How good would these machines be for potential projects?

[slapaham]

I'm terrible at knowing what specs are up to what... I'm always faffing with machines so just wondered how good these 2 would be for -

a) A media center set up
b) A SK Jukebox Touchscreen set-up
c) A MAME cabinet
d) A Visual Pinball cabinet

To me, they sound like good spec PCs - I'd agree with anyone who says they could do with a bit more RAM but they are upgradeable to 3gb's worth if needs be. Opinions please people! Here are the specs for the 2...

Celeron 3.06Ghz Fujitsu Esprimo E5905
1gb PC2-3200 DDR2 Ram
80GB Sata hard disk
Dvd Rom
7200 LE PCIE gfx card with Svideo out
XP



Celeron 3.06Ghz Fujitsu Esprimo E5905
1gb PC2-3200 DDR2 Ram
80GB Sata hard disk
Dvd Rom
Onboard gfx via VGA
XP

[JMB]

I'm terrible at knowing what specs are up to what... I'm always faffing with machines so just wondered how good these 2 would be for -

b) A SK Jukebox Touchscreen set-up

Either one of those machines are fine for this role. I am running a far less powerful machine for my SK system.

Depending on what you plan on running for Mame games they may also be fine for that. I have one Mame PC still running that is a Duron 950 with 756MB of RAM.

Are you trying to accomplish more than one of those tasks on the same box?

[slapaham]

No... just I want a box devoted to each of those tasks...

I already have 2 competent machines - one that is currently running MAME 105 fairly well... and another that is being used as a touchscreen juke. If I was to get these machines I'd probably use one as a visual pinball set-up. The other, well, depending on size and how I'm feeling, I may swap it with the PC currently being used for the juke...

I guess my main aim is just to see whether or not these are pretty high spec for projects or not... surely at 3.06ghz they are? But like cars, processors, etc can be a bit confusing - turbo charged motors can make a car more powerful even though it has a smaller engine for example!

[BobA]

For your media center it will depend on what outputs you are going to use.   If you want high end hd decoding and blue ray playing you may need more than the computers that you have spec'd.   For the other uses the computers mentioned should be fine.

Sometimes less is more. I have a zotac mini itx that has less processing power than the computers you mention but has hardware decoding and encoding for the HD outputs so it plays blueray and outputs hd anyway you want for media center use.