What is a good HD videocard for the current MAMES?? Need suggestions.

[LegendaryGamer]

Hello fellow gamers. I'm trying to get the best out of MAME on speed with what I have. I have a AMD Athlon X 2 64 processor with 3GB of DDR memory. The video card I have is integrated with about 156mb of memory but I'm looking to replace it with a HD video card. My motherboard can take PCI-E X16 cards so I'm looking for something that would be good with the current MAME. Also how important is the memory size of the video card for MAME? I know there are some games that are still in the WIP stage and that might be the reason for the slow down of the game as other games with about the same specs run just fine. I would like something that can handle 3D games well. Games like killer instinct 1&2 on graphics. Can someone help suggest some video cards by ATI etc? Thanks

LegendaryGamer

[ahofle]

Video card matters very little with MAME as emulation occurs (currently) on the CPU.

[LegendaryGamer]

Video card matters very little with MAME as emulation occurs (currently) on the CPU.

I thought video memory should help speed up things and help render the graphics? So what would be the ideal CPU then? My motherboard takes AMD cpus up to AMD Phenom™ II.

[ahofle]

MAME emulates every processor in an arcade machine, including 3D hardware, with the CPU.  So 3D processing is not done with your video card.
I don't believe there is a CPU out there that is fast enough to run every game.  4+ Ghz over-clocked Core 2 Duos seem to work well: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0

[DJ_Izumi]

Ati Rage 128 would thusly be awesome.

[Nataq]

Of course the video card matter. Some are better in 2D then others. I agree 3D doesnt matter but not all video card perform the same in 2D. I have a radeon 9600 and a leadtek 5900 and the leadtek is a lot better. In reviews of the card we can see that with the leadtek they put a lot of effort in the 2D department. Even connected on composite the image was pretty good. Not the case for the radeon. Unfortunatly I cannot get component out of the leadtek so I am using the radeon one. I would need a vga to component transcoder to output from the leadtek but that cost 100+ $.

[Blanka]

Just get a cheap one. I like the 9500GT passive cards for around 40-50 bucks, or a 7600GS passive if you like second hand, as they are completely silent.

[Nataq]

Yeah passive cards are great. My radeon have a broken fan so its like passive hehe. Working like that for 2 years without any problem. Even if I was saying there are difference between cards on the 2D department (look at this: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/leadtek_winfast_a350_ultra_tdh_review/default.asp, in particular, the "Leadtek: Paving the way for better 2D?" part) I would say too to just get a cheap passive card. Unfortunalty, reviews of video card rarely mention 2D performance.

[J.Max]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Ultimarc Arcade VGA.  3D performance makes no difference in MAME, but it does occasionally want some odd video modes that the Arcade VGA has no problem rendering, but some other cards do.

[DJ_Izumi]

2D performance isn't going to matter in MAME either.  MAME doesn't use any of the 2D hardware acceleration features on your card anyway.  2D features are for rendering windows and stuff really well.  All MAME is going to do is dump frames into the graphic card's frame buffer.  So long as the buffer can keep up with MAME, you're set.

[Blanka]

The vidcard deals with the upscaling though. With a good upscaling algorithm to 1600x1200 a vidcard can matter!

[DJ_Izumi]

The vidcard deals with the upscaling though. With a good upscaling algorithm to 1600x1200 a vidcard can matter!

The graphics card's upscaling is pretty basic resizing and that's all it offers.  Trilinier resizing and stuff like that, all any card can do. The smoothing type stuff and such in some emulators is agian all done by the CPU.  Unless some emulator offers 3D accelerated resizing on high end cards that I don't know about.

[Blanka]

On the Mac you have Quartz Composer overlay effects for CRT emulation, they are pretty hardcore GC routines.

[u_rebelscum]

First off, mame dones not use the video card for emulation.  However, mame can use the card's hardware for other, non-emulation stuff, depending....

Mame, by default, uses the directX 3D card hardware:
- full screen resizing/scaling/aspect scaling
- overlay, underlay, bezel & "effects" (like CRT simulation overlays)
- UI menu rendering
- multiscreens
- I think some of the rotation (although might be just the overlay stuff)
- I think vsync and "triplebuffering" (FYI, mame does not do true triple buffering, but actually "render ahead" buffering)

By default, mame does not use any directX 2D hardware.  However, if you change from "video d3d" to "video ddraw", the above features will stop using the card's 3d hardware and use the card's 2d hardware instead.

If OTOH, the option is set to "video gdi", mame will use the CPU to do the above features (if at all).

So depending on your settings, mame might use 3d card non-emulation accel, or 2d card non-emulation acel, or not use the card hardware at all.


FWIW:
To see if your card is "fast enough" for your current option setup, run a game unthrottled for x number of seconds ("mame game -nothrottle -str 120"), and note the percent speed.  Then run the same game with no video ("mame game -nothrottle -str 120 -video none"), and note the percent speed.  If the difference is small (0-5%), upgrading your card will make basically no difference with your current option setup.

Note that the above paragraph is for testing your setup, not for benchmarking purposes.  And if you haven't bought a card yet, you can't do it or course.  And changing you settings and/or mame version can make a difference.

[FrizzleFried]

Of course the video card matter. Some are better in 2D then others. I agree 3D doesnt matter but not all video card perform the same in 2D. I have a radeon 9600 and a leadtek 5900 and the leadtek is a lot better. In reviews of the card we can see that with the leadtek they put a lot of effort in the 2D department. Even connected on composite the image was pretty good. Not the case for the radeon. Unfortunatly I cannot get component out of the leadtek so I am using the radeon one. I would need a vga to component transcoder to output from the leadtek but that cost 100+ $.

This is false.  I've benched half a dozen cards ranging from a $30.00 TI4200 to a borrowed (I can't afford one) 8500GT and they all benched within 3% +/- of each other.  The only time I saw a significant drop in framerate from one option to the next was when I tried a motherboard with on-board video.

FWIW: I benched on an arcade monitor using different standard resolution video modes...

[ivwshane]

I'd go with a passively cooled card that supports multiple video out formats (ie dvi, hdmi, vga), that way if you upgrade your display you can easily connect it to your card.

I purchased an ati 4550 that is passively cooled for about $40 after rebate that should work nicely for you (no additional power needed). Plus the card is capable of rendering blue ray dvd's so a high res tv shouldn't be a problem.

[DashRendar]

The other thing to look for is a video card that outputs in 15 Khz frequency, if you're using an arcade monitor.

[Kman-Sweden]

About the CPU's then...
Is it only up to GHz then? Could a "cheap" AMD 3.3GHz Phenom II be better than a much more expensive 3.0GHz Intel Quad or i7?
Has anyone tried any of the Intel i7's?

[massive88]

About the CPU's then...
Is it only up to GHz then? Could a "cheap" AMD 3.3GHz Phenom II be better than a much more expensive 3.0GHz Intel Quad or i7?
Has anyone tried any of the Intel i7's?

Its doubtful that Mame will get much use if any at all at anything over 2 cores.  Theoretically, you could get a triple core processor, and try to put Mame as the only application on two of the three cores, leaving the last for system processes and such, but imo, you wouldnt really see any significant gains.

As to the Phenom 2 vs Core 2 or i7, its generally held that per MHZ, the Core2 is the king, however I dont know that we have definitive data on that.  I personally just got a Phenom 2 x3, and will benchmark it against my core 2 duo to see how they compare, but havent gotten around to it yet.

[u_rebelscum]

Is it only up to GHz then? Could a "cheap" AMD 3.3GHz Phenom II be better than a much more expensive 3.0GHz Intel Quad or i7?
Has anyone tried any of the Intel i7's?

...As to the Phenom 2 vs Core 2 or i7, its generally held that per MHZ, the Core2 is the king, however I dont know that we have definitive data on that.  I personally just got a Phenom 2 x3, and will benchmark it against my core 2 duo to see how they compare, but havent gotten around to it yet.

The Phenom 2 was a lot closer to the core 2 cpus in some non-mame benchmarks, than the older phenom (1) and athlon cpus.  But not in others, so I'm not sure how it will really fit in for mame.

Still, from what I've heard mame-wise, the core 2 is the most BANG for the buck (more bang for more bucks), the Phenom 2 the best bang for the (lowest) BUCK (lower bang for lower buck, and not quite as much bang per Hz as core 2), and the core i5/i7 in par with the core 2s (in bang per Hz), but too much $$$ to be a good bank per buck.  (The phenom 2 apparently is better at mame per Hz than the athlon/athlon64/athlon2, but not as powerful per Hz as the core2.)

Again, that's without good mame benchmarks over otherwise "equal" systems though, so I'm eager to see some real numbers.  Thanks massive88! (whenever it happens)

[Kman-Sweden]

Thanks for confusing the hell out of me u_rebelscum. 
Since English is my third language, I had to read your post 3 times to sort out the double negatives and what not. 

Can't wait for your test massive88.

[IG-88]

You weren't the only one who had to read that more than once. There's alot of banging and bucking going on in that post 

[u_rebelscum]

Thanks for confusing the hell out of me u_rebelscum. 

Thanks, I do what I'm good at.... 







Write long posts with TMI (Too Much Information).    

(If anything still is not clear, let me know.)

[Kman-Sweden]

Yeah, could you sum it up in 3 words?

[LegendaryGamer]

I'm glad to see I finally posted something of high interest. Yeah I've been curious on the members choices. These choices have given me some ideals on what I should buy. I'm still looking over reviews etc but I'll come up with something. Thanks to you all.


LegendaryGamer

[Kman-Sweden]

A little off-topic but what the hell...
I've been running 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP3 on a Intel Q6600 @2,4 GHz and compared that to my cabinet that's running 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP3 on a Pentium 4 @2.66GHz.
I started up Carnevil on both and tried diffrent builds of MameUIFX to see if some where better than others. O'course the Quad was a lot better. Running almost flawlessly.
Some skipping in the graphics but sound was playing at normal speed.

Yesterday I upgraded my Quad PC to 64-bit Windows 7 and compiled a 64-bit MameUIFX.
It's like day and night compared to running 32-bit XP.

So If you're running 32-bit OS on 64-bit CPU... UPGRADE! 
Now I have to start putting money aside for a major upgrade of my MameCab.
Cheers.
-Kman

[IG-88]

Wonder if you would've got that vast of improvement by going to vista64 over win7?

[u_rebelscum]

Wonder if you would've got that vast of improvement by going to vista64 over win7?

From what people say, for mame, vista 32bit is about the same as win7 32 bit, and vista 64 bit is about the same as win 64 bit.

So,
yes vista 64 bit will be faster than win7 32 bit, and
no vista 64 bit will be about the same as win7 64 bit.


That's ignoring boot time, driver issues, and other non-mame issues.

[saurian333]

Wonder if you would've got that vast of improvement by going to vista64 over win7?

From what people say, for mame, vista 32bit is about the same as win7 32 bit, and vista 64 bit is about the same as win 64 bit.

So,
yes vista 64 bit will be faster than win7 32 bit, and
no vista 64 bit will be about the same as win7 64 bit.


That's ignoring boot time, driver issues, and other non-mame issues.

I don't know about MAME in particular, since I never tried running it on Vista (didn't use it very long).  But overall, in my experience, Win7-32 is a vast improvement, performance-wise, over Vista-64.  Which was rather surprising, especially considering I was running Vista-64 on 4GB of RAM, and Win7 on 2GB.

Food for thought.

[u_rebelscum]

...That's ignoring boot time, driver issues, and other non-mame issues.

I don't know about MAME in particular, since I never tried running it on Vista (didn't use it very long).  But overall, in my experience, Win7-32 is a vast improvement, performance-wise, over Vista-64.  Which was rather surprising, especially considering I was running Vista-64 on 4GB of RAM, and Win7 on 2GB.

Food for thought.

Yeah, that's what I tried to imply with the disclaimer.  Win7's UI is "cleaner" (smaller, faster, and nicer) than Vista's, which helps speed up most windows apps.  Mame is a different beast, though, as it doesn't use the windows UI, nor windows standard I/O API (mame uses directX & rawInput instead).  Mame does benefit a little fromm the smaller memory footprint of win7 and probably other places, but the reports in don't show mame being helped nearly as much as other apps.

(Hmm, the front end will probably be helped, though.)

[IG-88]

This thread is totally getting hi-jacked 

I don't know about MAME in particular, since I never tried running it on Vista (didn't use it very long).  But overall, in my experience, Win7-32 is a vast improvement, performance-wise, over Vista-64.  Which was rather surprising, especially considering I was running Vista-64 on 4GB of RAM, and Win7 on 2GB.

Food for thought.

That gives me an idea. Do you think I can an I upgrade my system (Intel dual core E8500 with 4GB ram, Vista 64) to win7 32 bit and expect better performance on my apps? Not too worried about Mame, but I'm sick and tired of all my old 32bit software not working in 64.

[Nataq]

Of course the video card matter. Some are better in 2D then others. I agree 3D doesnt matter but not all video card perform the same in 2D. I have a radeon 9600 and a leadtek 5900 and the leadtek is a lot better. In reviews of the card we can see that with the leadtek they put a lot of effort in the 2D department. Even connected on composite the image was pretty good. Not the case for the radeon. Unfortunatly I cannot get component out of the leadtek so I am using the radeon one. I would need a vga to component transcoder to output from the leadtek but that cost 100+ $.

This is false.  I've benched half a dozen cards ranging from a $30.00 TI4200 to a borrowed (I can't afford one) 8500GT and they all benched within 3% +/- of each other.  The only time I saw a significant drop in framerate from one option to the next was when I tried a motherboard with on-board video.

FWIW: I benched on an arcade monitor using different standard resolution video modes...

By performance I was talking about video quality... Like I said, my leadtek gives me a real improvement if I compare it to my radeon both using composite. It's just fact. You cant benchmark that.

[DeLuSioNal29]

As stated above, MAME doesn't really require a powerful card.  An AVGA2 will do nicely.  However, being that it's a PC, you may want to run other games on it that DO use the video card.  One in particular Street Fighter IV.  This WILL NOT run on a less powerful card (namely ALL models of the AVGA2 - I've tried).

The good news is programs like Soft 15KHz allow you to alter the drivers of the card to work with arcade monitors.  Personally, I upgraded from and AVGA2 to an ATI Radeon HD4670 PCI-E (GIGABYTE model GV-R467ZL-1GI).  It cost me around $60 and has 1GB of RAM.  Not too shabby.

The card I mentioned above is officially supported by Soft15KHz and is listed as a compatible adapter:
http://community.arcadeinfo.de/showpost.php?p=99609&postcount=67

And it has a Zalman fan which is nice and quiet and should last a LONG time.

DeLuSioNaL29