Screen HLSL effects questions

[Justin]

Seeing as how my TV has finally died in my  MAME cabinet, I seem to be forced to transition to an LCD screen set up. I absolutely hate the look of LCD for classic games, but I am well aware that MAME has supported screen, RGB effects to make the LCD look more realistic and akin to older CRT monitors.

My question is, what is the best version and flavor of MAME to achieve this, on what kind of hardware would I need. I ran a few tests with my 10 year old computer and of course it ran extremely slow.

[Justin]

Looking for advice on a powerful
Enough Pc for HLSL shaders please.

[gildahl]

Any "modern" PC should handle the effects without a sweat.  My arcade machine has a Core i7 3770k from 2012 and a GTX 1070Ti from 2017, which is already way overkill.  Any current standard build of MAME should work.  I do know there was some change in MAME a few years ago that changed the effect of the HLSL settings that caused me to have to spend a lot of time experimenting with new setting values, but its been stable since then (I'm just a couple builds behind at the moment).  I wouldn't fret too much over the loss of the CRT.  MAME and an ordinary CRT TV is hardly a "pure" combination anyway.  If you're going to emulate games, you might as well emulate the display too and gain the same flexibility benefits.  Quite frankly, the HLSL effects can be really, really good when configured right, and using them in combination with the higher resolution of an LCD monitor lets you display much more convincing bezel art (art will be sharp like printed while game graphics remain RGBified), get full milage out of high res front end graphics or overlays, run more modern/higher res emulated titles if you like, make vectors look more like vectors, etc. 

[Justin]

Thanks. Very helpful post!  I have a used Dell Optiplex 9020 on order  w/ i7-4770  and 16gb RAM.

You aren't saying that the embedded iGPU will handle HLSL are you?   I was thinking of upgrading its power supply and putting a 1070 non TI card.   I'd rather not go overkill honestly as the larger GPUs are noisy with more powerful fans.  I really loved the simplicity of my old Pentium 4, winxp , CRT setup but I do look forward to proper vector game displays.

Only lcd that will property fit in my cab is a 16:10 1920x1200 25.5 inch LCD monitor.  They don't make this size anymore so I'm scouring eBay.

[gildahl]

Couldn't honestly say whether embedded graphics would work well (I'd be leery), but an i7 4770 plus 1070 non-Ti will certainly be fine.  Yeah, 25.5" is a more unusual size.  I use a 24" 16:10 monitor with a 4:3 bezel in front of it.  That's a much more attainable size if you can't get the 25.5.   

[Justin]

Update!

Acquired a $200 Dell 9020 with i7 4th gen 3.4mhz and iGPU Radeon 4600.

It runs every pre-1995 game I throw at it 1920x1200  with BGFX and speed to spare (unthtottled at 150-250%)

[Justin]

I will warn though: after upgrading to windows 10, BGFX shows artifacts on screen with this iGpu.  Must be a driver issue as it worked fine with windows 7. Oh well...