The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Sephroth57 on December 12, 2003, 03:00:14 pm
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So you want to run MAME in a cabinet and youre not sure if you should get a bargain mid level PC or dish out for the supreme PC of the month. Well I will try to cover most questions and concerns people will have about choosing a PC, based on my personal experience and that of others I've read throughout the forums.
First, you will need to decide a couple things. Will this PC be only for MAME arcade use? Will you only be playing classic or older type games? Do you want the flexibility to play newer games as MAME supports them? And also, will you use this for more then MAME, such as other console emulators or actual PC games?
Here are a few setups based on each situation I think would work well.
Disclaimer: These specs are not written in stone and are merely guidelines to base your PC purchases on. Also if youre making up a PC from old parts you will have to improvise and you dont need to have these exact numbers. This is mainly for the average person on a mid level budget, with exception to the A-Type PC.
A-Type - All MAME + PC games
In this setup youre basicly building the best computer you possibly can within your budget. Lets start with the motherboard and processor, this is the core of your computer and you don't want to skimp on it. I recommend a Athlon 2700 XP or better processor. I choose Athlon over pentium because their cost vs their performance is clearly better then Pentiums. Get that with a motherboard with a couple PCI slots, a AGP 8x, and some USB 2.0s with a 333mhz bus speed and you cant go wrong.
RAM always helps high end PC gaming, 512MB DDR RAM will be enough for most high end PC games. And if you have the extra money 1GB RAM would be optimal.
The size hard drive you want to buy is really a matter of preference. As a minimum a 40-60GB HD should be used. They are cheap now and can hold a full MAME collection and keep many games installed with room to spare.
You will want a high level video card as they affect PC graphics immensely (not MAME graphics) . Geforce4 and Geforce FX cards are relatively cheap now, about 130$ and 180$ respectively. for their high end models and offer a good low cost/high preformance ratio. Radeon is the other solution which are a bit more costly but have slighty higher framerates on graphic intensive games.
A DVD/CD ROM is also useful if you get your rom updates from burners in the mail, or if you download the roms on your main home PC and transfer them over. If you have a home network you could also add a network card in place of a CD/DVD drive and send the files from your main PC.
A-Type Typical Specs
Athlon 2700 XP +
512 DDR RAM +
40GB HD +
High end Geforce or Radeon card
Sound Blaster or Onboard sound card
DVD/CD ROM -or- network card
B-Type - Pure MAME PC
This PC type will play every game in MAME just about, except for the newest CHD games which can barely be played on the best computers out.
Processing power is key for a setup in which you plan to range from classics to the most currently supported games. Your processor tries to emulate each component on the original game board and therefore does not use much hardware acceleration besides processor if any at all. You want to get the highest processor in your price range, Athlon XP is preferred right now due to it's affordable price and nice speeds compared to equally priced pentiums. Athlon XP 2000 or better would be suitable for this.
RAM is not a main component for a MAME setup, 256MB RAM should be sufficient for most games
A 40GB harddrive will be plenty for a MAME only PC. It can hold the current MAME collection almost twice over so you will be good on space for a while. Although new games coming out in .chd format take a lot more space then normal zipped roms. I would reccomend a 60GB as the price difference is so little and you get so much more.
A DVD/CD ROM is also useful if you get your rom updates from burners in the mail, or if you download the roms on your main home PC and transfer them over. If you have a home network you could also add a network card in place of a CD/DVD drive and send the files from your main PC.
Your videocard is hardly important compared to the A-Type PC. MAME uses barely any hardware acceleration if any at all. A 8MB Rage ATI videocard is as cheap as you can go and will work just as good as a geforce. Although depending on what your display will be you might want to invest in a Radeon 9000 64MB as they have S-Video outputs for TV use and are only about 50$.
B-Type Typical Specs -
Athlon XP 2000 +
256 MB RAM +
40GB HD +
8MB Video Card minimum (if using a TV Radeon 9000 64MB)
Generic Soundcard or onboard
DVD/CD ROM -or- Network Card
C-Type The low end MAME machine
You want a machine to play the classics along with some 80s-90s era games. These machines are much cheaper and could even be obtained for free as most people have no use for outdated computers when they upgrade. This type of computer is designed to run roughly 90% of MAME games without problems. You might get slowdown on some newer fighting or 3d games. Most CHD games will probably not run too well.
C-Type Basic Specs -(thanks to Tiger-Heli for this info)
Duron, Athlon or XP 850-1.0 Ghz,
128-256M Ram
20G HD
4M PCI Vid Card (doesn't really matter)
On-Board Sound
D-Type - Bare Minimum - Classic MAME only
This is desgined for playing old games, Pacman, Galaga, Space Invaders, etc. You should use MAME version R36B12 or earlier (before alpha blending was added).
D-Type Basic Specs -(thanks to Tiger-Heli for this info)
Pentium 200 MMX
64M Ram
10G HD
4M PCI Vid Card (or on-board)
On-board sound
Good sources for finding parts/PCs.
www.ebay.com
www.pricewatch.com
www.newegg.com
www.portatech.com
If you still have questions about certain setups post in this thread and I will try to help you.
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You might want to change GigaHertz to GigaByte.
I don't think you need a 3d card for a dedicated mame machine, but I guess I don't play the brand newest games so I could be wrong.
As of right now really don't need 60 GB of HD for a dedicated mame machine.
If you have a home network, a network card might be the better solution for a deicated machine rather than a cd/dvd. That way you don't need to break out the keyboard
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ah yeah that was a error for the RAM ill change that. as far as the HD space goes i really belive in a large HD. if you have been playing any of the new .chd format games they are extremely large, I have about 15GB of HD taken up by like 5 chd format games. and these are going to keep coming out so you dont want to need to upgrade if you just bought a PC for this purpose not long ago.
also I plan to add an options kind of section at the end like you said people that might want to switch CD/DVD rom for a network if they happen to have that but i know a lot of people dont have networks going to their cabinets so i put that as the main option. Its not done yet like I said but I think its a good start
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BeatMania 4th Mix doesn't take up 4.9G of space unless you uncompress the CHD image, and then it wouldn't run.
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well then mine is messed up cause it takes up 5 gigs and it runs....
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I agree with the NIC idea...it's much easier. Also I heard that just some 8meg video card was the only thing necessary for MAME. I plan on testing this as early as this weekend. I currently have a 64 Geforce4 MX440se that I plan to swap out for an old 8 meg AGP card I found and seeing if it makes any difference in games. I'll post my findings if I'm able to try it this weekend. Also I just got a copy of MAME .77 burned on DVD from a guy on the net and loading everything to my HDD only took 20 Gigs.
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Suggestion - The only difference in your charts between type A and Type B is RAM and Vid Card and Sound card., also will be confusing having Type B as a better system then A , which is better than C.
Recommend Type A - All MAME GAMES and PC GAMES also - List your current Type B computer here.
Type B - Rename as - Most modern MAME GAMES - put your Type A computer here, but change -
Processor - drop to XP2200 - There are maybe one or two games at most that won't play on a 2200 and will on a 2700. Blitz needs a 4 Ghz, regardless.
HD - drop to 60Gb + (People can buy larger, but this is sufficient.
Vid Card - Drop to TNT2 (like you said, doesn't really matter.
Type C Recommendations - Up to Afterburner, 19XX, etc.
Duron, Athlon or XP 850-1.0 Ghz,
128-256M Ram
20G HD
4M PCI Vid Card (doesn't really matter)
On-Board Sound
Type D Recommendation - Bare Minimum - 80's games like PacMan, Galaga, etc. (Preferably use MAME R36B12 or previous (before alpha blending)).
Pentium 200 MMX
64M Ram
20G HD
4M PCI Vid Card (or on-board)
On-board sound
I have personally used configs C and D, so this is pretty accurate
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20GB including all the chds? well i guess mine is messed up Ill make those changes in the specs. Also about the 8MB videocard that is the minimum i believe, their price range is what like 10$? i think old geforce2 are only like 20 now i could be wrong but I will list that also. I plan to make this more extensive this is just a quick writeup i did at work when i was bored. Its not sticky worthy yet but I will try to encompass everyones suggestions and make it better.
thanks for the constructive replys, keep them coming =)
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20GB including all the chds? well i guess mine is messed up Ill make those changes in the specs. Also about the 8MB videocard that is the minimum i believe, their price range is what like 10$? i think old geforce2 are only like 20 now i could be wrong but I will list that also. I plan to make this more extensive this is just a quick writeup i did at work when i was bored. Its not sticky worthy yet but I will try to encompass everyones suggestions and make it better.
thanks for the constructive replys, keep them coming =)
MAME is NOT video intensive. I use a 16M TNT2 with a Duron 850. I had a 4M PCI (Rendition) in it before. Afterburner was slightly faster with the TNT2, but nothing to write home about.
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ah thanks for the low end specs, i was gonna ask around for those as I havent gotten around to making my classic mame setups yet
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I can see why you would suggest a bigger HD just to prevent people from upgradeing but if one is writting a FAQ i don't think you should say you NEED a 60GB HD when at the time you can really get by with a 40GB. Yes there little difference in price between the two now days, but I think it should be noted on what is requried and what is suggested.
I'd also probably make a note on processor, only a smaller % of the games require the faster processor.
If I'm a noob I want to know what is the min to run something or almost everything. I don't want to read a FAQ on how I need this, and that, go out and buy it and find out later I could have saved a much of money that does the job just as well but for a lot less money.
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About the video cards..
While it's true that the latest and greatest geforce or radeon wont make a large difference over a cheaper vid card, one thing you might not get if you go too cheap is no TV-out
My setup falls into the 'mostly mame classics + other emulators' category. Its a P3, 700mhz, 512ram, 20gb drive, with a Radeon AIW 7500. I'm going to a TV via the regular RCA jack(not s-video) and it looks great on mame, esp at the low resolutions to avoid scaling.
THese cards can be found for about 50-75 on ebay, depending on which model it is. Radeons without the AIW may be a few bucks cheaper, and they still ahve great looking TV out. Im sure the other cards(nvidia et al) have good looking tv out but I havent used em so I cant make any recommendations
I recently added Sega Genesis support, and just for kicks I got out my real sega as well, ran it thru the same TV. The picture quality(including color, brightness, tearing, sharpness, etc) is virtually identical between the 2.
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made a bunch of revisions. added the classic setups with Tiger-Heli's info.
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Maybe you should add a Vantage setup aswell. This classic setup requires barely any computing power. I know I can run it full speed easily on a Pentium 100, I can probably test it with a 386 20mhz if you want me to try.
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I've found that alot of onboard video cards don't support alot of video modes properly even for the oldest games. Most PCI or AGP cards (including the cheap ones) don't have this problem, though.
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Frankly, all those numbers are overkill. If you think you need that stuff, then you really haven't been around Mame long enough. Most of the games that are in Mame now, were in it years ago (especially the ones that anyone actually cares about), and they were largely running full speed before your type C system was even available.
That type C Basic specs system will run pretty much every title in mame, with less than 2 dozen exceptions (out of 4000 games, which makes that more than 99 percent).
Recent testing with a Celeron 400 (with 64 MB Ram, Windows 98 SE, and Mame .55) showed that it ran everything (non-analog) in Mame full speed with only a couple of exceptions (the stuff on Mortal Kombat hardware and Asteroids). I just did an install for as cabinet using this exact setup. We tested all sorts of games, and got 60/60 (or 40/40, or 57/57 or whatever), on everything we tested except for the aforementioned games.
My Pentium 200 (Win 95, 32 Ram), seems to run all the "classic" stuff (Pac, Rally-X, etc), full speed, no matter which mame version you use on it. Although hitting F10 shows that the older versions are almost and order of magnitude faster.
My 100 mhz laptop (486) can even run a bunch of the classic games fullspeed, even with windows running in the background.
There are really only two types of Mame systems.
The 4-way system
This is the only one I am going to assign a solid number to. If your only controls consist of a 4-way joystick and buttons, then the magic number is 300 mhz. Ram really doesn't matter in this setup. If you want to bump back a BUNCH of Mame versions then you can go down to a 200 mhz, or even a pentium 100.
The OTHER system
You can't really put a number on this, it is almost an analog thing. It is a sliding scale of cost vs. performance. Basically, it all really comes down to the stuff on Mortal Kombat hardware. If you HAVE to play that stuff, then you better throw down for a GHZ+ computer. If you can let those couple of games slide (I mean, come on, we are talking a couple of totally unoriginal games that have perfect Snes ports anyway), then you can get by with almost anything.
Other notes
I cannot stress enough how much faster older versions of Mame are. If you are having speed problems with your favorite game, then drop back 5 Mame versions, and see if it is running full speed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Most of the good games and the ones that anyone actually cares about were in Mame a LONG time ago. I haven't done a lot of solid framerate benchmarking, but Mame .55 seems to be able to run the games roughly 2-3 times as fast as my current version of Mame (which is at least 3 versions behind).
The hard drive games
I mean, really who cares? I look at these things and I see three types of games; complete junk, specialty controls games, and complete junk games that also have special controls. If you are on ANY sort of budget for your machine, and you are worried about supporting these games, then I think you might have priority problems.
The actual answer to the question
You need a 100 mhz computer to "run mame". As you increase in speed from there you will add the ability to run many more games with each 50 mhz bump in processor speed up to about 400 mhz. At 400 mhz you are cabable of running well over 90 percent of the games in Mame (assuming you are willing to experiment with different Mame versions). 400 mhz is really the price to performance sweet spot for Mame. The next 3000 mhz adds VERY LITTLE. Each 100 mhz or so bump in processor speed over 400 adds a game, maybe two (MANY of which are analog anyway).
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I've found that alot of onboard video cards don't support alot of video modes properly even for the oldest games. Most PCI or AGP cards (including the cheap ones) don't have this problem, though.
I wouldn't think this would be a problem with hardware stretching, but I haven't tried it.
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Good comments, Paige.
Frankly, all those numbers are overkill.
That type C Basic specs system will run pretty much every title in mame, with less than 2 dozen exceptions (out of 4000 games, which makes that more than 99 percent).
Type C (Duron 850) was listed b/c that's what I have. (And they're now around $25 if we're looking at buying rather than using off the shelf.). I agree it could be dropped down to the 400 Mhz level.
And as you said, the really tough games in MAME can be played on a much less capable machine using a SNES or N64 emulator and port.
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Okay I tested the video cards this weekend. I have downgraded my XP1600+ PC with 256megs of Ram and a Geforce4 MX440se to a pathetic 8meg AGP SIS card. I've tried a couple of classics like Galaga, and I've tried 10 Yard Fight and found no difference. I've also tried Ultimate MK3 and Area 51 and again I've found no difference so I am staying with the 8 meg AGP card. I did lose TV-out but since I'm using a monitor in my cabinet that isn't a big deal for me.
Secondly, I'm upgrading the hard drive to a 40gig so that I can fit Windows XP and everything on the MAME DVDs on one hard drive. Since it'll be a dedicated MAME machine.
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Paige, although some of your arguements are true and I will probably lower some specs a little, your main emphasis is that no one cares about new games you can run classics on a hampster why have anything better.
about HD games you said "The hard drive games
I mean, really who cares? I look at these things and I see three types of games; complete junk, specialty controls games, and complete junk games that also have special controls."
IMO HD games are awesome and I love how some actual good graphics games are becoming playable and that MAME is supporting them. Your opinions are very biased and although at least half of people into MAME like it for the old stuff, theres the new generation thats in it for the games that they grew up with. I grew up playing street fighter, MK 1, etc so these are my Pac-Man, Galaga , etc.
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IMO HD games are awesome and I love how some actual good graphics games are becoming playable and that MAME is supporting them. Your opinions are very biased and although at least half of people into MAME like it for the old stuff, theres the new generation thats in it for the games that they grew up with. I grew up playing street fighter, MK 1, etc so these are my Pac-Man, Galaga , etc.
Okay, let me try to stake out some middle ground here, since I see both sides of the issue. I grew up on PacMan and Galaga, but I think Cal Speed and SF Rush are awesome and I'm glad to see them coming to MAME.
Where I agree with Paige is that these games are basically unplayable on a Athlon 64 3200 with 1Gig of Ram and a 9800 Pro with 256M graphics. So if you can't play these games on the fastest PC, but you can play anything else on a P400, why recommend something faster - (That's a huge oversimplification, but you get the idea.).
I would love to play the arcade ports of SF Rush, etc. but it will be two or three years before the computer hardware will do it. In the meantime, my Duron 850 does fine for 99% of the other MAME games, and plays the N64 ports of those games, so why upgrade.
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well yeah even with the best computers some games are still unplayable but most HD games are. Personally id get the best setup just so i could play beatmania and KI 2. and you cant just look at the current list and base your purchase off that Im trying to think ahead so when Gauntlet Legends comes out (just an example) im not like damn I love that game now i need to upgrade.
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well yeah even with the best computers some games are still unplayable but most HD games are. Personally id get the best setup just so i could play beatmania and KI 2. and you cant just look at the current list and base your purchase off that Im trying to think ahead so when Gauntlet Legends comes out (just an example) im not like damn I love that game now i need to upgrade.
What was mentioned early on, but never resolved, is:
Is this a "This is what you should buy thread?" or a "This is what you need?" thread.
Example, the Duron 850 is $29, but an XP2200 is only $57, so if I'm BUYING, I'd get the XP2200. But if someone had a Pentium II 400 that they were GIVING away, that would run 90% of the games, so that would be acceptable.
See where I'm going . . .
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Example, the Duron 850 is $29, but an XP2200 is only $57, so if I'm BUYING, I'd get the XP2200. But if someone had a Pentium II 400 that they were GIVING away, that would run 90% of the games, so that would be acceptable.
Not a good comparison, the mobo and memory for the duron 850 is going to be signifcantly cheaper than for the xp2200. When the difference is $28 its easy to say go with the faster one but if that difference turns out to be $100 or $200 then it really is significant.
Why is this thread sticky anyway? Its full of conflicts, misinformation and opinions that aren't based on facts but rather on speculation.
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Example, the Duron 850 is $29, but an XP2200 is only $57, so if I'm BUYING, I'd get the XP2200. But if someone had a Pentium II 400 that they were GIVING away, that would run 90% of the games, so that would be acceptable.
Not a good comparison, the mobo and memory for the duron 850 is going to be signifcantly cheaper than for the xp2200. When the difference is $28 its easy to say go with the faster one but if that difference turns out to be $100 or $200 then it really is significant.
Actually, that's not true. I got a 256M stick of Kingston value PC2700 DDR (166 FSB) free with rebate from OfficeMax. That will work on the XP2200. (Can't get much cheaper than free.) Most DDR is PC2700, nowadays. In SDR, PC133 is usually LESS expensive than PC100 nowadays. Same with motherboards. You probably need a KT266 board for the XP2200 (needs 133 FSB), but these are among the cheapest boards to buy now. The boards that would support a Duron and NOT an XP2200 are more expensive b/c they are limited production now.
Why is this thread sticky anyway? Its full of conflicts, misinformation and opinions that aren't based on facts but rather on speculation.
The idea was that there would be a consensus and then the thread would be updated. This question gets asked a lot of the main forum.
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thank you tiger-heli for those clarifications. Also its not like Im dictating what people have to buy, your PC build is really just relavent to what games you want to play and your budget. which is different for everyone so obviously there can be no strict guidelines. If you feel something is presented wrong add in why and what you think i should add. As Tiger-Heli did to help the low end PCs
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hmmm, well after reading all this, it got me interested in the amd processors. ive always used pentium's but i saw on newegg.com that you can get a xp2200 for $67!! so im new to amd, what motherboard is best for these processors, and im guessing they use the same type of ram (ddr, etc.)
the reason im saying this, is cuz the only pc game that im really wanting to play is golden tee pc, will an xp2200 with a fair amount of ram and a radeon 7500 graphics card run golden tee smoothly?
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hmmm, well after reading all this, it got me interested in the amd processors. ive always used pentium's but i saw on newegg.com that you can get a xp2200 for $67!! so im new to amd, what motherboard is best for these processors, and im guessing they use the same type of ram (ddr, etc.)
the reason im saying this, is cuz the only pc game that im really wanting to play is golden tee pc, will an xp2200 with a fair amount of ram and a radeon 7500 graphics card run golden tee smoothly?
Overkill
Dude, Golden Tee PC came out like 6 years ago. Here are the system requirements.
Win 95
16 MB RAM
1X CD-ROM drive
486DX/133 MHz
640x480 (256 colors, or more, required)
So, yes, I am betting an Athlon 2200 could run this game smoothly, since that is roughly 20 times the minimum specs. Also, it isn't even going to use your fancy video card, so don't bother.
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hmmm, well after reading all this, it got me interested in the amd processors. ive always used pentium's but i saw on newegg.com that you can get a xp2200 for $67!! so im new to amd, what motherboard is best for these processors, and im guessing they use the same type of ram (ddr, etc.)
the reason im saying this, is cuz the only pc game that im really wanting to play is golden tee pc, will an xp2200 with a fair amount of ram and a radeon 7500 graphics card run golden tee smoothly?
Overkill
Dude, Golden Tee PC came out like 6 years ago. Here are the system requirements.
Win 95
16 MB RAM
1X CD-ROM drive
486DX/133 MHz
640x480 (256 colors, or more, required)
So, yes, I am betting an Athlon 2200 could run this game smoothly, since that is roughly 20 times the minimum specs. Also, it isn't even going to use your fancy video card, so don't bother.
whoa, take it easy there bud, im sorry im not "johnny-arcade" like yourself...please forgive my ignorance on the system requirements of golden tee! what was i thinking! ;D
okay all joking aside thanks for the advice. the reason i was getting this better pc is because my current setup is lagging when i play games like double dragon with 2 players, and the sound is garbled. granted the lag and obviously the sound could be due just to my sound card, but still. its a pentium 3 1.1ghz with 512 SDRAM and radeon 7500. i was just thinking of upgrading. so im guessing i dont need to?
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If Double Dragon is lagging on that system then it is because of a configuration problem, or perhaps a sound card issue. I was playing Double Dragon in mame a loooooong time ago on my 300 mhz K6. Do you have onboard sound? Are you using a USB input solution for your controls? Do you have other software running in the background? What resolution are you running at? What is your sound set at (try bumping it down to 22 khz).
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well i tried messing with the sound config in the ini files (i think thats what it was...text file anyway) and that helped a little, but it was still messing up. i mean it was a crappy card im pretty sure. and im pretty sure no programs were running in the background, but i could be wrong. well regardless, im trying to sell this cab, and build another, so i would need another system which is why i was asking these questions.
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okay all joking aside thanks for the advice. the reason i was getting this better pc is because my current setup is lagging when i play games like double dragon with 2 players, and the sound is garbled. granted the lag and obviously the sound could be due just to my sound card, but still. its a pentium 3 1.1ghz with 512 SDRAM and radeon 7500. i was just thinking of upgrading. so im guessing i dont need to?
The real arcade double dragon lagged pretty bad sometimes with lots of action on the screen. Its just a really good emulation is all. :)
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Opinions on which games a person wants to play really shouldn't even be in this thread... that would be completely different thread...
Here's a little benchmark info. While I agree with Paige on most things related to this issue I have bounced on the floor of Mame-capable PC's before and have found some problems with low ends PC's.
The setup:
Pentium 133mhz
Some RAM, it was probably 16M or possibly 32M?
ISA Creative SB 16
1 meg PCI video card
Mame 0.36 ran all the classics I tried fairly well. Classics meaning about 25 typical popular early 80's games. BUT NOT PERFECTLY. Moon Patrol and BurgerTime would slow down sometimes when music was playing. Atari System 2 games like Paperboy, 720, Super Sprint were too slow to play properly.
Mame 0.6X (the most current at the time) had more difficulty playing some of these same games.
Another setup:
AMD K6/2 500mhz
32M RAM
ISA Creative SB 16
1 meg PCI video card
Mame 0.6X couldn't run Atari System 2 games full speed either!! (Paper, SSprint, 720). The older early 80's classics I ran all played full speed. Mame 0.36 or so ran these Atari games full speed. This is the setup I'm currently using on a cocktail Mame project.
*** Hard drives ***
I also think hard drive space shouldn't even be listed, I used a 4G on my main, fast Mame cabinet and never used more than 1 gig of it. Later it died so I had to switch to a 13G because it is all I had, but I'm not using 12G of it. It all depends on what games you want on the system. Specify the space it takes to load every single ROM/chd for a given Mame version but don't include all the screen caps, front ends, movies, etc. because none of that is a necessary part of running Mame.
Wade
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I got CarnEvil at 55-65% on a centrino 1.3! A 2.4 Centrino may run all MAME games fullspeed.
Anyone have one to test?
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Just a footnote about the specs for the class A....
that should read "almost all mame and pc"
I have an xp 2600 barton running at the faster 2700 (333mhz) bus speed about 5-10 percent of the games still won't run, most notably the crusin series, carnevil and the other high end 3d games. Even ki2 looses a frame or two.
I really doubt that another 100 mhz and a slightly larger processor cache would be enough to get these games playable.
I don't think that there is a type A system that can be built when it comes to cost practicality. A newer 3+ gig system with a gig of ram MIGHT be able to get it done, but with the slowness of the drivers I really doubt it.
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Just a footnote about the specs for the class A....
that should read "almost all mame and pc"
I have an xp 2600 barton running at the faster 2700 (333mhz) bus speed about 5-10 percent of the games still won't run, most notably the crusin series, carnevil and the other high end 3d games. Even ki2 looses a frame or two.
I really doubt that another 100 mhz and a slightly larger processor cache would be enough to get these games playable.
I don't think that there is a type A system that can be built when it comes to cost practicality. A newer 3+ gig system with a gig of ram MIGHT be able to get it done, but with the slowness of the drivers I really doubt it.
Howard, you should really brush up on what percentages are, and what 5 or 10 percent of 4000 games really is. 5 percent is 200 games, and 10 percent is 400 games.
Can you name 400 games that won't run full speed on that processor?
I would actually be impressed if you can name 40 of them.
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Actually yes I can... my percentages were accurate.... out of the current mame build there are approx 375 drivers that are not complete (used to be test drivers) or have "hacked" sections of code causing them to run very slow. Then there approx 25 more games that although they are fully playable, the emulation is unoptimized and is far too slow to run on any normal system.
However I'm not going to list them all because I don't have that kind of time. :)
Anyway, quit nit-picking and look at my point. Type A does not exist because there isn't a system commonly available that will play all runnable mame games at full speed.
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Well, what are these magic games? I will admit that I do not have the hard drive games, nor do I plan on getting them for a long time.
I will assume that ALL that hard drive games are too slow, since I cannot play them to check for myself. Although apparently the Bemani hard drive games run just fine, even on "slower" systems (which also seems to be almost half the hard drive games).
Checking a rom site it appears that there are 18 CHD games. If that is wrong, then please correct me, as I just trusted the first source I found.
The absolute fastest computer I have access to for testing purposes is my Athlon 1200.
From playing on that I can add the following to that list.
Prop Cycle
The Cruisin Series (are these CHD? I can't recall).
Stun Runner is not ALWAYS 100 percent, and there are a couple of polygon games that I can't recall the names too that are also not always 100 percent, but they are darn close on my 1200, and should run full speed on something else.
If every one of those games has one clone, then we are up to 40 games, which is like one percent, not 5 or 10, and is almost exclusively hard drive games.
Now I admit, I have not played EVERYTHING in Mame, but I have played most of them. Everything pre 89 runs full speed as far as I know (although depending on version, the color vector games sometimes need a good system).
As far as post 90 games. The majority of them fall under the following categories.
CPS 1 - Runs full speed.
CPS2 - Full speed.
90s Midway hardware (needs a bit of power if you want to use a newer Mame version, but it does run full speed).
Neo Geo - Full speed.
Taito F3 - Full speed.
Jaleco Megasystem 32 - Full speed
Psikyo - Full speed (but many still had other issues last time I checked).
Kaneko hardware - Full speed.
Mahjong games - Not a platform, but everyone I have ever tried has ran full speed.
I probably missed a major hardware platform in there somewhere, but you get the point, the major non-chd hardware platforms from the 90s are running full speed.
If you can find more than 2 (or even one, just find one) pre 89 game that won't run full speed on modern hardware, then let me know, until then, we are ruling that they are all full speed. That right there is 75 percent of the games in Mame (maybe more?)
That leaves 18 CHD games (say 36 with clones), 3 odd versions of Cruisin, and Prop Cycle. Which makes 40.
The reason I am nitpicking is BECAUSE of the common misinformation that 5-10 percent of the games won't run full speed on anything. In reality it is well under 1 percent (as some of the hard drive games WILL run full speed, just not on my comp), and almost exclusively hard drive games.
I am going to start a thread in the software forum to get a definitive list of the games that won't run full speed on current hardware. I have a feeling it is going to be short.
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You can start a list, but why bother? My information is accurate.... simply type mame.exe -gamelist
all games listed with the "Not working" status have incomplete drivers or drivers that are too unoptimized to be deemed playable. That list will come up to well over 300... add on the slower harddrive games which have been technically upgraded to playable status but are still too slow and the slew of namco 3d games that are too slow and the number is more like 400.
I do know what I'm talking about, don't argue with me.
I read your comments above about how you haven't tried every single game. Guess what? I have.. I try each and every new game upon a new release to help find bugs for the mametesters and to get new info for controls.dat. project. I don't see how you have the right to argue against me when I am more qualified to answer than you are.
Getting back to THE POINT which you STILL aren't getting. Class A is deemed as being able to run ALL mame games. That is impossible, and it always will be. Even if ONE game isn't playable then that isn't ALL now is it? Just because YOU wouldn't want to play a game doesn't mean that the game is wiped from existance.
I hate to be rude, but you keep dancing around the real matter with split hairs and such.
Your opinions one what is worthy of being played are irrelevant to the thread. This is about what you need to play the games regardless of weather a person actually wants to play.
But regarding this thread... I don't think that pc games should be lumped in with mame games. They are totally different animals. If your specs are enough to run your favorite modern pc game then they will obviously be enough to run mame well. The two aren't related... you make sure it can run the pc game and mame is an afterthought. Alternatively, even new pc games can run on veyr very slow systems if you turn the effects off... I've yet to see a game that doesn't have the minimum req. on the box at something like 5-600mhz with 256 megs of ram.
Getting back to mame:...
Heck I could run about 88% of the games on my old athlon 900 mhz with 512 megs of ram. Considering 10% are "permenantly" unplayable on any system I would say that's pretty good. I would reccomend about a 1.2 gig processor with 512 megs of ram soley because windows will run better... mame itself has little or nothing to do with the equation.
Which gets back to something eightbit brought up... that's opinion. What will actually run at what speeds is a fact... but what specifically to reccomend based on "what mamers will want" is far too opinionated. This thread needs closed / un-stickied with two new threads......
"What are the minimum requirements to run these mame games", in which a person posts a game and people respond stating the fps they get with their system (and specs of course), and a similar thread just for pc games.
Then the info could be looked over and compiled into something useful, like a cut-off point of when a processor is too slow to run game xyz (no pun intended) or how much ram is need for said game so that mame doesn't give an out of memory error (never happens anymore.)
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Ok, howard, it appears we are talking about two different things. I am talking about the speed of the games that actually work, and you are talking about the "not-working" games. I have never even bothered to mess with the "not-working" games, because they "DON'T WORK".
As far as what is going on inside the drivers, I could really care less. What I care about is that the games that are listed as working, do in fact work, and what those can run on.
My main arguement, is, and always has been. that all the pre 90 games will run on just about any P2 era computer, and just about any p3 will run all the major 90s hardware platforms, and thus you don't need a 2 GHZ computer for Mame.
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*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread ;D
paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that ;)
im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).
just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand (???) so im not sure how long they will last.
thanks ;D
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*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread ;D
paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that ;)
im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).
just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand (???) so im not sure how long they will last.
thanks ;D
Computers inside dedicated Mame boxes don't really tend to have as much power needs as desktops. Owing to the fact that they usually aren't powering any USB objects, or extra drives other than the hard drive. A 300 watt should be fine.
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*finally* read through this whole thing, what a controversial thread ;D
paige and howard; you both are talking about different ideas, so you're both right, leave it at that ;)
im fairly new to mame and was surprised that it's not graphic card intensive (good thing i read this thread, i came here just before finalizing my decision on what to get -- almost bought something for three times and much as i needed to).
just one thing i'd like to ask tho, what power supply would you all recommend? my local computer store has 300watt power supplies on sale for $5 (woo for boxing day sales!) so i was wondering if that would be be enough? only need to power one hard drive, one graphic card, and everything else onboard (sound card, etc). is 300watts safe enough or should i go for 350watt? also, does brand matter very much? these ones im looking at apparently have no brand (???) so im not sure how long they will last.
thanks ;D
Computers inside dedicated Mame boxes don't really tend to have as much power needs as desktops. Owing to the fact that they usually aren't powering any USB objects, or extra drives other than the hard drive. A 300 watt should be fine.
yeah i agree with paige 300 should be fine. also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me
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Take a look at these recent Mame benchmarks from a couple days ago:
http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/bench.htm
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WHat did they do to make Prop Cycle run so slow? It runs faster than that on my Athlon 1200. I remember playing it a couple times.
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also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me
300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference. I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS. You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though. A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.
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also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me
300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference. I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS. You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though. A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.
really? i never really researched on them but in my personal experience with over 10 PCs ive never had problems using whatever power supply i happened to have. but thats just me
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also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me
300 watts is more than enough, but brand does make a difference. I'm not saying don't use a generic, I'm just saying that there is a big quality difference between a good and a bad PS. You would have to go to a hardware forum to find out what a good PS is though. A flaky PS can cause system instability and other annoying things.
really? i never really researched on them but in my personal experience with over 10 PCs ive never had problems using whatever power supply i happened to have. but thats just me
It can matter...I had problems with an old dual Celeron system with a Geforce card...everything was trying to draw power from the 3.3V rail=too many amps=flaky system. You probably won't need more than 300 watts. What matters most is how that 300 watts is broken down between 12V, 5V, and 3.3V and what line your MB/Processor/Cards are drawing power from. I've seen some cheap power supplies that provide plenty of power to 12V but not enough to 3.3V or 5V. Just my observations. Opinions vary....
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What about a NASA supercomputer! ;D
XXX type PC! hehe
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I just purchased a new computer for my cab. It is a barebones kit from Tiger Direct.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=81577&Sku=TC1-XP-1028&CatId=1219
Based on the firt post in this thread, I would have to call it a B-minus system as it has a 1.6 ghz Duron instead of an Athlon XP. I was able to go to their outlet and save the cost of shipping, and they gave me PC2100 DDR memory instead of the PC133 SDRAM that the website shows. I don't know if that was a mistake or not, but the faster memory can't hurt.
I assembled it over the weekend, and so far everything seems to be running great. I have not tried it with everything yet, but I did try out the games that I cared abot that would not run well on my old 233mhz system.
Majestic12, Pacmania, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Warrior, Galaga 84, Galaga 88, and the Daphne games all work at full speed.
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nice , thats around what the next comp im building is gonna be. prolly get a athlon 2000xp barebones type of deal. i really want higher so i can play KI2 and beatmania games without skipping but i dont have the cash right now =\
pretty much will play everything non chd
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so why is this thread stickied? ???
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yeah i agree with paige 300 should be fine. also about the brand, I would say it doesnt matter. I use generic brand power supplys/cases with my PCs and none of them have ever died on me.
It's not having a power supply die on you that is the issue. It's having your PC parts have unnecessary stress on them because of bad voltages.
I have used exactly one cheap PS, it was right in the middle of the other PS's I've used. While it didn't hose the system, it certainly gave me a slew of problems. Never again.
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so why is this thread stickied? ???
to give people some basic guidelines on mame PCs.... its been asked here a ton of times and this thread has over 1000 views so its probably been stopping some of them. and if people do ask, its usually in here.
whats with all the haters on my sticky!? just trying to help the community
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Dude, I don't hate the sticky but when its been completely hijacked, argued over and contradicted, its usefulness is pretty much shot--you should summarize the findings and post somewhere else without all the banter.
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yeah, well i wanted some constructive critisism but it really got off topic at parts. Still the first post has all the info and thats what everyone reads first. It still does its job
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Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull. :)
My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?
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Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull. :)
My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?
Well it could on games that use a CHD (a hard drive image), although I really am just guessing. You should just buy a 10,000 RPM Raptor just to be safe.*
*No, not really, although these drives kick ass, it would be serious overkill. I've seen no difference between my old 5400 2mb drive compared to my 7200 8 mb (for MAME) but hey, I just got a 250 GB 7200 8 mb Western Digital drive for $140 after rebates, that's about $.56 a gig. Unless you buy used, you aren't going to find cheaper than that.
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Actually I find this thread alot better than nothing, plus in the arguments comes some info that I find usefull. :)
My question is : does HD rotation speed make much of a difference in gameplay or would it just effect load times with mame? Is it safe to go with a 5400 RPM drive on the cheap when playing games up to...say...some of the vampire and mortal kombat games?
Well it could on games that use a CHD (a hard drive image), although I really am just guessing. You should just buy a 10,000 RPM Raptor just to be safe.*
*No, not really, although these drives kick ass, it would be serious overkill. I've seen no difference between my old 5400 2mb drive compared to my 7200 8 mb (for MAME) but hey, I just got a 250 GB 7200 8 mb Western Digital drive for $140 after rebates, that's about $.56 a gig. Unless you buy used, you aren't going to find cheaper than that.
Right, actually I was considering throwing in my 4-way Xeon server with dual 15000RPM SCSI drives in my cab but thought better of it. I think I'll buy a 8 gig 5400 RPM used hard drive instad. :)
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i just upgraded my HD from a really old 20GB drive (im guessing it was 5400), to a 80GB 7200 RPM drive and it made a huge difference in other games loading speeds, like star wars:KOTOR, and warcraft III. it made a small difference in loading a couple of the bigger games in MAME but its not like it was unbearable on my old 5400. its definately not necessary to have 7200
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That's what I was thinking. I wouldn't even mind if it was slightly slower load times either. Cool.
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Hi Guys,
I'm going over to Fry's today to pick up my computer for my Emulation cabinet. I read this entire thread and got a little confused. I'm very new to computers. I didn't even know that there was an internet two years ago. :-\
I want to run: MAME, Daphne, and all console emulators: Genesis, N64, SMS, TB16, NES, SNES, Colecovision, NeoGeo, GameGear, etc. I want all to run smooth, except for the really high end chd MAME games.
This thread cover MAME well, but not the other emulators and their requirements.
From this thread, here's what I've come up with:
AMD XP2200
256 RAM (2100 or 2700)
80 gig hd (7200rpm)
onboard sound card
DVDR/CDR combo drive
Now, I'm confused on a video card. What would be a good card to compliment this system? I'll be emulating through a computer monitor. Geforce 2 64MB?
Does this look like a system that will do what I want it to do, and more?
Sorry, if this is offtopic or redundant. I'd really like opinions on this.
Thanks.
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that looks like a good setup, even a little overqualified. if youre not worrying about CHD games 2200 is plenty you could prolly even go a little lower but nowadays thats the difference of like 5$ so thats your preference. RAM is fine, HD will have plenty of extra room, and again its just a matter of your preference cause a 80GB is only like 10$ more then a 60 so its what you wanna pay. a geforce 2 vid card would be perfect, dont need anything more unless you plan new PC games
overall it looks good, go for it ;)
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Hey all. I needed a little cash so I sold my brother my old computer which was a duron 750 w/512mb ram and took the one he had (which was half mine anyway). It's a 350mhz P2 with 64mb of ram and gf2 mx. I'll overclock if I can of course. Been a while since I played mame, so I'm wondering what I can, or if its easier, can't run. I love pretty much all games but will mostly be shooting for running neo geo and other '90s games. I got my Dreamcast for more modern arcade fun. So, what can I run?
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id suggest using an older version of MAME, maybe .36. ive never actually ran mame on a computer slower then like 600mhz so i couldnt really tell you what will run but im sure that can run a decent amount of older stuff. try it out and let us know
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I have run MAME on a 200mhz and a 233mhz system. For most older games I had no trouble with mame .76 on these machines. I only had to use .36 for some some older games like Asteroids (most of the vector games), Gorf, Wizard of Wor.
Obviously most games since 1985 don't run well on a system that slow.
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Last night I resurrected an ABIT BM6 motherboard that uses the good old Intel 440BX chipset. It had the leaking cap problem and I replaced about 15 caps.
I've modified the board so it will run a 1.1GHz (non-tualatin) celermine processor.
I had planned on using it as the basis for my new MAME machine.
So I installed the 1.1GHz CPU, loaded it up with 256 megs of memory, a 40GB 7200RPM hard drive, a SB Audigy, a GeForce3 and installed Windows 98SE.
Using MAME 0.79 optimized for Pentium Pro, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 runs at a choppy 19 frames per second or less. Complely unacceptable in my opinion.
On my primary computer running a P4 2.0GHz, 768 megs of memory, GeForce 4, integrated sound, Windows 2000, I get 50+ frames per second. Like butta.
So unless anyone has ideas on how I can get better performance than 19FPS on a 1.1GHz, it looks like I'm in the market for some new hardware before I can finish my MAME machine.
...
Krick
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In case anyone is interested, I ran some benchmarks on my faster system using the batch files found here...
http://benchmark.mameworld.net/howto.html
Motherboard: Asus P4S533
CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood 1.6GHz (400MHz FSB) overclocked to 2.13GHz (533MHz FSB)
Memory: 768MB (512 + 128 + 128) PC2100 using 1:1 memory divider
Audio: onboard sound - CMI-8738
Video: GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128MB 4x AGP
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD800JB 80GB Special Edition 8MB cache 7200RPM
benchmarks:
ROM: umk3
MAME 0.79 - http://www.mame.net/downmain.html
FPS: 74.887929 (10000 frames)
MAME optimized for Pentium Pro - http://www.mame.net/downmain.html
FPS: 87.747528 (10000 frames)
FastMAME 0.79 - http://www.geoshock.com/
FPS: 89.729396 (10000 frames)
MAME 0.79 optimized for Pentium 4 - http://www.redump.de/mame.shtml
FPS: 90.669439 (10000 frames)
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nice info there krick, for even better gains you might try getting a sound blaster PCI card to take a little load off the processor.
i wonder if that pentium 4 optimized works for pentium 3 also? my setup im ordering for my cab is pentium 3
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Optimized for Pentium 4 won't work on a P3 but the FastMAME and Optimized for Pentium Pro will.
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Hmmm, I think perhaps I will do some benckmarks on my own to help lay rest to this issue.
I am thinking testing 10 different roms.
Pac-Man
Penguin Kun Wars
Asteroids
Star Wars
Street Fighter 2
Money Puzzle Exchanger
Marvel Vs. Capcom
STUN Runner
Mortal Kombat
Assault
on 8 different systems
P 100
p 200
p2 300
Cel 400
cel 533
Ath 650
P3 733
Ath 1200
using 7 different Mame versions
.36 final
.53
.60
.65
.70
.75
.79
Note, I am not going to bother with CHD games, because everyone has problems with those. I feel the other selected games are a good cross of eras, gametypes, and hardware platforms. I am not going to bother testing faster machines than 1200, because I don't own any faster machines, and there are very few games that see much benefit from faster than that anyway.
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that would be very helpful paige, i only have 2 machines , 1.6hz and 2.0 ghz so i cant really test the low end stuff myself hehe.
also maybe throw metal slug 3 in there? a lot of people like their comps to be able to play that game. its probably one of the newest neogeo games emulated
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that would be very helpful paige, i only have 2 machines , 1.6hz and 2.0 ghz so i cant really test the low end stuff myself hehe.
also maybe throw metal slug 3 in there? a lot of people like their comps to be able to play that game. its probably one of the newest neogeo games emulated
From what I have seen the Neo Geo games all run at the same speed provided you have enough RAM to load them, with a couple exceptions in the areas of some attract mode animations. I chose an older neo title because I figured it would be in more of the earlier Mame versions (I might indeed alter the final title list if certain games on certain platforms debuted in Mame in earlier versions than other titles).
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Hmmm, I think perhaps I will do some benckmarks on my own to help lay rest to this issue.
Great idea.
Whatever games you benchmark, make sure you use the batch files from here...
http://benchmark.mameworld.net/
...and be sure to email the results to bench@mameworld.net so they can be posted for everyone to see.
Maybe if they get enough data, someone can put it all in a searchable database on their website so you can search, sort, and filter it.
...
Krick
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Ok, recently I got a new PC AMD Athlon 2400+XP, 256 MB DDR, 32MB on board video, on board sound, 40 GB etc and
while I'm generally happy with the performance of my machine (fast boot up!) I would like to squeeze out a few more frames on some taxing games. For instance on puzzloop, mk3, sftm etc I'm not getting full frame rates. Normally obtain somewhere around 43-48/60 fps on average. I seem to remember my brother's AMD 2000+XP getting slightly higher results and it's a slower processor - although he does have 512MB (compared to my 256MB) and a Geforce 4 (compared to my on board video).
I know that video cards don't make a huge difference but I'm wondering will it help things if I put in a spare Geforce 2 400MX (64MB) I have? I can't afford more ram right now so what do you think?
Also, how about if I get FastMame or the build for Athlons? I understand Fastmame should crank up the fps but is it lower quality or hacked type emulation? I really like the official mame and surely what I have should give me full frame rates in the games mentioned.
Also, maybe more a software question but I'm here now...I haven't used mame in ages and have forgotten, is there a way (not mame -cc) to create an editable ini or cfg file for
each game? From memory Mame32 has an ini folder right?
If I could just switch off throttle on those games things would be a bit better (i've tried doing so in mame.cfg temporarily to better results). Plus I want to tweak my settings for vector games as they aren't performing well under D3d but I really like that on for everything else.
If anyone has some ideas please let me know ok!
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i have almost the exact setup you have except i have a old geforce2 card in my machine and i run UMK3 on full framerate easy. also i use an athlonxp optimized version of MAME with my MAMEWAH setup. which also adds some speed. try both of those and together it should give you that last 10FPS youre looking for
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Just a suggestion for us AMD haters/athlon illiterates.... Can you make the main/first post more like this:
B-Type Typical Specs -
Athlon XP 2000 + OR P3 1.8ghz
Simply put, I have no IDEA how an athlon stacks up to a pentium (the above looks equal to me?), but have no plans whatsoever in using any AMD parts in my mame computer, and I know if I dare to start a topic saying "what kind of CPU do I need to play every mame game?" I'm going to pointed to this thread immediately :)
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Just a suggestion for us AMD haters/athlon illiterates.... Can you make the main/first post more like this:
B-Type Typical Specs -
Athlon XP 2000 + OR P3 1.8ghz
Simply put, I have no IDEA how an athlon stacks up to a pentium (the above looks equal to me?), but have no plans whatsoever in using any AMD parts in my mame computer, and I know if I dare to start a topic saying "what kind of CPU do I need to play every mame game?" I'm going to pointed to this thread immediately :)
good suggestion , Ill add this soon =)
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The funny thing about benchmarks is how varied they can be. :) Take for example, using the following benchmark line:
pacman -d3d -norc -v -ftr 1000 -noafs -noswitchbpp -noswitchres -nothrottle -rdtsc -high_priority -skip_disclaimer -skip_gameinfo -noart -nomouse -nojoy -nogun -nosleep -d3dfilter 0 -d3dtexmanage -d3dprescale none
Yields Average FPS: 463.197490
But
pacman -nod3d -norc -v -ftr 1000 -noafs -noswitchbpp -noswitchres -nothrottle -rdtsc -high_priority -skip_disclaimer -skip_gameinfo -noart -nomouse -nojoy -nogun -nosleep -d3dfilter 0 -d3dtexmanage -d3dprescale none
Yields Average FPS: 687.096515
The best performance to eek out is to enable Triple Buffering (-tb), this:
Yields Average FPS: 925.126927
And this was using the MAME32 (still my fastest runner, not even the specialized compiles go this fast) M.A.M.E. v0.82
HW:
AthlonXP 2100+
1G RAM
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
Radeon 9600
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Don't kill me if this isn't the kosher thing to do, being my first post and all, but it seems like bumping way old threads is acceptable (and I hate 5,000 repeat threads as much as anyone).
Here's the question: I'm building a MAME cab (surprise!), and have gathered from the hundred or so threads I've read on the topic that having the latest, greatest video card doesn't matter as much as MAME is mostly CPU dependent.
However, most of those statements are from 2002 - 2003. I'm curious as to what card to purchase nowadays, not so much in the "OMG HUGE GPU/VPU" aspect, but how much Video RAM should be on the card. I'm wanting to be able to run pretty much everything that currently CAN run on MAME, particularly fighters, and I've heard that games like Killer Instinct, with the proper setup, can be run pretty well.
I currently have a video card I can use, but it's pretty friggin' old, and I'd like to know if it will "handle" things. If it will, I'll be able to get two lightguns from Actlabs as well, if not, well, the video card is the way I can SEE this stuff, and I'll just have to wait on the lightguns (which I want to get in, of course, as I build the cab, not after.
Here's the list of computer parts that should be coming in tomorrow, and the card I've already got (I also already have a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, case, etc).
Motherboard: SIS655FX ASROCK P4S55FX RTL
Sound Card: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY LS
CPU: P4/2.8GHz, 800M 478P/512K HT %
System Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC-3200/400MHz DDR SDRAM
The video card I currently have is the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR.
I've seen from some posts that a 64MB Video Card is the way to go if you want to run EVERYTHING (minus, of course, stuff like Cruis'n USA/Area51).
Is it worth the upgrade?
-
.
Note, I am not going to bother with CHD games, because everyone has problems with those. I feel the other selected games are a good cross of eras, gametypes, and hardware platforms. I am not going to bother testing faster machines than 1200, because I don't own any faster machines, and there are very few games that see much benefit from faster than that anyway.
Hi,
What are CHD games ? Does it has any relation with the "name_of_the_game.chd NOT FOUND" error ?
Thanks
-
Don't kill me if this isn't the kosher thing to do, being my first post and all, but it seems like bumping way old threads is acceptable (and I hate 5,000 repeat threads as much as anyone).
Here's the question: I'm building a MAME cab (surprise!), and have gathered from the hundred or so threads I've read on the topic that having the latest, greatest video card doesn't matter as much as MAME is mostly CPU dependent.
However, most of those statements are from 2002 - 2003. I'm curious as to what card to purchase nowadays, not so much in the "OMG HUGE GPU/VPU" aspect, but how much Video RAM should be on the card. I'm wanting to be able to run pretty much everything that currently CAN run on MAME, particularly fighters, and I've heard that games like Killer Instinct, with the proper setup, can be run pretty well.
I currently have a video card I can use, but it's pretty friggin' old, and I'd like to know if it will "handle" things. If it will, I'll be able to get two lightguns from Actlabs as well, if not, well, the video card is the way I can SEE this stuff, and I'll just have to wait on the lightguns (which I want to get in, of course, as I build the cab, not after.
Here's the list of computer parts that should be coming in tomorrow, and the card I've already got (I also already have a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, case, etc).
Motherboard: SIS655FX ASROCK P4S55FX RTL
Sound Card: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY LS
CPU: P4/2.8GHz, 800M 478P/512K HT %
System Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC-3200/400MHz DDR SDRAM
The video card I currently have is the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR.
I've seen from some posts that a 64MB Video Card is the way to go if you want to run EVERYTHING (minus, of course, stuff like Cruis'n USA/Area51).
Is it worth the upgrade?
id reccomend a 128MB video card, theyre cheap these days and if youre gonna upgrade you might as well do it right. with one of those the only thing holding you back from running CHD games full force would be your processor. and some games the technolgy doesnt exsist yet to emulate, wed need like 15ghz cpus
-
.
Note, I am not going to bother with CHD games, because everyone has problems with those. I feel the other selected games are a good cross of eras, gametypes, and hardware platforms. I am not going to bother testing faster machines than 1200, because I don't own any faster machines, and there are very few games that see much benefit from faster than that anyway.
Hi,
What are CHD games ? Does it has any relation with the "name_of_the_game.chd NOT FOUND" error ?
Thanks
youve probably just downloaded the rom file and not the CHD file. if you look at a game say killer instinct, the rom is only like 1MB, obviously all those graphics arent in there. you gotta find the .chd file also
-
.
Note, I am not going to bother with CHD games, because everyone has problems with those. I feel the other selected games are a good cross of eras, gametypes, and hardware platforms. I am not going to bother testing faster machines than 1200, because I don't own any faster machines, and there are very few games that see much benefit from faster than that anyway.
Hi,
What are CHD games ? Does it has any relation with the "name_of_the_game.chd NOT FOUND" error ?
Thanks
youve probably just downloaded the rom file and not the CHD file. if you look at a game say killer instinct, the rom is only like 1MB, obviously all those graphics arent in there. you gotta find the .chd file also
So .... if I understand right the .chd are graphic files.
Great ... thanks ... I was wondering what that was ... ;D
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So .... if I understand right the .chd are graphic files.
I always thought that .chd meant Compressed Hard Drive. I assumed the games that had these files associated with them had actual hard drives in them to store virtually all the code (not just the graphics).
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yes you are correct, but for my example i was just saying all the good graphics in killer instinct, are not going to fit into a 1 MB ROM file
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Why don't we have an official FAQ that is based upon price of MB/CPU/RAM and percent of games that it will play?
We could setup a matrix and post that as the FAQ. Has this been done already?
This way people will know what type of mb/cpu/ram they can get for $200, $300, $400, $500... Perhaps we cap it at $500 for a dedicated MAME setup?
HD's, cases, etc don't have to be part of the matrix due to the "buy what you can afford" rule. As long as the HD is over 40gig, you'll be fine....
any takers to help me compile such a matrix? Send me the info for the dollar amounts above and I'll throw it all into a nice excel spreadsheet :-)
Mike B
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I don't really see the point in that since an older system will easily play most games in MAME. You could buy an old 500mhz system for like $25 at a garage sale or the like and be able to play 80 or 90% of all games in mame.
No one is going to buy parts to put together a 500mhz system... if they are... well.... something is wrong with them.
If you're buying parts for a new computer, they are going to be newer parts, so a matrix isn't necessary. Buy a CPU... want a faster one? Spend more money and get a faster one... you don't need a listing to show you that a new CPU will let you play 1 new game do you? You're comment of "buy what you can afford" is exactly what you should do with everything.
This thread already says that xxx mhz can play xx% of games, so that should be your basis. Once you figure out what rough percentage of games you want to run, build/buy a system that can do that.
O, and you don't need nearly as big a hdd as 40gig for a MAME machine, especially if you aren't running all the newer games. People make classic mame cabs with 500mb hard drives. It all depends on what you want out of the cab.
Just me .02
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Actually these days anything too much below the speed of the lowest athlon XP is actually more expesive. At this point, brand name DDR can be more cheaply at FSB speeds higher than what you actually need (I recently bought 400Mhz rather than 266 for this reason). and actually Pc-133 sdrams are getting more expensive every week.
On a budget, I would suggest you buy a mobo with the processor already installed. And try to find one with onboard lan and sound(most new ones come with it anyway now). It is usually cheaper this way and the onboard components are decent and usually a standard chipset. Ye be warned however not to get onboard video IMO, as it probably won't work with TVs or aracde monitors very well, and even if it does, it means you don't get an AGP slot and usually the cards suck anyway. Also, when it comes to memory, most name brands have something called a value line, and if uber(and i stress uber ;D) performance is not an issue it is cheaper. The only difference really is something called the CAS latency and is not important for most users to worry about.
I can see why you would suggest a bigger HD just to prevent people from upgradeing but if one is writting a FAQ i don't think you should say you NEED a 60GB HD when at the time you can really get by with a 40GB. Yes there little difference in price between the two now days, but I think it should be noted on what is requried and what is suggested.
The Difference in price on these things now-a-days is like $10(less than the cost of shipping on some websites). A lot of retail stores don't even sell anything less than 80GB as well. My advise to people who don't know what to buy has always been to buy slightly more than you think you need. This may only mean buying a machine with 10% extra if prices are prohibitive. It is my experience that boxes get outdated pretty fast. If you really don't need the space then don't get it though.
I personally am going to use an old box for the one I will be building though. I am going to build a new computer for my main one and then put the old one in my cabinet.
So I guess maybe I just broke my own rule ;). And ignore this of course If you only want to play older games. Actually if I am too poor by the end of the project, I may just use an old 1Ghz computer that I am running Solaris on. But I digress...
If you decide to go the network route for transfering files to your cabinet, you may also decide to make it a personal file-server(standard windows peer-peer networking is sufficient). If you can't think of what you would use it for then you probably wouldn't use it. But it can save storage space if you use a lot of files in different places. This is important for me at least, because I am a hard-drive hog and I have a lot of computers and limited space. Just something to consider, but only makes sense if you already use at least 2-3 computers already.
Anyway, save those cpu cycles when you aren't playing games. I am getting off topic here so I am going to stop. I'm talking about brand name brand name parts here bought on the internet (try www.newegg.com they are cheap and reputable).
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Building a cab for a friend. This is the first one that I actually have to purchase a computer for, instead of one being supplied by the customer. She's wanting to keep the costs down as much as possible (as usual. Doesn't everyone.)
Pros/cons for a Celeron? I'm pretty much an AMD guy myself, but we may have an angle on a good celeron deal. Any pitfalls to using a Celeron?
Thanks,
D
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Don't kill me if this isn't the kosher thing to do, being my first post and all, but it seems like bumping way old threads is acceptable (and I hate 5,000 repeat threads as much as anyone).
Here's the question: I'm building a MAME cab (surprise!), and have gathered from the hundred or so threads I've read on the topic that having the latest, greatest video card doesn't matter as much as MAME is mostly CPU dependent.
However, most of those statements are from 2002 - 2003. I'm curious as to what card to purchase nowadays, not so much in the "OMG HUGE GPU/VPU" aspect, but how much Video RAM should be on the card. I'm wanting to be able to run pretty much everything that currently CAN run on MAME, particularly fighters, and I've heard that games like Killer Instinct, with the proper setup, can be run pretty well.
I currently have a video card I can use, but it's pretty friggin' old, and I'd like to know if it will "handle" things. If it will, I'll be able to get two lightguns from Actlabs as well, if not, well, the video card is the way I can SEE this stuff, and I'll just have to wait on the lightguns (which I want to get in, of course, as I build the cab, not after.
Here's the list of computer parts that should be coming in tomorrow, and the card I've already got (I also already have a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, case, etc).
Motherboard: SIS655FX ASROCK P4S55FX RTL
Sound Card: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY LS
CPU: P4/2.8GHz, 800M 478P/512K HT %
System Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC-3200/400MHz DDR SDRAM
The video card I currently have is the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR.
I've seen from some posts that a 64MB Video Card is the way to go if you want to run EVERYTHING (minus, of course, stuff like Cruis'n USA/Area51).
Is it worth the upgrade?
Im in the process of build a computer and wanted to know what will run Killer Instinct at full speed? Thats really the only CHD i want to play. Thanks
-
On memory and CAS Latency: Tomshardware article back in January
http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index.html
To sum it up, except for the worst timings you can have, memory timings affect performance very very little.
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shadowdrak said regarding hard drives...
The Difference in price on these things now-a-days is like $10(less than the cost of shipping on some websites). A lot of retail stores don't even sell anything less than 80GB as well. My advise to people who don't know what to buy has always been to buy slightly more than you think you need. This may only mean buying a machine with 10% extra if prices are prohibitive. It is my experience that boxes get outdated pretty fast. If you really don't need the space then don't get it though.
I'd recommend that people don't buy anything larger than 120GB. Windows 98 can't deal with drives bigger than 120GB and I know people that have problems with large drives even in Windows XP.
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Here is the computer setup for the cab I'm planning to build to play MOSTLY mame, but could probably go for some other emulators down the line. As far as games go I'm mostly interested in all the traditional stand and play joystick/button games, all capcom fighters etc, all Mortal Kombats, Killer Instincts.... basically anything like that. Please critique it and tell me what my Mame capabilities will be. I picked the parts based off reviews but may change them but the specs will probably be similar.
DVD-Rom of some sort
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2700+, 333MHz FSB, 256K Cache Processor - Retail
Harddrive: SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model SP1213N, OEM Drive Only
Memory:Kingston ValueRAM Dual Kits 184 Pin 512MB(256MBx2) DDR PC-3200
Case:APEX Beige Mid-Tower Super Case with 350W Power Supply, Model "7C574-115"
Motherbord:ECS "K7VTA3 V6.0" VIA KT333 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU -RETAIL
Video card:SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9200SE Video Card, 64MB DDR, 64-bit, TV-Out, 8X AGP -BULK
Sound card: something cheap.
Am I missing any other essentials?
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I think if you want to run as much games as you want possible as far as chd games like blitz for an example you need at least a pen4 2.8 or higher with hyper threading to run the higher end games any other game that it won't run the processors don't exist!and it's not that expensive.I got one from dell for $375.00 come on you can't beat that!a 2.8 pen 4 with hyper threading(server)The rest is settings :'(that's the hard part atleast for me :'(But i'm really close
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No no I don't really care about the 3D games like Blitz
just basically any 2D game...I can't think of any 3D games really that I'd want to play so I'm not worried about it.
and was that 375 JUST for the processor? :O
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I really want to build a MAME cabinet, and the only spare PC I have is an old Packerd Bell with a Cyrix M II 250mhz processor, 64 megs of ram (maxed out), and onboard graphics.
What upgrade would be the best bang for my buck?
The only thing I can think of is replacing the motherboard with a Duron mobo, buying a Duron 1.1 ghz processor, and putting in some extra ram I have around here (256 megs).
Would that allow me to play most 2D games? I wanna load it up with mostly fighting games (Marvel vs. Capcom, MK, etc.)
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Well...just about anything is better than what you have.
If you're looking for fighting games only, I'd go with at least 1.4GHz. Prob more speed than you need, but that extra will go a long way.
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wow i forgot i made this thread, the main FAQ could probably use an update.
Starnix, i would reccomend a new mobo/processor cause youre not gonna run fighting games too well on that rig. If you want to stay as cheap as possible, maybe grab a duron 1.6ghz or something like that with a mobo combo, they actually just had a sale like that but it expired =( but look for something along those lines and it will play the 2D games fine
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outpost.com had a AMD Sempron 2400+/ECS motherboard combo for 59 bux a few days ago. That'd be a good bang for your buck upgrade. It won't run "everything" in MAME, but it'll def give you a nice boost.
EDIT: here's a link
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4189253?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
They also have other combos with a 2500+, 2800+, etc. The motherboards accept Athlon XP CPUs as well if you wanted to upgrade later on.
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Wow, that's pretty cheap. I might just go with it (still gotta see if I can get a cabnet of a friend of mine).
I had a friend run a few figting games on his Celeron 2.2 ghz with 256 megs of RAM and he said they ran fine. I doubt I'll play anythink 2D, just fighting games (Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters) and some old games (Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, etc. doubt they would have trouble running).
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FYI-
www.pricewatch.com
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outpost.com had a AMD Sempron 2400+/ECS motherboard combo for 59 bux a few days ago. That'd be a good bang for your buck upgrade. It won't run "everything" in MAME, but it'll def give you a nice boost.
Remember that the Sempron has half the L2 cache of an AthlonXP. MAME loves cache, and it can help things along immensely. The MAME devs typically recommend avoiding low-cache models if it can be helped.
That said, $59 for a 2400+ and motherboard is a steal. That wouldn't even buy you half a CPU where I come from. :)
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so wait- the one on outpost for $59, does that have high enough level of cache on it or no?
I am wanting to not only run mame Analog+ on XP, but also N64, NES, SNES, etc. Will that little setup work ok?
Thanks
D
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so wait- the one on outpost for $59, does that have high enough level of cache on it or no?
I am wanting to not only run mame Analog+ on XP, but also N64, NES, SNES, etc. Will that little setup work ok?
Thanks
D
You are going nuts with these WHAT COMPUTER DO I NEED threads.
What computer are you using now?
Good. Then try the software out on the computer you are using now. Does it work? Good, then use that one and get yourself a different computer. Problem solved.
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lol- well, this is my business machine here, so I don't want to scrap that. But, I get your point, thanks for being blunt with it. I'll use what I got, and upgrade later if it sucks. Let's move on....
D
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Don't kill me if this isn't the kosher thing to do, being my first post and all, but it seems like bumping way old threads is acceptable (and I hate 5,000 repeat threads as much as anyone).
Here's the question: I'm building a MAME cab (surprise!), and have gathered from the hundred or so threads I've read on the topic that having the latest, greatest video card doesn't matter as much as MAME is mostly CPU dependent.
However, most of those statements are from 2002 - 2003. I'm curious as to what card to purchase nowadays, not so much in the "OMG HUGE GPU/VPU" aspect, but how much Video RAM should be on the card. I'm wanting to be able to run pretty much everything that currently CAN run on MAME, particularly fighters, and I've heard that games like Killer Instinct, with the proper setup, can be run pretty well.
I currently have a video card I can use, but it's pretty friggin' old, and I'd like to know if it will "handle" things. If it will, I'll be able to get two lightguns from Actlabs as well, if not, well, the video card is the way I can SEE this stuff, and I'll just have to wait on the lightguns (which I want to get in, of course, as I build the cab, not after.
Here's the list of computer parts that should be coming in tomorrow, and the card I've already got (I also already have a hard drive, CD-ROM drive, case, etc).
Motherboard: SIS655FX ASROCK P4S55FX RTL
Sound Card: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY LS
CPU: P4/2.8GHz, 800M 478P/512K HT %
System Memory: 512MB Mushkin PC-3200/400MHz DDR SDRAM
The video card I currently have is the Leadtek Winfast GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR.
I've seen from some posts that a 64MB Video Card is the way to go if you want to run EVERYTHING (minus, of course, stuff like Cruis'n USA/Area51).
Is it worth the upgrade?
Im in the process of build a computer and wanted to know what will run Killer Instinct at full speed? Thats really the only CHD i want to play. Thanks
I'd like to bump gumby's question, because I'm planning to build a comp for a MAME cab, and I too think Killer Instinct 2 should be the most processor-intensive thing I'll run.
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well first off using MAME to get KI 2 is pointless, your best bet is to use a program called UI64. its made specificly for emulating arcade roms of KI 1 and 2. i have my athlon xp 2000+ running KI 2 PRETTY well, there is occassional slowdown and choppyness. i would say a nice 500mhz past mine would be sufficient for full speed with no problems.
so basicly 2ghz runs its like 95% for me, little slowdown here and there
im thinking a 2.5ghz would run it fine, anyone personally run KI on a slightly higher system than mine and did ok?
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this thread has been helpfull. im going to buy a new pc for my setup, but what i am really interested is what CPU speed is need to run Blitz...
is anyone here playing blitz without any problems and what system setup are u running?
i dont want to go out and buy a AMD 2200 and then later find out that i needed a AMD64 3200 to run blits..
this pc will be for mame and some computer games..
thx
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I could be wrong, but I don't think Blitz will play at full speed on any current hardware.
Paul
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Sephroth, could you tell us which games you can't run at full speed with your 2000+
or maybe post a list of the games that you do run at full speed with it?
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Is there any games an athlon 64 X2 4200+ would have a problem running? I am going to upgrade my PC as my next project and was wondering if that would be a good chip to run all the games.
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I can guarantee that a 2200 will not play Blitz. I have a 2500+ (333) and it's quite unplayable. The emulation appears quite nice though.
this thread has been helpfull. im going to buy a new pc for my setup, but what i am really interested is what CPU speed is need to run Blitz...
is anyone here playing blitz without any problems and what system setup are u running?
i dont want to go out and buy a AMD 2200 and then later find out that i needed a AMD64 3200 to run blits..
this pc will be for mame and some computer games..
thx
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... or dish out for the supreme PC of the month.
Ha Ha! Quite true with the computer industry these days!
Great faq by teh way. Helped alot.
-Drew
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whats a CHD games?
and whats the best to do if i really only want to play Mame games and arcade games (mainly old, but some newer arcade games)
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Tagged for later reading.
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Is there any games an athlon 64 X2 4200+ would have a problem running? I am going to upgrade my PC as my next project and was wondering if that would be a good chip to run all the games.
Dual core will not help MAME in the slightest (and all these "but it makes my virus scanner go faster in the background" posters be damned, you're paying extra to compensate for crap software??? Change virus scanners! - dual core are SLOWER in MHz than a similarly ranked single core!).
If you are buying just for MAME, buy the fastest single-core chip you can afford. Dual core, hyperthreading, all of that guff means nothing to MAME, which is single threaded, and will be forever more.
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So .... if I understand right the .chd are graphic files.
Great ... thanks ... I was wondering what that was ... ;D
CHD officially stands for "Compressed Hunks of Data". Generally speaking they are hard disk or CDROM images, mimicing the layout of the same pieces of hardware found in more recent arcade systems.
In games that are quite graphics heavy, it was often substantially cheaper to load the games from a CDROM or hard disk to flash RAM (or sometimes even normal RAM) than it was to write everything to expensive ROM chips. Typically speaking, *MOST* of the games requireing CHDs are fairly recent, and require a powerful system to emulate. Notable and popular exceptions are Area51 and Killer Instinct which do run on fairly mid-range (by today's new hardware standards) hardware - although just quietly I find both of them to be as boring as watching paint dry, but each to their own.
I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ. It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?
http://www.mame.net/mamefaq.html
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I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ. It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Woo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's rich. :)
-S
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Is there any games an athlon 64 X2 4200+ would have a problem running? I am going to upgrade my PC as my next project and was wondering if that would be a good chip to run all the games.
Dual core will not help MAME in the slightest (and all these "but it makes my virus scanner go faster in the background" posters be damned, you're paying extra to compensate for crap software??? Change virus scanners! - dual core are SLOWER in MHz than a similarly ranked single core!).
If you are buying just for MAME, buy the fastest single-core chip you can afford. Dual core, hyperthreading, all of that guff means nothing to MAME, which is single threaded, and will be forever more.
I agree with you that dual core does not help with mame which is why I did not ask about dual core.
As for the processor itself, is there any games that a 4200+ single/dual core could not run well?
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As for the processor itself, is there any games that a 4200+ single/dual core could not run well?
1) There are roughly a dozen games in MAME that will not run at full speed for quite some time yet (people are estimating 6GHz+ needed for these, due to the way they work). Your choices there are to use other non-MAME emulators, or play console ports (or simply to not play them - really, would anyone with half a brain actually play "Prop Cycle" on MAME?). You need to ask yourself if it's worth spending an extra $1000 on your system just to make 4 extra games playable? Honestly, you could play them cheaper (and more legally) on a console port, or on original gameboard hardware.
2) An Athlon64 4200+ X2 is a dual-core unit with a real clockspeed of 2.2GHz, and 640KB of L2 cache shared between two processors. The Athlon64 4000+ is a single core CPU with a real clockspeed of 2.4GHz, and 1MB (1024KB) of dedicated L2 cache. It is cheaper than a 4200+ X2, and will run MAME substantially faster.
Definitely buy an X2 dual-core for day to day computing and casual MAME play. If you are building a dedicated MAME box, go for the faster/cheaper single core solution.
Check out John IV's mame benchmarking page. Remember that most games run at 60FPS, so anything getting less will not be running at full speed (take note of Gauntlet Legends running at 19FPS on a 3700+):
http://mame32qa.classicgaming.gamespy.com/Bench.htm
I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ. It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Woo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's rich. :)
Sorry... looks like I was expecting too much of people again. Silly me.
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I should note that this sort of thing is contained in the MAME FAQ. It might pay for folks to read it first, and ask questions second?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Woo! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That's rich. :)
Sorry... looks like I was expecting too much of people again. Silly me.
I did read first and ask questions second, smarty pants.
After all you would think a thread titled Topic: The "What PC do I need to run MAME?" Official FAQ would be the right place to look.
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I did read first and ask questions second, smarty pants.
After all you would think a thread titled Topic: The "What PC do I need to run MAME?" Official FAQ would be the right place to look.
That was not directed at you, but the other few dozen posts that definitely ARE covered in the MAME FAQ in detail.
And no, this is not the "official" FAQ. The only people who can say whether an FAQ about MAME is official or not is the MAME authors. Anything else is unofficial until otherwise told. Until then, anything "official" is limited to www.mame.net , so check out their docs and FAQs for some great technical detail on their software.
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I ended up buying an opteron 148. It is single core 2.2ghz, but supposed to OC well.
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Currently (Oct 06) You can but packages of an Athlon 3400+ Single Core and MB for 100 - 110 + shipping. I can run 99% at 60 FPS...
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Has anyone actually done any benchmarks with Mame? Pick certain ROMs and certain CPUs and certain versions of Mame and just do some comparisons and post the Frame rates and such? I'd love to see something like that.
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Hi,
Did you read this thread? ;) Post 120, about five up has a link to such a site.
Rick
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Here's another -
http://benchmark.mameworld.net/ (http://benchmark.mameworld.net/)
Rick
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Most pc building around here is based on mame, but if I want to run newer emulators and nulldc, stepmania, guitar zero, etc can I get by with somthing like this
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1.833GHz Socket A Processor Model AXDA2500BOX
Antec TRUE330 330W ATX Power Supply
MSI K7N2 Delta-L 462(A) NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 ATX AMD Motherboard
1gb of ram
I don't mind doing an upgrade but I'm can't blow a ton of money.
$500 or less.
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Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.
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Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.
This thread is all but dead, totally out of date for the current state of MAME, see my thread on MAME preformance on Core 2 Duo's for up to date info.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0)
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Its interesting to see there isn't any talk about current CPU's...needed for current roms.
This thread is all but dead, totally out of date for the current state of MAME, see my thread on MAME preformance on Core 2 Duo's for up to date info.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.0)
Great thanks will move over there.
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**********MY FIRST POST********
ANSWERS TO WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR
AND
QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT CPU/Processor to begin with?
So there are a lot of posts in this thread....
1. I am a guy who has played the MAME emulator on my pc for years and now am going to take the plunge and build out a MAME cabinet
2. I simply want the best possible setup, that is futureproofed so i can reasonably expect it to run the new stuff while realizing the reason that I have MAME is because of the 80s classics like galaga, centipede, defender, guantlet, and dragons lalr. If it can also run MK great. if not, MK is not why i am building theis system, it is Pac-Man, etc and the fact that whether on a computer, or iPad ---- nothing feels as good as jetking the stick and mashing buttons on a full-size arcade cabinet.
3. I want it to play all MAMEs, and preferably my ATARI 2600 and Nintendo (mainly for Super Mario), because it is all about the classics games and i want to get the flicker and the CRT resolution lines in my finished product.
4. I am not going to use this computer for anything other than MAMEs.
5. Cost isnt a hindrance to me - this is a fun project to build and i will do it as slow as needed. BUT at the same time, if a $50 athlon processor will do, i'll gladly put that extra money i save into my Pinball machine project. :)
6. ONE difference though is that i am building a 2 screen Cabinet (imagine two cabinets turned 45 degrees away from each other but connected in the same (albeit bigger it actually wont look bad sitting up against a wall. oh yeah and so the LEFT SCREEN will have a VERTICAL CRT (Pac-Man, Qbert, Sinistar, etc) etc while the RIGHT SCREEN will be HORIZONTAL (Defender, Street Fighter, etc). SO knowing this....
7. Can this be done with one CPU, and then two partitions (one dedicated to each side so i don't have to even see the HORIZONTAL MAMEs from the VERTICAL MAMEs side and vice versa. I'm hoping there is a way that I can have two sound and two video cards and pump the pertinent audio/video to that side. Plus then I want to have my X-Controls controllers available on each side so essentially Pac-Man and Defender could be played simultaneously and you would see, nor hear, nor experience any blips, drips or glitches in game play. IF THIS IS NOT possible, i will just build a separate setup for each side.
8. Is there a preferred CPU speed that they were intended to be viewed (in other words, is there a CPU that would be TOO FAST to use? Or what is the best CPU featurewise? AND, if speed needs to be within a certain range to achieve a perfect replication of the arcade experience, then are there any ways to turn down the clock speed of the computer? I seem to recall a computer i once had years ago having a "turbo button" on the front of the case which turned it from 10mhz to 15. Any of you have that???
ONCE I GET THIS ANSWERED, WE'LL MOVE ON TO Mobo and Memory
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I have an I3 2120 that will run MK3 without issues. MK4, not. My I7-2600k will run everything just fine. Mame doesn't really use the video card, so that's not a factor for you. I would suggest an I7-2600k based machine. You could run both monitors/control panels from 1 machine using VM's, but you'd need more expensive hardware than running 2 separate systems. Not to mention the complicated setup you'd have to configure.
I'd run an I3 system for the vertical screen and a more powerful I7 setup for the horizontal, i'm assuming MK3-4, KI will be played on the horizontal screen here. You could get by with older core2duo's or AMD's, but the 1st/2nd gen I3 and I7's are really cheap. Not to mention that they are both overkill for 90% of Mame games.
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words
2.I was playing MK on an old P4 2.4 ages ago, any modern CPU will run all the games you mentioned just fine. Check TKWarrior's FS thread, he has i5 desktops for like $150 shipped
3. so are you hooking it up to a CRT or going to use HLSL (or a SLG) on a LCD?
5. see #1
6. 2 cabinets or one with a rotating display is a better option.
8. No CPU can be too fast.
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Yea if your building a pc just for mame newegg be having some decent deals on i3/i5 barebones under 400 you could have a full mame computer. the brains of my arcade cab slowly get upgrades as i upgrade the other systems. Mk4 is still unplayable in mame. (20-40% on my i5-4690k during a fight) Ki and the rest of the Mk have been fully playable for years. if you really want to get best performance use this site https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html) benchmark for single core performance then buy and build around that cpu. If you plan on using opengl or hlsl for overlays you will want a dedicated GPU.
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OK, this thread hasn't been updated since 2015. A lot has changed since then. What's a good PC (or Android TV box) to use now?
I was thinking about this Super Console X Pro (https://www.retrogamely.com/product/super-console-x), which is an Android TV but apparently powerful enough to run even things like TMNT smoothly. And it comes with tons of emulators and games preinstalled, which is good for me, since I don't have a ton of time to put into this hobby. But I don't know whether my USB controller interface (which emulates a keyboard) will work with it.
I'd also be happy to buy a small Windows box, if y'all think that works better. I would like to be able to run Unity apps (though not Unity itself) on it, since I have a couple custom arcade games and may want to write more.
So. When you have <$300 to spend, and want to be able to run things like TMNT, X-Men, maybe even Gauntlet Legends, what would you suggest in 2021?
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@ <$300 I would go with a Ryzen 3 3200G or 3200GE, if you wanna save more, an Athlon 3000 works absolutely fine. Motherboard go with an ASUS Prime A320M-K, basic AM4 board, has everything you need and none of the costly extras you don't, memory you want a minimum 8 gigs. Now keep in mind, at the moment, tariffs and chip shortages are impacting the market so prices are higher then normal. The board is normally like $58, the CPU (Athlon) normally runs about $50, then say another $50 for ram, spend maybe another $30 or 40 on a M.2 or SATA SSD, and you have yourself a very cheap and modern mame machine. If you wanna go used, I'd look for something in the socket 1155 range, great performers when it comes to mame especially when paired with an i5-3570 or i7-3770.
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find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.
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"Official FAQ" :laugh2:
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find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.
bought a core2duo the other day with 2gb of ram for $15 at thrift store.
I tossed an nvidia 9400 GT i had in a drawer in there because it was low profile and I was able to run a crt shader with libretro 2003 at almost 60fps on a 1280x1024.
if i dropped down to mame4all 37b i hit 60 fps with the shader.
or it ran just fine with the onboard graphics without a shader.
this was with MXLinux with minimal desktop that uses under 200mb at boot though.
it came with Vista which was then upgraded to win 7.
either way i can't imagine trying to run that pc with that little ram on either OS.
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Thanks for the recommendations! But let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that I'm a Mac user little experience in assembling PCs and (to a lesser extent) installing operating systems, and rather lacking in the time and desire to learn how. Are there any good off-the-shelf ready-to-run options (apart perhaps from installing MAME, which I'm happy to do) on a <$300 budget? (Setting that as the ceiling mainly because of that Super Console X, which is $250 and comes with everything preinstalled, so it doesn't make sense for me to spend a lot more unless it's way better in some way.)
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find an old 3rd or 4th gen i-5 with as much ram as you can put in it, good luck finding a GPU though, I saw 1030s going for $150 and they arent worth $50.
Yeppers. Those damn GPU prices will kill ya!! Lucky for me I have a nice horde of brand new ones for upcoming YouTube videos to play with, might even have a GT 1030 I'd be willing to part with at retail price not over inflated internet price. But, yeah, until those prices start dropping even a GT-1030 is ridiculous. My prediction is for a short while, you'll be seeing a surge of Ryzen G series based arcade and PC builds as gamers start getting frustrated with the market but still wanna get their game on. I know lower end old cards like the GTX 960 even, are making a slight resurgence. But getting back on topic (sorry), today's Ryzen APU's just slaughter in MAME and other emulators. Might not pull 100fps in more modern games, but for emulation, gimme a G series Ryzen chip any day when it comes to using onboard graphics. A super Console X (Glorified Android TV), can't even come close to the smoothness and speed.
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An upside to recent GPU difficulties is that crypto miners are having to buy bundles to get what they're after, so it's likely we'll be seeing the remainders of these bundles (CPUs, motherboards, SSDs) being poured onto places like eBay soon according to this article (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crypto-miners-could-soon-flood-Ebay-with-cheap-CPUs-motherboards-and-SSDs-acquired-via-GPU-bundle-purchases.539289.0.html).
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This thread is now old enough to vote and drink alcohol in some countries! That deserves a celebration :cheers:
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An upside to recent GPU difficulties is that crypto miners are having to buy bundles to get what they're after, so it's likely we'll be seeing the remainders of these bundles (CPUs, motherboards, SSDs) being poured onto places like eBay soon according to this article (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crypto-miners-could-soon-flood-Ebay-with-cheap-CPUs-motherboards-and-SSDs-acquired-via-GPU-bundle-purchases.539289.0.html).
Probably not the SSDs because of Chia mining.
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This thread is now old enough to vote and drink alcohol in some countries! That deserves a celebration :cheers:
I'll drink to that!
I would make it a double if there was a clear answer to this question
:laugh2: