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Just curious about building dedicated Mame PC

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dkersten:

--- Quote from: yotsuya on September 12, 2014, 12:35:21 pm ---Exactly.
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Which is why I said I tend to agree with you.  But the question isn't if 2gb of ram is enough, but rather 4 gb.


--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: Vigo on September 12, 2014, 12:28:11 pm ---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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I am reminded of the son-of-a-motherless :censored: previous IT director my district had running the show. He INSISTED that we'd be fine with only 2GB of RAM on our new Windows 7 machines to save something like $10 per computer. Every time the students sit there and wait for programs to load, every time Photoshop bogs down, they curse his name.

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@Vigo, I get what you are saying, but sometimes throwing money at something "because you can" is just throwing money away.  I have yet to run into a game with any of the emulators I have tried that used more than 70% of the 4 gigs of memory I used, and like I said, about the same percentage when I had half that much RAM.  And considering that just a few short years ago utilizing more than 3.2 gigs of ram was not even an option in any desktop OS, yet people were running the very same games we are talking about and not running into problems, I can't sit here and agree that "4 gigs isn't enough" for mame.  That isn't to say that if you can afford more memory you shouldn't put it in (although I gave an example of why you shouldn't fill your banks if you can avoid it), just that spending more money for no gain is wasting money.

@yot, to expand on what I said above, I completely agree that when using memory hog programs like Photoshop, having more RAM is always good.  But Mame is not Photoshop.  And 4 gigs is more than enough.  I also wouldn't recommend he put a Titan graphics card in, or double up some SSD's in a raid array for better disk performance, even though the price of SSD's is way down and very reasonable.   

As for the cheap IT guy, to YOU that $10 or $20 (or more like $50-100 in recent years given the cost of RAM) might seem trivial and well worth it, but to the guy writing the check (or responsible for the budget) for dozens or even hundreds of computers, it adds up fast and isn't trivial.  As an IT director, I look at the needs of the individual and decide if they need more or can get by with less.  And frankly I am the kind of guy who leans toward spending a few extra dollars where it matters most.  My guys don't need 500 gb of storage, they use maybe 40gb, sometimes as much as 60gb after 4 years of use, so why spend even $5 more for more storage?  But then I will put a Core i5 in their desktops and laptops instead of an i3 or something slower and cheaper, because I know it is money well spent.  But I won't put 8 or 16 gigs of ram in a desktop and especially not a laptop (takes more power to run more ram) because 99% of my employees don't need it.  I also won't skimp out and put 2 gigs in a 64 bit computer because I know how much it can limit things, particularly with windows 7. 

I relate this to an arcade cab because it is so damn easy for costs to get out of control, yet there pretty much isn't any one part outside of the monitor that costs more than $100 by itself.  It gets out of control because you look at it and say "well, I can get the buttons for $2 each, or the better buttons for $3.  But wait, there are good ones with leaf switches for $4.  Or I can go RGB lit buttons for $6, or OOOH, I can do brighter RGB lights with leaf switches for only $9.50 each!".  Each increment in itself is small, and even the total cost of one button is small, but when you have 20 or 30 buttons, and hundreds of other parts and pieces in that cab, spending just a few dollars more on this and that can easily mean $500 more overall..  Every time you have an opportunity to save $20, you are one step closer to saving yourself hundreds of dollars..

Vigo:
Dave, you definitely have an IT director approach to things. (And not one who works for an AZ school district.)  :cheers:

I am gonna say, as far as my philosophy on RAM, is that I might not be as good as many people at benchmarking my computers needs, but I have always taken the cheap route in the past, thinking I could just upgrade as needed. It usually worked out for me, but a few years ago I was burned by underestimating my needs. I think it was a few newer gen emulators were taking their sweet time. When I flipped in new ram, I ended up having to toss some of the old ram, and started getting BSODs much more often. I can't verify if the RAM was the cause, I never spend the time to look into it. I did just end up getting a whole new computer out of frustration with speed issues that were cropping up. Ended up realizing that it was just worth it for me to just get a step above the ideal RAM I felt I would need.

I think it might be a safe philosophy to just say, when in doubt, don't skimp on RAM. If someone is gonna do their homework on their exact needs, more power to them, just plan on possibly needing more than you think.

dkersten:
The irony in my case is that I started out budgeting $1200 for my own 4 player cab and ended up pushing just over $2500, not including the $160 it just cost me to change out all my LED's.. lol!

It is all semantics in the end, just fodder for some discussion really.  If ya got it to spend, spend it where you think is best.  I still think about my first PC and when RAM was $100 for 1 megabyte and I scraped and scrounged for the $400 (back when that was about 3 weeks worth of take home pay) to upgrade from 2 megs to 6 megs.  Or my last "bleeding edge" gaming rig where I spent $290 per stick for 4 sticks of 1gb ultra low latency ddr2 ram.  Funny thing is I just gave that motherboard and ram away to a friend who is reporting fairly regular blue screens due to the capacitors bring fried on the power regulators for that expensive RAM that never would run stable at the max capable clock and lowest possible latency. 

A gig is a LOT of memory, even though we take it for granted today when you can get a 4 gig stick for like $60..  MOST software doesn't take as much as we think because we are used to memory hogs like windows 7 and photoshop that will easily burn up a couple gigs.  I believe a lot of programs will reserve a percentage of memory "just in case", which is why I can run the same software and have about the same percentage of free physical space left whether I am running 2 or 4 gigs.  It is easy to look at that and think "I'm using 70% of my memory, I better get more."  Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is just reserving chunks of memory so that people will buy into the idea that they NEED 8 gigs to run internet explorer... I need someone to tell me why internet explorer actually needs to use 150 megs of physical ram to have one forum window open, when I could run netscape with 2 megs of ram and 80 megs of hard drive space 20 years ago, and have the same exact information on my screen..     :dizzy:

yotsuya:

--- Quote from: Vigo on September 12, 2014, 01:46:32 pm ---Damn, and I have been complaining about my work Computer. I am the only employee in my company who works with the Adobe creative suite, and because my work has a "fairness" philosophy, we are all stuck on dell laptops from 2007. It has been fun trying to explain to my boss why the software that costs $600 a year is useless for me to make training videos with because Adobe Premiere and after effects will not work with a 32 bit system. At least I was able to get upgraded to 4gb or Ram so photoshop and indesign are not too terrible. I just can't run them both at the same time.

--- End quote ---

I would punch someone in the nuts if they made me use Premiere (which I LOVE, BTW) on a 32-bit platform with 2GB ram.

And, Dave, I love you, bro, but I haven't "clocked" a system since the Days of SiSandra.

I use an eyeball test, now: Does it play what I want? Am I happy with it? Good.  :cheers:


--- Quote from: dkersten on September 12, 2014, 03:14:52 pm ---As for the cheap IT guy, to YOU that $10 or $20 (or more like $50-100 in recent years given the cost of RAM) might seem trivial and well worth it, but to the guy writing the check (or responsible for the budget) for dozens or even hundreds of computers, it adds up fast and isn't trivial.  As an IT director, I look at the needs of the individual and decide if they need more or can get by with less.  And frankly I am the kind of guy who leans toward spending a few extra dollars where it matters most.  My guys don't need 500 gb of storage, they use maybe 40gb, sometimes as much as 60gb after 4 years of use, so why spend even $5 more for more storage?  But then I will put a Core i5 in their desktops and laptops instead of an i3 or something slower and cheaper, because I know it is money well spent.  But I won't put 8 or 16 gigs of ram in a desktop and especially not a laptop (takes more power to run more ram) because 99% of my employees don't need it.  I also won't skimp out and put 2 gigs in a 64 bit computer because I know how much it can limit things, particularly with windows 7. 
--- End quote ---

Yeah, but that extra RAM was REQUESTED because we knew our users and students. You know what the savings were spent on? ---smurfing--- docking stations for teacher laptops. Which they forgot to buy keyboards and mice for and have been sitting in boxes for two years now, unless we open them up to raid the power supplies from them.  :dizzy:

cools:
Right, now I've tested:

Gauntlet Legends uses about 200MB when running (monitoring in Resource Manager, not Task Manager)
Gauntlet Dark Legacy is a little more, at 210MB.

Legends works well, it's a little glitchy which I'll put down to using the latest MAME. Dark Legacy requires 153 rather than 154 to work. It's also a little glitchy. Neither have any sort of performance issues - they run unthrottled at a few hundred percent.

With nothing other than 64bit Win 7 running (it's not a slimmed down install), after I've been running stuff and closing it and I'm sitting at the desktop - RAM usage is almost exactly 1GB. My chosen frontend (Attract Mode) uses 90MB.

The pagefile is also disabled.

FWIW I'd throw an SSD into a Win7 or higher machine before I upgraded the RAM beyond 2GB, the performance difference just doing that far negates any benefit from the extra RAM for the majority of use cases.

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