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Just curious about building dedicated Mame PC

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yotsuya:
Everyone listen to IAmDotorg because he's obviously invested time into researching this. Me, I'm going to continue to use as much RAM as I can because, well,  :dunno

dkersten:
Not to split hairs, but he is correct, even though it is fairly moot.  My only point is that 4gb is more than enough for anything unless you are running some insane memory hogging software or loading up dozens of apps at once. 

RAM and hard disk space have become so cheap and plentiful that people think that more is better, but at some point you are just buying it because you can.  Usually larger disks DO mean a slight performance boost, so even if you don't need the space the larger disks can help.  But more RAM doesn't equate to more performance unless physical memory is already a bottleneck.  There are actually situations where more RAM can hurt your performance and stability.  If you are running more sticks of memory, you will draw more voltage per bank, and stability at higher clock rates can degrade rapidly.  I have actually had motherboards in the past that couldn't run at max clock with all banks filled, meaning having to run less memory at a higher clock rate (and lower latency) or more memory at a slower rate.  Plus if you look at motherboards after a few years that have run all banks as opposed to just the minimum, you will see more blown out, swelled, and dried up caps around the power regulators.  I have thrown away a lot of motherboards that still worked but had become unstable because of this exact problem. 

As for the number of banks, there is only one chipset that used triple banks instead of dual, and it would be very clear even to a novice that to get your machine to perform the best you will need a certain multiplier of sticks of memory. 

Bottom line: build the machine you can afford to build, mame will run on it.

To reiterate: 32 bit os = ~3.2 gigs of ram max usage, so anything more than 4 in a 32 bit OS is a complete waste, it can't even be accessed by the software.  64 bit OS doesn't have that limitation, but also doesn't use MORE ram. 

yotsuya:

--- Quote from: dkersten on September 12, 2014, 11:37:38 am ---Not to split hairs, but he is correct, even though it is fairly moot.  My only point is that 4gb is more than enough for anything unless you are running some insane memory hogging software or loading up dozens of apps at once. 
--- End quote ---

Oh, I'm not saying he's not correct. I'm just saying that if I'm running a Windows 7 64-bit machine, I'm going to put 4 GB in it to compensate for the overhead that Windows 7 brings as well as any FEs or other programs that need to run.

dkersten:
Although I have built one cab that runs 2gb with windows 7 and it seems to run just fine, I tend to agree with you, if at all possible, I don't use less than 4gb.  I was running into performance issues on the latest cab PC (caused by using a .154 ini with a .153 mame build) and in troubleshooting I dug up 2 more sticks of ram and bumped it from 2gb to 4gb.  No difference in performance, and in both cases I had plenty of ram free still. 

But I didn't try it with the FE fully loaded with 2 LED controllers each running different animations, and the amount of free memory was only around 500 megs with 2gig in the machine, nor did I try to run a game with a large CHD file.  And windows DOES use a little more if it has it, which theoretically means it should help in bottleneck situations (my free ram while running mame off the FE went from 500 megs to around 1.5 gigs after adding 2 more gigs). 

Vigo:
The thing about RAM is that if you have more than enough, it is completely worry free. If you are low on RAM, then it becomes a PITA. First you have to identify that the emulation is slow due to RAM. Second, if you cheaped out on RAM in the beginning and playing slot games to boost performance, you are most likely filling all your slots with smaller RAM sticks. It would have just been better to get one stick larger at a time, so you won't need to trash the current RAM in order to upgrade. Also, If you end up tossing a 1 gb stick to put in a 2 gb stick you end up risking performance or instability issues from having uneven RAM sized sticks.

There is no point to examine the best configuration of ram for your motherboard, simply fill up on enough from the get-go, and fill evenly. If you underestimate your RAM need, then you end up wasting a lot more time and money than overkilling on RAM.

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