Video card for classic games

[DarkSoul1]

Just a quick query on video cards.

Will a 2 or 4 meg PCI video card be enough to run classic MAME games on?  eg. Galaxian, Space Invaders, Galaga.

CPU is PII 233, 64mg PC100 sdram.

I'd love a quick answer as I may be able to pick up several cards cheap very shortly.

 

[F|end]

The problem here is the monitor frequency that isn't compatible with the arcade games frequency! The pc monitor has a higher frequency and a much cleaner resolution! The arcades monitors have low frequencys and blurry screen aspect!

Advance mame has some custom resultions that can reproduce most of the aspect and original size of the games in your pc monitor! I would say that is the cheapest way to play those games with full blurry screen aspect! I think that any card does it and belive me, it does a fine free job!

Other method is to buy the arcade vga card wich can be bought in this site www.ultimarc.com wich is a card fully compatible with original arcade monitors and does not stretch the hardware to make or applies screen blurry filters to make the game full screen aspect! It's a Ati based card and you can play also 3d games with it like quake 2 and stuff! The problem is that card soon will be deprecated to play the top games like virtua fighter 2 etc.

Well, i know this info isn't complete but i think that solves a little bit your issue in this matter! At least is solved for me!

Good luck and happy "full screen" gamming!

[rampy]

The original poster didn't specify what type of display they are using.

If you are using a regular PC monitor yes.. you can use and old 4meg card and do just fine for the classic games... especially if you choose to run in DOS (but really it doesn't matter).

Even if you are using an arcade monitor you can use an old card, you'll just be hunting for a very specific trident card or old ati card in order to best run at an arcade monitor's frequencys (or buy an ArcadeVGA card as wiskers alludes to... but I bet that would be overkill for your situation, eh?)

I used to use a 2 meg trident pci card with mame (not that long ago) in a celeron 366@550 and it work admirably (although i did use the ScitTech Display doctor to get the most out of that old card)

good luck!

Rampy

[bionicbadger]

Yes.  Pretty much any cheap old video card will work fine.

[DarkSoul1]

Yes, I'll be using a PC monitor.  I should have specified that.  

I'll do some shopping for a card in that 2 - 4 meg range then.

Cheers