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Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: bhays on March 30, 2012, 12:03:53 am

Title: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: bhays on March 30, 2012, 12:03:53 am

I am wanting to get my project going and I was hoping to get some advice from those here as to whether the hardware I have lying around would be sufficient.  I want to have a MAME cabinet that will run with nice performance using Hyperspin with all of the movies, etc.

I purchased a mame cabinet without the pc.  It has a Wells Gardner D9200 monitor and IPAC4 with it as well as the controls.

I have a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard on hand with a core2quad processor and 4GB DDR2800 Ram
I have a Seagate Barricuda LP 2TB Hard Drive for it
I have a Radeon HD 2400 Pro 256MB Video Card

Will that processor/mb/ram combo be fast enough for pretty much any of the roms/games I want to run?
Will the Radeon HD2400 Pro video card work with Soft15Khz or GroovyMame or would I be better off ordering an ArcadeVGA 3000 video card?

I appreciate the advice.  I want to get started, but wanted to make sure all of the stuff I had on hand would do the job.

Title: Re: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: Yenome on March 30, 2012, 12:30:58 am

Far as everything you got it should all work out fine. play anything you want. the only things i cant comment on are the video card and if it works with groovymame or not as i never used groovymame. should work with soft15. far as which is the best picture that monitor is a multisync digital monitor its ready to be plugged into you PC as is, its a hybrid monitor of sorts a cross of PC and arcade. nice review http://retroblast.arcadecontrols.com/reviews/d9200-1.html (http://retroblast.arcadecontrols.com/reviews/d9200-1.html) you got more than enough CPU power and more than enough memory i would suggest a 64bit OS as the performance increase with 64bit Mame is worth it.

Title: Re: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: kahlid74 on March 30, 2012, 09:08:13 am

So, the challenge here lies in the idea of whether you want to play "Everything" or just a list of games.  I'm still a noob at benchmarks but I'll tell you what I know:

• You should have no problem running all of the old school 2d arcade games.  On the newest versions of MAME some of the games are simulated rather than emulated, so they take a lot more horsepower but again you should be just fine.  If a 2d game runs slow I'd try an older version of MAME
• What Ghz is your Proc.  Gauntlet and NFL blitz99 can take anywhere from 4-9 GHZ to run without stuttering a little.

Also, this thread is huge when it comes to understanding all of the performance benchmarks. - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.msg1255424#msg1255424 (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.msg1255424#msg1255424)

Title: Re: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: bhays on March 30, 2012, 10:40:46 am

Quote from: kahlid74 on March 30, 2012, 09:08:13 am

So, the challenge here lies in the idea of whether you want to play "Everything" or just a list of games.

Honestly, just a fun machine for the family room.  Not looking to do anything exotic.  Thanks.  I was mostly concerned as to whether that Radeon video card would be ok or if I needed to get an ArcadeVGA card.

Title: Re: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: GregD on March 30, 2012, 10:52:27 am

Hyperspin is the resource hog.  Get as much RAM in there as possible.

Title: Re: Need advice - will hardware I have on hand work
Post by: bhays on March 30, 2012, 10:53:21 am

Quote from: GregD on March 30, 2012, 10:52:27 am

Hyperspin is the resource hog.  Get as much RAM in there as possible.

I'm pretty sure the MB can only handle 4GB and that's what I am putting on there.