AGH! Mame is running pig slow!

[Timstuff]

Oy... I'm having a bit of trouble, and I'm not entirely sure what to do. I finally got Mame on my the Pentium 2 that I plan on putting in my arcade cab, but I'm having MAJOR slowness issues. I have the DOS version running as well (haven't gotten my DOS sound driver installed yet though), and it is running equally sluggish. I tested Mortal Kombat 2, and the framerate averaged at 5.7 FPS. Occassionaly I'll get a small boost in speed, like when it's at a title screen or similar scenarios. And I also tested old games like Galaxian, Centipede, and Star Wars and they all ran fine. But anything with more than 8 colors it seems runs like molassis on a 1 degree incline. Alien vs. Predator sometimes almost came close to looking like it was running at a playable pace, but that quickly changed whenever there were more than 3 characters onscreen at once.

The computer is a Gateway pentium 2 with a Nvidia Geforce 2 MX (I know, graphics cards don't mean diddly with Mame), and the Sytem General Information in the control panel says the computer has 256 MB of ram. It had been out of use for quite some time, and I reformatted the whole thing. I'm guessing that I somehow need to re-distriubute the PC's ram so that it's optimized for playing games. I know this old bucket has it in her. My brother, the computer's previouse user, played games on it all the time before it became outdated. He even got a Playstation emulator running on it, so I know it is capable of running Mame smoothly.

So, does anyone have any advice, or know where I can go to get it?

[SOAPboy]

Oy... I'm having a bit of trouble, and I'm not entirely sure what to do. I finally got Mame on my the Pentium 2 that I plan on putting in my arcade cab, but I'm having MAJOR slowness issues. I have the DOS version running as well (haven't gotten my DOS sound driver installed yet though), and it is running equally sluggish. I tested Mortal Kombat 2, and the framerate averaged at 5.7 FPS. Occassionaly I'll get a small boost in speed, like when it's at a title screen or similar scenarios. And I also tested old games like Galaxian, Centipede, and Star Wars and they all ran fine. But anything with more than 8 colors it seems runs like molassis on a 1 degree incline. Alien vs. Predator sometimes almost came close to looking like it was running at a playable pace, but that quickly changed whenever there were more than 3 characters onscreen at once.

The computer is a Gateway pentium 2 with a Nvidia Geforce 2 MX (I know, graphics cards don't mean diddly with Mame), and the Sytem General Information in the control panel says the computer has 256 MB of ram. It had been out of use for quite some time, and I reformatted the whole thing. I'm guessing that I somehow need to re-distriubute the PC's ram so that it's optimized for playing games. I know this old bucket has it in her. My brother, the computer's previouse user, played games on it all the time before it became outdated. He even got a Playstation emulator running on it, so I know it is capable of running Mame smoothly.

So, does anyone have any advice, or know where I can go to get it?

Im inclined to say MK2 isnt going to run on a P2.. but thats just me..

[APFelon]

Yeah, your machine is much too slow to run anything new-ish. Upgrade to at LEAST a high-end P3... but that still won't be enough to run a lot of the newer games. MK2 & 3 will still run like crap, KI will be awful...

I have a Athlon 2100+ with the AMD optomized build in my cab, and it'll play most mid- '90s stuff. KI2 and most of the 3D stuff doesn't run well, though.

Bottom like is this: the faster your machine, the happier you'll be. You'll probably never run MK at a decent rate on that old Gateway, no matter what you do. However, if you want to play around with it, get an older version of MAME and try to squeeze some more FPSes out of it that way.

Good luck.

APf

[JoyMonkey]

Try using Mame 0.37b5 or 0.37b9 to play MK2.
37b5 was the first version of Mame to fully support it and should give you your best performance. Some MK2 related drivers were tweaked in 37b9 that might give a speedup, and might not.
Either way I'd think it'll still be pretty slow though, but faster than what you've got now.

Edit: Also, I don't know if pigs are all that slow.

[Timstuff]

Hmm... Guess I have no choice but to find something a little peppier. I've got a pentium 3 notebook avalible also, but I don't think that'll do at all. The main reason is that it's keyboard functionality is pretty busted up. Only some of the number keys actually work (unless you hold down Shift, and then it all comes out  @*^!%$ cause it's symbols). The num-pad works, but the back-space key doesn't work unless you're holding down shift a press it twice. If you're not using an external keyboard, then the arrow keys don't work either. It's got some seriouse issues, and since I'm going to use a keyboard interface for my arcade controls it wouldn't do at all, even if it does have AV out built in.

So, I guess I gotta look for a good pentium 3. Time to check with my ol' buddy the Connecticut bargain news I guess.

[Timstuff]

Although, I suppose that it might be worth it to try and put Mame on the P3 laptop. If it runs smoothly, I could always just re-assign the keys for my controls interface to accomidate the fact that the computer has alot of disfunctional keys. I'm pretty sure that it's specs are a 700mhz processor and around 300 megs of RAM (it used to have about 500 but some of it was defective). I guess I'll give it a shot before I go out and potentially spend money on another machine.

Probably the most advanced ROM I have is Marvel vs. Capcom, and I want to be able to run it on my cab. So if this laptop thingie doesn't work I'm gonna need a machine with specs good enough to run it.

[Timstuff]

Nope... The laptop is another dead end. Mortal Kombat 2 clocked in at about 2.4 frames per second, even worse than on the pentium 2. Obviousely, I'm gonna need a computer with more muscle. I suppose the best place to start would be the computer shops. I'm sure they've got some pretty good P3s that they can part with. The local bargain newspaper didn't really turn up anything that helpful. Most of the people selling stuff were either computer illiterate or looking to rip someone off.

Hopefully tomarrow I can check out some computer shops. Does anyone have any suggestions for what type of system specs I should be looking for to run Marvel vs. Capcom at a playable framerate?

[ahmer]

TimStuff, Every new version of mame will disapoint you becoz of its more hardware requirements.First you decide what type of games you wish to run on your Cab.I think that you should have atleast a 1.7 Ghz Pentium 4 to run latest mame versions.

I recommend you to use mame7.3,after this version Mame becomes more complex due to addition of ZN1,ZN2 CPU's which are for 3D games.

You should atleast have 933 Mhz pentium 3 with 256Mb ram.

untill you upgrade your Pc Hardware just use mame37b9.




 

[Timstuff]

Does mame work with non-intel procsessors too? I'm looking at Newegg.com for a cheap alternative to a Pentium 4, and I found this.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=19-104-160&DEPA=1

I have a GeForce 4 MX that I took out of my pentium 4 a while ago (replaced it with a Radeon 9800), and if I had a decent speed computer to put it into I  probably would use it.

My two goals for my cabinet computer are:

1) Have a machine powerful enough to run my favorite 2D and Mode 7 arcade games
2) Be frugal with how much money I have to spend.

I don't care what parts I'm using with this thing as long as they WORK and work well enough to play the games I have without issues. I could try to salvage the case from one of my old computers, and maybe the power supply and Windows 98. But right now it's looking like I'm either going to have to get a used computer that already works well enough to run Mame, or build one that does.

[SirPeale]

Does mame work with non-intel procsessors too?

No.  Attempting to run Mame on an Athlon will result in the space-time continuum grinding to a halt, and everything as you know it will cease to exist.

Was that a serious question?

[Timstuff]

lamlamlam

Sorry about that. I've been checking out some stuff on the web and I think I'm learning fairly quickly what stuff I need to build a PC.  I have a few things I can probably re-use from one of my older PCs, like a case, DVD drive, a graphics card, and an OS (Win 98 in this case). But from there I'm definately going to have to go out and buy stuff. I need to do some research on what card would be best, but if I will be just as well off without an Intel brand processor and it saves me money, I'll do it. I've never built a PC before, so this will be treading new ground. My mom knows alot about computers, and she's repaired and modifyed them before. These past two weeks I've been learning alot too, and I think that I've got enough confidence to build my own PC, with a little help.

There are tutorials on the web that should be pretty useful too. Hopefully I can put together a machine that will work nicely and not break the bank. I'm definately going to go for a Pentium 4 equivelent.

[tommy]

Mame dosent use your 3d graphics card, unless your into pc games anything will do.

[Timstuff]

Well, I've got a Geforce 4 MX that's not doing anything right now. It does have compitent 3D capability, which won't make a difference either way, but it's a pretty solid card, and best of all I already have it and it's not installed in anything. So it should be just fine for the machine I want to build. It's better to have more power than you need than not enough I guess.

[paigeoliver]

What mame version are you using?

And what is the SPEED of your pentium 3?

Mortal Kombat 2 WILL run full speed on the faster Pentium 2 processors, but you have to use the right Mame version. Try .55, .60, and .70 and see if any of those will do it.

The current version of mame should not be let anywhere NEAR a computer less than 1.0 ghz.

[Timstuff]

I was using Dos mame .69, and it ran at 5 FPS. I'm just gonna build a new computer. It won't cost me alot because I've got some fairly recent parts around already. The only things I really need to buy are a motherboard, a CPU, and some RAM, and the rest I can salvage from one of my old PCs.

[ahmer]

For Dos, Buy a cheap Cost Mother board as possible,Don't worry about Board Busses,Video memory,sound card.
Main thing is Proccessor Speed and amount of RAM.

Note,To configure a sound card in DOS, it will be better to buy a Mother Board contain ISA Slots .you can also use Non ISA boards.
Only some of the Companies provides ISA with PCI slots.

 

[Timstuff]

So, will I need an external sound card to run Mame in dos with sound? I wanted to get a motherboard with as few things "on board" as possible. Having to deal with built in sound and video cards tends to give me fits. So basically, I'm looking for a mother board that has

A built in ISA slot, PCI slots and an AGP slot
No built-in video card or sound card
A CPU slot that will fit the CPU that I want to buy
Something that's not so big that I'll need to buy another case

If I can find all that, things will be just dandy.

[SirPeale]

Not all motherboards with built in stuff are bad.  I've got a Delhi III board (it's an old Socket 7) that has onboard ATI Rage graphics (non-shared memory) and Crystal sound that does *awesome*.  Does most classics very well.  I've got a 550 MHz processor on it (although I believe the board only supports up to 450, I can't get it any higher), and it does the Williams games with no frameskip.

I'd love to find a modern board with onboard sound that DOS drivers are available for, and video that outputs 15KHz.  I've seen VIA AC'97 DOS drivers, but I don't know how many chipsets they support.

[ahmer]

You are right Peale 

There is no need to waste money,Just buy that hardware suitable for
Mame Cab project.Built-in chipsets are just fine if they have sound card
with Dos drivers and a non Ram shared VGA.
Good brand mother Board is not a require here.
While you can cash that extra money to buy a powefull processor or
More Ram.

BTW! Dos buits of mame are going towards dead well in future 

[Timstuff]

I guess there's no harm in a built in audio card. Pretty much every computer I've had has had a built in audio card. But I don't need something with a built in video card, because I already own a good one that I can put in there, so there's no need to waste money on a built-in one. I suppose I shouldn't cling very hard to the idea of having a DOS version of mame in my cab, because as you guys said, it's going the way of, well, DOS. Mame32 works pretty good as a front, however I'd like to know if there are any good ways to "disguise" the fact that the computer is using Windows. I guess I should wait till I've actually built the thing before worrying about that though.

[ahmer]

timstuff,you are worried about hiding the fact, presence of a computer inside your Mame cab.In short you can easily do it.
you can hide windows startup/shutdown logo and also change it with your custom made logo.



 

[Eagle5469]

BTW! Dos buits of mame are going towards dead well in future 

At least there's still AdvMame.  I still have to learn more about that.

[ahmer]

Ofcource, Advmame being very famous.If you configure it properly it will
gives better results.

[paigeoliver]

I was using Dos mame .69, and it ran at 5 FPS. I'm just gonna build a new computer. It won't cost me alot because I've got some fairly recent parts around already. The only things I really need to buy are a motherboard, a CPU, and some RAM, and the rest I can salvage from one of my old PCs.

You skipped the big question. What SPEED Pentium 2 did you have. A 233 mhz one would only be suitable for classics, a 450 mhz one can be tweaked for general use. The Mortal Kombat driver changed a lot between .55 and .70 and I have gotten wildly different speeds out of it on different systems.