Main > Software Forum

Front End review blog

<< < (7/9) > >>

SirPoonga:

--- Quote from: Minwah on September 12, 2005, 03:52:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: SirPoonga on September 12, 2005, 02:08:45 pm ---I think it is realistic that a FE should support older hardware, that's what most people put in their cabinets.

--- End quote ---

Not sure I agree with this anymore.  I would go as far as to say the majority of cab builders now use pretty high spec machines, and 'old pc' guys are in the minority.

This is just an observation, and I could be entirely wrong.

--- End quote ---
I see the opposite.  Granted you see alot more posts about people wanting to know what minimum specs are on mame than if a certain computer will run mame.  But that type of question is going to be asked more by people who are going to build a mame specific computer.  I see an awful lot of "I used my old computer in my cabinet" and those people already know what the computer can do with mame since they have the computer so they won;t be asking those type of questions as much.

Like me for example.  The computer I am using in my cab isn't my old computer but a former roommate's old computer.  It's a 1.4Ghz tbird.  He gave it to me.and ATI Rage 128 and Voodoo3 are not that old.  Only about 5 years old.  For most people that was their last computer since most people get a new computer about every 3-5 years.

Like youki said, I think most people will put an older computer in there cabinet, but they will still run mame on their main PC.

If you look at the general advice about computer for mame speeds given around here the answers are usually:
1) Fastest you can afford
2) but since most of the games that would require something over 2.5Ghz don't work well or just don't work it's not worth getting a new system for mame.

That means most people will not be running mame on anyhting that is considered top of the line, even for last year.

Now, a 1.0Ghz machine with 256 megs of memory better be able to run a frontend.  Hopefully the video card is supported.

Ok, I admit the Voodoo3 is different since it uses glide drivers and has long since died.  I am using 3rd party drivers on my cabinet right now.  But if the FE is having graphical issues with my cabinet, for review purposes, I will install it on my main PC which is an AMD64 3200+ with an ATI Radeon 9550.

Hmm, I should post my PC specs on the lbog...

swindus:

--- Quote from: SirPoonga on September 12, 2005, 02:08:45 pm ---For Mala I know one bug, it searches for mame.ini for any mame exe. So if you have mamepp.exe it won't search for mamepp.ini.

--- End quote ---

Thanks. I fixed it 10 minutes ago.

Howard_Casto:
I'm sorry, but I've got to disagree yet again. 

I honestly don't think system specs are that much of an issue anymore. 


I definately agree that cab builders don't put top of the line machines in their cabs, usually they put their old desktop pc in it after they upgrade. 

The thing is, in the year 2005, their old pc is going to be at least 1 gigahertz with 256 megs of ram.  If your front-end of choice won't at least run decently with those specs then something is wrong with it.  I mean heck, with some of the bells and whistles turned off, dk will run on as little as a 500 mhz with 256 megs of ram and when I made it, it was intended for high end cabs only. 

youki:
From my experience in France, the majority of mamecab i saw or heard about are running on PC between 500 and 1 Ghz.  Of course some have some P4 3ghz.. but only few.

Personnaly i'm developping Atomic on a old Celeron 533Mhz with 256mega of RAM. despite the fact i have a 2ghz pc in my cab , and another 3ghz PC i use for my work and mame compilation.(too long on my old celeron!!!)

I think even if it is not very confortable to develop a 533mhz  with only 256meg on XP , it is a good way to force you to optimize, and a very good way to find bottleneck in your code.  in general, I would said developpers shoud use low power computer  instead of a higth tech machine with huge memory....  But the "standard" seems to be the opposite. Mentality of developper now are , The user has to updgrade his PC if he want use my software...  For me , the software has to fit the hardware and not the opposite.   but i'm a little bit "old school". :)




Minwah:

--- Quote from: youki on September 13, 2005, 03:53:23 am ---I think even if it is not very confortable to develop a 533mhz  with only 256meg on XP , it is a good way to force you to optimize, and a very good way to find bottleneck in your code.  in general, I would said developpers shoud use low power computer  instead of a higth tech machine with huge memory....

--- End quote ---

This is true, I used to use a P2 333 when Mamewah started and although it had very low system requirements anyway (by it's nature), it was a good way of making it as fast as possible.

Trouble is if you want to keep up with the latest Mame and/or other new apps., and don't have room for more than 1 PC it is difficult to do so.  I've been using a 1.4ghz AMD for the last 3 years, but just got a 2.8ghz P4 as my desktop.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version