Any reason to update MAME?

[jelwell]

I'm wondering if there is any reason to upgrade from MAME 149 to the current 152?

I setup my brother in law's cabinet a few months ago (with 149) and I my PC finally stopped booting so I bought a new computer. Since I just set his up I have all the software, configurations, roms, chds, artwork, etc for 149. Updating to 152 seems like a chore. I read through the whatsnew files but didn't see anything interesting.

Anyone know of a compelling reason? If it matters I'm setting this up on a relatively high end pc, i5-4400 with 10GB of RAM. I'm wiping it with WIN 7 tonight.
Thanks,
Joseph Elwell.

[SegaOutrun]

unless you want to play a newly added game or if a game you like that needed work, has been worked on then no, i dont see a reason why.

[adder]

personally here im thinking of updating from 148 to the next release (.153) when it comes
but that said i think there is some core changes going on so it remains to see if there are any bad side effects etc which might take until .154 to be sorted out
as for changes since .148 i havnt had a good look, but one or two things on mametesters caught my eye.. namely improvements to double dragon (less slowdowns), improvement to express raider (music speed) and fix to the galivan driver (few games) so the sprites lagging is gone. there's obviously loads more improvements since .148 but those ones caught my eye 

[B2K24]

From one version to the next massive amounts of bugs are being fixed and resolved, so it's always good to use the latest official binary.

If some odd game you like have regressed for w/e reason you can also rename an older binary and keep that in your main MAME path as well.

The advantages of updating far outweigh any disadvantages IMHO

[Howard_Casto]

So long as you keep your hardware current yes.  Keep in mind though that as the years roll on mame gets slower due to different optimizations. 

We haven't had to worry about that in some time though.

[Minwah]

I'm still mainly using v0.99. The only reasons I've found to use a newer version are:

~v0.125: Buggy Boy working
v0.129: TX1 working
~v0.139: Donkey Kong discrete audio implementation

I'm sure I've missed some other good stuff but nothing to lose sleep over I doubt.

So I do the opposite of B2K24...use my old version but use newer versions for newly added/improved games. Beats keeping romsets updated all the time if you ask me...

[Generic Eric]

I find it easier to stay current, and maintain sets (which I didn't always do) than it is to say, run down romset .139 for example.