How large of a HD is required for everything Arcade related on a Mame type cabinet. Considering 8TB

[Rockstead]

Can anyone tell me how large of a Hard Drive is required when all I want to do is play arcade type games, I want to buy one of these managed Hyperspin drives and I got caught up in to thinking I should get one of these 8TB drive games that has every console system imaginable.

I like the idea of checking retro stuff, like an Amiga game someone remembers, or an Atari 2600 game, but even with game pads I just don't see myself wanting to relive anything on newer consoles in the past 10-15 years, even with game pads on a cabinet, just not sure.

At the same time I wanted to enforce token use on my cabinet, so I don't think that is possible for games that don't need a credit.

Anyhow, kind of just thinking out loud. So I just wanted the opinion of someone that went through the same type of thing and what you decided on.

Also, outside of MAME, what emulators would I also use to play Arcade games, or is everything through Mame and does the latest Mame Rom set includes everything?

And to those that enforce tokens and use Hyperspin, do you hide the non token games from the menu?

[Howard_Casto]

8tb is more than sufficient.  The total mame download is frikkin huge at this point, but 75% of those games aren't emulated yet.  You'll have to filter out non working games, e.m. games, pinball roms, ect. 

Model 2 emulator, Super model, Demul, and perhaps Daphne will cover most of the arcade games that are emulated today.

[Rockstead]

8tb is more than sufficient.  The total mame download is frikkin huge at this point, but 75% of those games aren't emulated yet.  You'll have to filter out non working games, e.m. games, pinball roms, ect. 

Model 2 emulator, Super model, Demul, and perhaps Daphne will cover most of the arcade games that are emulated today.

Thanks, if the arcade stuff you mentioned covers it all, how large of a HD am I looking at? I'm really leaning towards just having the arcade stuff and nothing else.

[Phreakwars]

I'm thinking all CHD's will take up like 370 gigs, all roms will take up about 36gigs, future pinball takes up 92gigs. So that right there is close to 500 gigs. Though I may be wrong here. If your looking to do just MAME, then go with an SSD drive. If you want all the other systems, then ya, for sure you'd want 8 terabytes. Keep in mind though, your OS and BIOS must be able to support 8TB to read it all.

[BadMouth]

Only a tiny fraction of the CHDs are playable, so aside from preservation through many people having copies there isn't any reason to have them on your cab.

My cab is arcade only and has a full MAME v.146 romset, Demul romset, Supermodel romset, all Taito Type X games, all Daphne laserdisc games, video snaps, the most popular PC fighting games (MKK, MKX, SSFIV AE, SF x Tekken), and a handful of other small PC games that work well with arcade controls.  I had pinball and consoles on the last one, but chose to leave them off my new cab.
I am just now running out of room on the 500GB hard drive.

In my experience the bigger drives are less reliable.
I think 2TB is a good size for a modern arcade cab.
I'm not sure how much hyperspin and all its releated image files take up, but 2TB should still be plenty.
It's probably still multiple times the amount of space you need for arcade only, but allows for PC games and future expansion.
The amount of space that the cartridge based consoles take up is negligible.

The big space requirements kick in when you start adding disc based consoles, but most of those games don't play well on an arcade cab anyway.
The few that do can be added without adding the entire collection.

[Rockstead]

Only a tiny fraction of the CHDs are playable, so aside from preservation through many people having copies there isn't any reason to have them on your cab.

My cab is arcade only and has a full MAME v.146 romset, Demul romset, Supermodel romset, all Taito Type X games, all Daphne laserdisc games, video snaps, the most popular PC fighting games (MKK, MKX, SSFIV AE, SF x Tekken), and a handful of other small PC games that work well with arcade controls.  I had pinball and consoles on the last one, but chose to leave them off my new cab.
I am just now running out of room on the 500GB hard drive.

In my experience the bigger drives are less reliable.
I think 2TB is a good size for a modern arcade cab.
I'm not sure how much hyperspin and all it's releated image files take up, but 2TB should still be plenty.
It's probably still multiple times the amount of space you need for arcade only, but allows for PC games and future expansion.
The amount of space that the cartridge based consoles take up is negligible.

The big space requirements kick in when you start adding disc based consoles, but most of those games don't play well on an arcade cab anyway.
The few that do can be added without adding the entire collection.

Thanks for the detailed post, I feel better about my decision In keeping it Arcade only, and it was quite a challenge trying to manage an 8TB drive, I was going to purchase an additional one of my NAS so I could could a local backup and then a cloud solution since Amazon cloud now offers unlimited storage for such a cheap price.

In terms of hardware, I was thinking a 64 or 128GB SSD for Windows 10, Intel I5 2.4ghz, 4GB Ram, GeForce 770 which I picked up used because I thought I would be running more powerful games.

[BadMouth]

Intel I5 2.4ghz, 4GB Ram, GeForce 770 which I picked up used because I thought I would be running more powerful games.

2.4Ghz is way too slow if you plan to "be running more powerful games" in MAME
For 3D games in MAME, your processor has to emulate both the original processor and GPU.
Your graphics card doesn't help at all. 
It takes more like 3.5-4Ghz to get games like NFL Blitz and Ridge Racer playable.

The graphics card is important for Demul and other emulators that actually utilize it.

If you were referring to more powerful PC games and aren't worried about the 3D games in MAME, then it should be fine.

[tonesmalone]

Intel I5 2.4ghz, 4GB Ram, GeForce 770 which I picked up used because I thought I would be running more powerful games.

2.4Ghz is way too slow if you plan to "be running more powerful games" in MAME
For 3D games in MAME, your processor has to emulate both the original processor and GPU.
Your graphics card doesn't help at all. 
It takes more like 3.5-4Ghz to get games like NFL Blitz and Ridge Racer playable.

The graphics card is important for Demul and other emulators that actually utilize it.

If you were referring to more powerful PC games and aren't worried about the 3D games in MAME, then it should be fine.

MAME uses OpenGL which WILL be processed by the graphics card. The i5 stated plus a decent GPU will be fine.


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[BadMouth]

from http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/FAQ:Performance

"Games with 3D graphics. As of this writing, MAME does not pass polygons down to the video card of your system; instead, it renders all 3D graphics by hand in software. Although this code is generally optimized to take advantage of multiple CPUs, it is still quite taxing to do this. Some 3D games give you control of the output resolution; reducing it will reduce the CPU requirements. "

I'm not sure when that was written.  Last I heard (a couple months ago) some people were working on ways to utilize a GPU more and had submitted a proof of concept, but it was nowhere near making it into an official MAME build.  Saying the graphics card "doesn't help at all" is technically incorrect, but for what little it does onboard video is usually sufficient.


Do you run Tekken 3, NFL Blitz, Gauntlet Legends, & Cave SH3 shmups(Deathsmiles, Muchi Muchi Pork) on a similar speed processor?
I haven't used the latest generations i5 and being proven wrong would be a good thing.

[Rockstead]

I would love to know the answer, I would love to be able to leverage my I5 2.4ghz 4GB ram laptop, but not if it means not being able to play everything Arcade, I've 100% made up my mind and I'm just going to run Arcade, so I'm going to stick with a 2TB.

When people mention speed issues, often I see MK4, Blitz, Gauntlet Legends, Ridge Racer, are these actual Arcade games or pc games?

Would also be interesting to know if I could use my GeForce 770 with my laptop motherboard, not sure if there is an adaptor i can use?

[tonesmalone]

from http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/FAQ:Performance

"Games with 3D graphics. As of this writing, MAME does not pass polygons down to the video card of your system; instead, it renders all 3D graphics by hand in software. Although this code is generally optimized to take advantage of multiple CPUs, it is still quite taxing to do this. Some 3D games give you control of the output resolution; reducing it will reduce the CPU requirements. "

I'm not sure when that was written.  Last I heard (a couple months ago) some people were working on ways to utilize a GPU more and had submitted a proof of concept, but it was nowhere near making it into an official MAME build.  Saying the graphics card "doesn't help at all" is technically incorrect, but for what little it does onboard video is usually sufficient.


Do you run Tekken 3, NFL Blitz, Gauntlet Legends, & Cave SH3 shmups(Deathsmiles, Muchi Muchi Pork) on a similar speed processor?
I haven't used the latest generations i5 and being proven wrong would be a good thing.

I have a 2 core i3 with a nvidia 650 and all of those games run perfectly. Ok, so my i3 clocks faster that the i5 listed above, but the i5 will be more efficient so should be about the same.


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[yotsuya]

As long as you can play Galaga, that's all anyone cares about.

[Howard_Casto]

Processors aren't as clear cut as they used to be.  You've got multi cores and cores running at different bus speeds and caches and all of this nonsense.  The raw ghz is the most important stat though.  Any fairly modern processor at 3+ ghz will make all of the playable games in mame playable.

[Haze]

Intel I5 2.4ghz, 4GB Ram, GeForce 770 which I picked up used because I thought I would be running more powerful games.

2.4Ghz is way too slow if you plan to "be running more powerful games" in MAME
For 3D games in MAME, your processor has to emulate both the original processor and GPU.
Your graphics card doesn't help at all. 
It takes more like 3.5-4Ghz to get games like NFL Blitz and Ridge Racer playable.

The graphics card is important for Demul and other emulators that actually utilize it.

If you were referring to more powerful PC games and aren't worried about the 3D games in MAME, then it should be fine.

MAME uses OpenGL which WILL be processed by the graphics card. The i5 stated plus a decent GPU will be fine.


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The video card is used for post-processing effects only, not the emulation.

The i5 is a decent processor, but won't run everything.

*nothing* will run everything, there's no processor on the market that will run Naomi stuff (Marvel vs Capcom 2 etc.) at full speed in MAME, although there are certainly games that a faster processor could run that the i5 won't.

I imagine in busier scenes some of the Cave SH3 shooters will drop frames on the i5 for example (I tried a lower clocked i5 a while back and they did, although i5 does cover a wide range of processors, some much better than others)

Of course, it's up to you if you want to run things like that anyway, some argue that without the slowdown of the original games (that for very complex reasons, isn't accurately emulated yet) the games are too difficult to play anyway as so much is happening so quickly you don't stand a chance.

Golden Tee Fore! series will definitely drop frames on the i5, even on a 4ghz i7 you have to set it to the lower resolution to ensure it never drops frames (otherwise some busy woodland areas can dip to 80% if you take a really bad shot and end up in 50 trees)  Of course, Golden Tee Fore! requires special controls (trackball etc.) so isn't really suited to most cabinets anyway.

From what I've heard, in terms of space, it's a lot of the extra (videos etc. for frontends) that end up taking the majority of your space up rather than the actual roms.

[ZoOl007]

As long as you can play Galaga, that's all anyone cares about.

nonono... cabal ... In my teens I was able to complete that on one coin...