Athlon 64

[southpaw13]

Does Mame run on the new Athlon 64 chipsets?  Is it something to consider to help with speed?

Thanks,
Southpaw

[spongebue]

I have an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ that runs all that I've tried perfectly. (aside from mame issues) This is, however, in Windows 2000 which is in 32 bit mode.  Honestly, if you're getting an AMD64, that's fast enough in 32 bit anyway, since you don't need anything near that speed.

[elvis]

John IV (MAME32 dev) has some Athlon64 MAME benchmarks up on his site:

http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/bench.htm

Overall the A64 3200+ comes out faster for most games, but in newer games (specifically the 3D games ala SFEX, souledge, etc) the P4's longer pipeline and gross MHz win out in performance.

If you want to run as many games as possible, get the fastest P4 you can afford.  However the A64 is a great chip, and works fine with MAME.  I personally prefer it for day-to-day use over anything Intel.

[Lilwolf]

I would still say... 

AMD is always best bang for your buck.

And the games that Intel handles better are almost all working perfectly in Zinc on both.

There are other reasons to go Intel (faster for media apps) but mame doesn't seem worth the extra cash.

[southpaw13]

I just saw on the Mame forum that someone reported having Carnevil working.  It doesn't even come close on my Athlon XP 2500.  That's why I was wondering if it is time for a 64.

Does anyone have games like Carnevil and the Blitz games working (or close to working)...

Thanks for your input on this...
Southpaw13

[elvis]

Check the link I posted above.  It shows blitz running at 21FPS on an Athlon64 3200+ and 22FPS on a P4 3.2GHz.

To answer your question, no, there is no processor that will play this game at full speed.  You'll just have to wait a few years for CPUs to get fast enough.