64bit vs 32bit

[Pinto]

Hey everyone, been reading these forums for quite sometime but never posted before but here I am

I've been planning my first arcade machine to be built for quite some time. Since I'm in college, most of the work will be done over the summer and spring break but I'm making a small wooden box mockup CP over winter break for testing. I've tossed around the idea of making a design from scratch or getting a used cab and I think I'll get plans from mameroom for my first machine to get my feet wet. We have lots of coin op at my house and my dad has restored jukeboxes/pinball machines before so I'm hoping use his knowledge on the actual construction. I'll make a site to keep updates on the construction once it starts but thats months away.

Anyways, I'll be using MameUI and noticed that they offer both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. Did anyone make the jump to 64 bit and notice improvements in their performance? From what I was able to find, it sounds like complicated roms process better but somewhere else I saw a post where the 64 bit hurt the performance of some of the earlier roms. Hopefully some of you have an opinion on whether the jump to 64 bit is worth it. Thanks

[divemaster127]

64 bit is much faster I can run all chd's etc on my machine.  Blitz runs very well also
dm

[joeH]

What chip/clock speed are you running it at?

[divemaster127]

Intel dual core 6850, overclocked to 3.8 w/ 4gig of ram.  Gigabyte motherboard
dm

[joeH]

Nice. Are you running this on your main PC or a in a cab? Which Gigabyte board?

[Pinto]

Yeah I think I'm going to go with 4 gig of muskin ram but probably an AMD 64 bit so I just have to find an equivalent one to yours around summertime (hopefully a price drop by then on it too)

[taz-nz]

Anyways, I'll be using MameUI and noticed that they offer both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. Did anyone make the jump to 64 bit and notice improvements in their performance? From what I was able to find, it sounds like complicated roms process better but somewhere else I saw a post where the 64 bit hurt the performance of some of the earlier roms. Hopefully some of you have an opinion on whether the jump to 64 bit is worth it. Thanks

Short answer is 64bit is the way to go, up to 20% boost in preformance to be had by switching to 64bit.

Almost all games even the oldest ones will gain in preformance when running in 64bit, there are a few games that have heavy 32bit optimations that are lost in the 64bit builds of MAME, but even these games will see a small improvement in performance when run using a 32bit build of MAME running under 64bit Windows. (gradius4 is the best example of this.)

You can see benchmark results here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=72776.40

Intel dual core 6850, overclocked to 3.8 w/ 4gig of ram.  Gigabyte motherboard

Sweet dude, you got it to 3.8ghz good going, did you need to change your heatsink to get there or are you still using the Rosewill cooler ?

I checked at work and the intel distributor has the E8x00 series Core 2 Duo due in around the 15th Jan, so I'm planing to retire my E6850 then and replace it with a E8500 should be good for a easy 4.5ghz on air, if I can get it up around the 4.7ghz mark I'll look and switching to water cooling and aim for the big 5.0ghz mark.

Yeah I think I'm going to go with 4 gig of muskin ram but probably an AMD 64 bit so I just have to find an equivalent one to yours around summertime (hopefully a price drop by then on it too)

MAME really doesn't care about the extra memory but 2GB is a must if your running Vista 64bit, If you want some cheap fast RAM track down some Transcend TX800QLJ-2GK (the model is very important) it's a 2x 1GB DDR2-800 kit, the thing is a few the guys at work now have it overclocked stabalibly at DDR2-1200 without the need to run extreme RAM voltages.

I would really suggest getting a Core 2 Duo, I really like the Athlon 64s (i've owned a half dozen different models) but they can't keep up with the Core 2 Duo, look at getting one of the cheaper Core 2 Duos and a good heatsink so you can overclocking it.


 

[Pinto]

yeah I'll check those core 2 duos out. I'm sure my one CPU purchase can't cripple my already $8.00 AMD stock any further