What PC/Vid card are you guys running?

[Mugzilla]

What PC Processor do you guys use in your cabinets?

I have a free c-400 on a motherboard w/o an agp slot. I also have a free TNT2 16mb videocard.

[Nailz]

A TNT card with a P3 700 does the job great for me...

[grafixmonkey]

This computer does things other than Mame...  but my cab compy is a 1500 P4, and Radeon 9000 all-in-wonder (serves as cab, video capture workstation, and TiVo...   at least it will TiVo some day.)

I'm considering upgrading the processor a bit to be able to play N64 games nicely.    Last I checked it had some sound skipping.  not to mention only a few N64 games were actually emulated.

[DeathMonk]

Athlon XP 2100+, 512MB DDR, ArcadeVGA

[_Iz-]

nForce2, Athlon XP 1800+, 2 x 256meg PC2700 DDR (Dual Channel), GeForce 2 MX 400 AGP

[TalkingOctopus]

Whoa! Most of you guys have nice computers for your cabs.  

I use a p3 733 and an ATI Radeon 7500.

[Mugzilla]

Let me clarify: What hardware will I need to run xmen vs streetfighter?

[jerryjanis]

Let me clarify: What hardware will I need to run xmen vs streetfighter?

Xmen vs Street Fighter runs great on my PIII  600/Arcade VGA.  If I remember right, it even ran fine on the same computer using the Triden Blade T64.

The Mortal Kombat games and NBA Jam, for instance, will not run very well at all on this computer.

[SpamMe]

AMD 1700xp, and a radeon 8500 pro.

[bionicbadger]

Let me clarify: What hardware will I need to run xmen vs streetfighter?

Your TNT2 is fine.  Mame doesn't need any fancy video cards.  I got a $6 ATI 8MB card off e-bay and all the games play great including x-men vs. streetfighter.  There are a couple games that run slow, but that is because of the processor not the video card.  Mame doesn't need all the fancy 3D stuff, so a 5 year old video card will work fine.

[Mugzilla]

Let me clarify: What hardware will I need to run xmen vs streetfighter?

Your TNT2 is fine.  Mame doesn't need any fancy video cards.  I got a $6 ATI 8MB card off e-bay and all the games play great including x-men vs. streetfighter.  There are a couple games that run slow, but that is because of the processor not the video card.  Mame doesn't need all the fancy 3D stuff, so a 5 year old video card will work fine.

Sounds great. I have a case, AMD Power supply, RAM, CD rom, etc laying around. I am going to build an athlon XP 2200 for my cabinet! (And of course use the TNT2 video card!

[Chris Goodwin]

Celeron 533, 384 MB of RAM, ATI Radeon 7000 video card with TV out.  Not in a cabinet, though; it's my all purpose PC.

Edit:  Removed embarassingly stupid mistake.

[_Iz-]

Celeron 533, 384 MB of RAM (though I think it's mixed PC133 and PC100 -- might pull the 128 of PC100 out and see if it improves my speed any), ATI Radeon 7000 video card with TV out.  Not in a cabinet, though; it's my all purpose PC.

Swapping out the PC100 won't make any difference to your speed. Computers of that era always ran the memory at the same speed as the CPU's FSB which in your case is 66mhz. (This means that both your pc100 and pc133 are running at 66mhz not 100mhz and 133mhz).

[paigeoliver]

The vertical cabinet has a PII 333 with a voodoo3 and the Horizontal cabinet has a PIII 733 with a Voodoo3. Not sure what is going into the Battlezone cabinet yet?

[Tiger-Heli]

What PC Processor do you guys use in your cabinets?

I have a free c-400 on a motherboard w/o an agp slot. I also have a free TNT2 16mb videocard.

Not sure about the games you mentioned.

I have a Duron 800 and it plays most of the games up to the mid-90's.

I previously had a Pentium 200 which needed help for most anything but early 80's games.

I have a 16M TNT2 AGP in the machine now, but previously had a 4M Rendition Verite PCI.  I didn't see a difference in MAME, but the TNT2 graphics are fuzzier in 2P office apps.  (I would swap it out and go back to the 4M PCI, but I need the TNT for some PC 3D games).

[Lilwolf]

Athlon 2.1ghz + ATI 9500 -> 9700pro

I use it for other games also.  But it is nice to be able to play like 10+ more games then my 1ghz machine.

[abrannan]

Athlon XP1800, ATI Rage IIc PCI card.  Used to run a Radeon 7500 AGP, and I notice no difference in MAME between the two video cards.

[Nailz]

Let me clarify: What hardware will I need to run xmen vs streetfighter?

Your TNT2 is fine.  Mame doesn't need any fancy video cards.  I got a $6 ATI 8MB card off e-bay and all the games play great including x-men vs. streetfighter.  There are a couple games that run slow, but that is because of the processor not the video card.  Mame doesn't need all the fancy 3D stuff, so a 5 year old video card will work fine.

I would agree, before I used my TNT card, I was using a Diamond Stealth64 2MB PCI card.    I have had this thing around since 1994, but it works great in Windows, DOS, Linux, you name it , and I never had a problem with slowdowns with it in MAME, ran Metal Slug just the same as any other video card I put in my cab.

[Lilwolf]

If you are buying something new.... 100% for mame...

I would look at this.

Good TNT card if you aren't using TV out...  

Good older ATI card if you are.

ArcadeVGA if your using an arcade monitor.

For the speed of the computer.

if its 100% for classics.  I don't think you will save much by buying less then 1ghz machine.  But 500 will get you most of them... But look around.. you might find that 5-10 bucks more will double the speed....  

if its for all mame.  faster the better.... So look for best price / performance (I think around 2.4 ghz right now is it).... basically whats being the most mass produced.. (most massproduced?? sounds bad)

[bguss1]

My new cabinet in progress:

- MEGA cabinet from http://ww.dreamauthentics.com
- Wells Gardner 33" D9200 monitor
- AthlonXP 3000+
- 1GB DDRAM
- GeForce 4Ti video card

I wanted the setup to be future proof as well as run all the latest demanding games via MAME, N64, PC, etc.

[shmokes]

Yeah...my specs are way higher than what I would need for 99.9% of MAME.

Athlon 2500
512 MB RAM
128 MB GeForce 4 4600

I like to play other (non-MAME) games on it, though.  Mafia is just so fantastic.  A lot like GTA, but with a much better story line.  I love racing games, though, and that is one area where the classics just don't deliver like modern games.  Crazy Taxi and some of the good rally games and Midnight Club II are fantastic on a cab.

[Chris Goodwin]

Celeron 533, 384 MB of RAM (though I think it's mixed PC133 and PC100 -- might pull the 128 of PC100 out and see if it improves my speed any), ATI Radeon 7000 video card with TV out.  Not in a cabinet, though; it's my all purpose PC.

Swapping out the PC100 won't make any difference to your speed. Computers of that era always ran the memory at the same speed as the CPU's FSB which in your case is 66mhz. (This means that both your pc100 and pc133 are running at 66mhz not 100mhz and 133mhz).

Duhhh.  Me am computer tech.  Me am s-m-r-t.

I should have known that.  

[Mugzilla]

Well, I just ordered stuff. Thank you one and all for your input. A special thanks to www.pricewatch.com for saving me a pile of money!

AMD Athlon XP 2200

Asus A7V8X-X KT400 MB (Which has 5.1 audio on it, no video, and upgradeable to the faster FSB speeds)

512 MB of PC333 ram

40 gig HD

2 big fat case fans

This puppy will be running a stripped down version of 98SE OR, I'll set it up as a DOS machine.

Thank you all once again!

[shmokes]

You should run XP.  With specs like that a lot of stuff will run faster in XP than 98 and if you head over to the software forum it looks like we've finally got a handle on multiple mice in XP.  Aside from that it's just such a spectacular OS compared to anything else Microsoft has ever made.  And it can go from power on to completely booted in about 35 seconds if you don't have a bunch of applications or unnecessary services starting automatically.

Server 2003...now that boots fast!  My schools got MSDN subscriptions so I got a free copy of Server 2003.  Looks really nice.

[bionicbadger]

Win98 boots plenty fast if you set it up right and takes up much less memory.   Win XP is fine for a normal use computer, but for a cabinet, you aren't going to be running much other than mame, so DOS or win98 is fine.  My cab runs win98 and goes from power off to mame32 in about 30 seconds.  I might have gone with DOS myself but sometimes it's a bugger to find drivers for stuff.

Please tell me what stuff I use on a cabinet will run faster on winXP than win98.  

[Malachai]

Duron 900MHz and RADEON 7000 here.  Runs CPS2 and MK games fine.

[greywolf22]

Well a year ago, I thought that a P3 1Ghz machine would be my mame machine (and was for awhile)....then I upgraded to an Athlon XP 1800+ and figured I'd use that as my cabinet mame machine...then I got an Athlon XP 2400+ for my home machine, and it played even more games with less lag then my 1800+....sooo then I figured I'd use my Athlon XP 2400+ for my MAME cabinet and just upgrade my home machine...of course if I wait much longer, some new game will come out that isn't quite fast enough and then I'll have to upgrade again...somebody stop the maddness