I know there are a few different flavors of MAME in circulation, but I was wondering if anyone knows which version is most popular?
It really depends on what you're looking for it to do. There are reasons why there are different flavors of MAME:
MAME32 - MAME, but with a Windows GUI
Advance MAME - MAME, but with better support for arcade monitors
Misfit MAME - MAME, but with support for a few more 'hacked' games
PacMAME - MAME, but support for only pacman ROMs including hacked graphics versions
There are a lot more out there too.. Check out
MAMEWorld.
Also, is there such a thing as as and Arcade emulator that supports all MAME supported ROMS which also uses hardware rendered graphics? I know the goal of MAME is to accurately model the game and not for playability but I'm interested if there is a version whose goal is game play and not nesessarly be completely accurate.
No, there isn't. But there's a project
Raine that will get you part of the way there...
-Steve