Upgrading opinion

[dithrin]

I recently transferred my files to the computer I was planing on using for my cabinet.  The problem I ran into are the specs on the old computer I have are not as good as i thought they were (should have checked before I got started).  I can not put a lot of money into upgrading at the most would be around $40.

Mala loads fine and so do the games, just a little slower than on my main computer but not an issue.  The part that doesn't work is the actual game play.  The game speed seems to have slowed down significantly, but not on all of the games.  EX: I loaded Bubble Bobble II  and it was very slow (speed was about half of normal),  then I loaded SF Zero and it seemed to work just fine.  I also loaded Mega Man 3 (nes) and it was slowed as well but not as bad as Bubble Bobble.  This is backwards from what I would have expected.

I am thinking if I upgrade the RAM this would help the issue, but I wanted some more opinions before I spend money on that, since my budget is limited.


I am at work right now, but the specs I can remember are:  if you need others I will check when I get home.

Intel celeron processor 1.6ghz?
256 ram
internal video card ( cant remember any specs on this)

This is for casual game play so I do not need anything crazy quick I just want it to run games at normal speed.

Thanks for the help
-Dith

[Howard_Casto]

Ok you have three different types of games there:

Bubble Bobble II isn't all that advanced a game.  It should run fine on most systems.  Nes performance varies greatly by the emulator (don't ask me which is fastest) but you should be able to run it on darn near anything.  Sf zero is a cps2 game.... those require some processing power.

Your specs are a tad too vague to understand where the problem is coming from. 

for example:

1.6 ghz celeron...  what's the bus speed? Is that single, dual or quad? (I'm guessing single)

An internal video card is obvously crap and it's obviously slowing down your system, BUT what resolution are you running mame at?  For an internal card especially on a system with so little ram, that will make all the difference in the world.  You are probably going to have to run mame at as low a resolution as possible.  Make sure "switchres" is turned on and resolution is set to "auto" in your mame.ini. 

So to answer your question on what to upgrade, the real answer would be the whole pc.    Joking aside, I don't think you can do it for 40.  You really need more ram AND a video card.  At least going with the assumption that you aren't running an arcade monitor.