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PC horsepower and DirectDraw vs. Direct3D
Cynicaster:
--- Quote ---It's not difficult to build a computer. Especially if you're using good parts. ASUS makes great motherboards. I won't buy anything else. In the end, it's all about doing your research and taking your time. There's lots of people here (and in other forums on the Internet) that can help you put a system together.
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What operating system would you recommend for a purely MAME PC? I would assume XP? If so, can you still buy new licenses for it? If so, any idea what that would cost?
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If you want, we can set up a MAME benchmark test. We can try running the same version of MAME with the -bench switch that was implemented in newer versions. Then you can see how our systems compare. My MAME PC is almost the same as the $186 system so it should give you a good idea what you'd be seeing with an upgrade.
Here's some information about benchmarking MAME...
http://www.mameui.info/Bench.htm
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I checked out that link but I'm not sure what the numbers in those charts even represent. If you want to recommend a specific test (command line), I'll post my results. Thanks for all the info!
scofthe7seas:
I personally love the crispy look direct draw gives over the direct 3d look. I likes me some jaggies on the older games, makes them feel more authentic to me. As for dual-cores, they do bump the frame rate a moderate amount. (about 10 fps or so, depending on the game), but mostly it's the architecture (as was said, the miserable Pentium D that was released for about 2 minutes was essentially EXACTLY the same as a Pentium 4 HT) of the core2duo / "Pentium dual core" as it's called now, which is a budget minded core2duo. I just built a brand new MAME PC for my cab with a Pentium dual-core for about 200 dollars. I had to share a cdrom between my other Pcs though. Plus, with a newer Pc, you have to keep in mind that you won't be able to really use ANY of your old components. I have a high end PC from about 5 years ago, and the biggest hurdle stopping me from upgrading is the need to upgrade dang near everything inside. Does the -bench switch work independent of any rom, or do we need a rom to agree on for the benchmark?
If you'd like, I could price you out a very reasonable PC for your purposes :)
XP works pretty well, 64 bit OS/PC (all modern PCs have this) actually bump the speed up quite a bit, but windows xp 64 is moderately unstable. I just discovered that Windows 7 actually runs disturbingly quickly on a new PC, so I am currently going with that.
LeedsFan:
Sorry for bumping this thread... but I didn't want to start a new one for my question.
I recently read that there is also a difference in the timings between D3D and DirectDraw. Is this true? Basically someone had Pacman running alongside an original cabinet and they said that the timing (or speed) was only correct in DirectDraw whereas in D3D it went off tilt. Personally I prefer D3D because it just looks nicer. On some machines I even struggle to read the Mame menu text in DirectDraw it looks that bad. But I never heard of this timing issue before.
newmanfamilyvlogs:
If that is true, my guess would be it has to do more with any particular video card's driver's implementation of D3D versus DirectDraw. Some older/cheaper video chipsets (I'm looking at you SIS) do not fully or correctly implement D3D and/or DDraw. If the time it takes to draw a frame, or the way it reports back to the system that the frame has been drawn (vsync, for example), then I could see that affecting timing (If we're talking things like emulation speed and input lag).
To the best of my knowledge I don't see how the way the final frame is rendered could have any bearing on the internal game logic emulation. Those two systems should be fully divorced from one another.
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