Author Topic: What os for best mamewah performance (Read 4996 times)

custard80 · « **on:** July 12, 2005, 05:21:03 am »

I have been searching the boards and the web to try and fing the best dirrection to go in and im in a right mucking fuddle!!

I have a dell dimension xps t with a 800 pentium 3
32mb tnt video card
512mb ram
soundblaster 128
and a pc monitor. all mounted in a lovely cabinet.

Im currently running win 98 with mamewah and mame working ok. Albeit it keeps droping out of mamewah when changing resolutions.
Mortal kombat is chugging baddly. Gunbird works well but gunbird 2 is poor as is puzzle bobble 2 and bakubaku.

Would a change to xp help or just make it all worse? Am i just asking to much of the old dell. It was a freebie so im not prepared to fork out any money at this stage on it.

I have considered dos but need usb support for my joystick for starwars.

Having real trouble getting mamewah to list games for other emulators at the moment as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is my first try at a mame cabinet and this site has been great so far.

Minwah · « **Reply #1 on:** July 13, 2005, 04:56:31 am »

Mamewah works best in XP...

However I think you are asking more how your games will run. With that spec I would probably stick with '98, I doubt changing to XP would help how well your games run.

Search this board & the ArcadeOS/Mamewah board at MameWorld for help with other emulators (after reading http://mamewah.mameworld.net/help.htm ).

Havok · « **Reply #2 on:** July 13, 2005, 09:09:14 am »

Get a faster pc (motherboard,cpu,memory combo) - that's what you really need. $100 will go pretty far when shopping on the Internet. Check pricewatch:

Bill Mote · « **Reply #3 on:** July 13, 2005, 10:02:32 am »

512 MB of RAM will be pretty low for an upgrade to XP. It will run, but it will run *much* better on 1g. Conversly, 512 MB of RAM is a little high for Win98. Counter-intuitive; I know. Win98 can actually get bogged down a little with memory management above 256 MB.

That said; I'd upgrade to XP with your existing RAM. Just make sure you go through and disable *ALL* unnecessary services. "Black Viper" has a site that lists the services and their optimal setting for different scenarios. He's a little odd looking and has his picture on the web site, but it's good info:

http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

You'll be able to turn off about a dozen things that are running by default. Doing this will greatly improve your system performance.

dot

pointdablame · « **Reply #4 on:** July 13, 2005, 12:05:19 pm »

Quote from: dot on July 13, 2005, 10:02:32 am

512 MB of RAM will be pretty low for an upgrade to XP. It will run, but it will run *much* better on 1g. Conversly, 512 MB of RAM is a little high for Win98. Counter-intuitive; I know. Win98 can actually get bogged down a little with memory management above 256 MB.

That said; I'd upgrade to XP with your existing RAM. Just make sure you go through and disable *ALL* unnecessary services. "Black Viper" has a site that lists the services and their optimal setting for different scenarios. He's a little odd looking and has his picture on the web site, but it's good info:

http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

You'll be able to turn off about a dozen things that are running by default. Doing this will greatly improve your system performance.

dot

512mb of ram is TOTALY sufficient for an install of Windows XP. There is no need for 1gig of ram just for an upgrade of XP... none whatsoever.

Bill Mote · « **Reply #5 on:** July 13, 2005, 01:09:45 pm »

Wow. Get some anger management help. You'll note that I said to upgrade to XP. XP does benefit greatly from a jump from 512 to 1g; necessary or not is irrelevant.

SadGamerGeek · « **Reply #6 on:** July 13, 2005, 02:50:47 pm »

Quote from: pointdablame on July 13, 2005, 12:05:19 pm

512mb of ram is TOTALY sufficient for an install of Windows XP.

Bill Mote · « **Reply #7 on:** July 13, 2005, 03:05:13 pm »

When I started reading about Mame and the resulting cabinets being built there were plenty of people building them on P2s and I've read about some older AMD K6 machines. Most of the games my kids play today don't require a big guns system. That wasn't what I implied at all.

I simply noted that XP runs better with 1g of RAM than with 512 MB. That's it. Simple truth. Nothing more. I didn't say it won't run. I didn't say it will run poorly.

My personal Mame cabinet is built around a Pentium 4 1.6 w/512 MB of RAM. I've also taken the care to disable all unnecessary services and the machine is performing no other tasks. All-in-all I'm very happy with the performance.

In hind sight I wish I had left that comment out and just said, yes; upgrade. Sheesh.

pointdablame · « **Reply #8 on:** July 13, 2005, 03:18:24 pm »

Quote from: dot on July 13, 2005, 01:09:45 pm

Wow. Get some anger management help. You'll note that I said to upgrade to XP. XP does benefit greatly from a jump from 512 to 1g; necessary or not is irrelevant.

umm... what anger? I was just pointing out some misinformation. No hard feelings there, its just XP does not see much improvement with a gig of ram over 512... not enough to warrant the extra purchase SOLELY for the upgrade to XP. You could disable the page file with a gig of ram, which will help slightly, but overall you're not going to see a boost in performance.

I've run XP on system with 128mb or ram up to 2gigs. 128 crawls along, 256 is doable with service tweaks and removal... 512 is the sweet spot IMO. Anything after that is gravy, but I would never tell someone to purchase/use more ram simply to upgrade XP.

You say its a "simple truth" but honestly.. it isn't. There is nothing within the XP OS that directly works better with 1gig of ram... at least no more so than any other program. Now if you were gaming (high end games), or doing photo and video editing... that's a different story. Ram makes a massive difference in those applications... but not the OS.

Bill Mote · « **Reply #9 on:** July 13, 2005, 03:36:52 pm »

Noted. I based my assesment on real world use: Office, Visual Studio .NET, Gaming, Paint Shop Pro, etc. The OS will run fine on 512 MB of RAM. It's all the crap after that that's affected. If the machine is to be solely a mame cabinet then you're unlikely to benefit from a bump up in memory.

ahmer · « **Reply #10 on:** July 15, 2005, 09:39:50 am »

Dot,

In my openion there is no need to waste money for 1Gig Ram for a mame machine,unless you are running an emulator like ZINC.

512 Mb ram is more than enough with a 800 MHZ P3 processor.
Xp runs fine on 256 mb ram with some tweaks.

Quote

Noted. I based my assesment on real world use: Office, Visual Studio .NET, Gaming, Paint Shop Pro,etc

if you are using some other softwares (as you mention)on the same machine then you should keep 1Gig Ram.Some softwares speacially
3D graphics softwares often slow down Xp perfomence.

Bill Mote · « **Reply #11 on:** July 15, 2005, 09:55:11 am »

Straight from the horses mouth ...

LINK->How much RAM do I need?

Havok · « **Reply #12 on:** July 15, 2005, 01:38:27 pm »

Quote from: dot on July 15, 2005, 09:55:11 am

Straight from the horses mouth ...

Bill Mote · « **Reply #13 on:** July 15, 2005, 01:47:59 pm »

Where's the conflict? They recommend 512. I don't understand your comment. In fact, they say that 512+ is for gamers and high-end graphics work.

Everything over 512 is overkill? You don't play World of Warcraft; do you? I have found 2 areas where 1g helped a lot: 1. Ironforge (aka Ironlag and/or Lagforge) and 2. Creating my marquee for my Mame cabinet. Has it helped outside of those 2 applications? Probably not, but it's not overkill ...

Havok · « **Reply #14 on:** July 15, 2005, 03:29:45 pm »

Quote from: dot on July 15, 2005, 01:47:59 pm

Where's the conflict?

custard80 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 22, 2005, 11:00:26 am »

Thanks for all the advice and the link to black viper. Im thinking about a new hard disc so ill try xp pro out on one to see if there's any improvment.

Not wishing to continue the already heated debate but we run xp pro on machines at work with 512mb running CAD applications and have no real issues with performance.

Still it was entertaining reading.

TalkingOctopus · « **Reply #16 on:** July 22, 2005, 01:56:50 pm »

Your computer is capable of running XP, but running to XP is not going to improve your MAME's performance. Your processor is just too slow to run the games you listed. I think your best bet is to install an older version of MAME. I have a very similiar computer in my arcade. (P3 733, 512 MB RAM and WinXp Pro). I use MAME .66. Puzzle bobble 2 runs very well on my setup. The gunbirds run pretty well but have occasional hiccups.

RayB · « **Reply #17 on:** July 25, 2005, 11:04:18 am »

Weird, I've been using XP for over 2 years now, with only 512 mb and I do alot of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash work every day. Never had any problems.

Minwah · « **Reply #18 on:** July 25, 2005, 11:44:33 am »

Quote from: RayB on July 25, 2005, 11:04:18 am

Weird, I've been using XP for over 2 years now, with only 512 mb and I do alot of Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash work every day. Never had any problems.

I don't do a lot of graphics work, but I've done some Fireworks stuff on a similar spec machine to this (P4 2.8, 512mb, XP). I've had the machine choke to death (like minutes wait between clicks and things happening), but it was with some pretty large images.

ahmer · « **Reply #19 on:** July 25, 2005, 05:22:51 pm »

I have a 700 MHZ pentium 3 with Xp sp1, only 128 MB Ram and using a self compiled vesion of Mame_73.All the neogeo and Capcom games are working with 56 to 60 FPS.(belive me)

If you ever tried Advance mame (pure dos) with advmenu then the same hardware will provide you 25% extra. $:-\$

RayB · « **Reply #20 on:** July 26, 2005, 03:03:14 pm »

Why do people always recommend AdvanceMenu with AdvanceMame? Can we not use GameLauncher with AdvanceMame?

Minwah · « **Reply #21 on:** July 26, 2005, 03:59:35 pm »

Quote from: RayB on July 26, 2005, 03:03:14 pm

Why do people always recommend AdvanceMenu with AdvanceMame? Can we not use GameLauncher with AdvanceMame?

I think because AdvanceMAME works with an arcade monitor...so I guess the configuration of AdvanceMenu would be similar.

I'm sure GameLauncher can be displayed on an arcade monitor too, I just suppose people find it easier to use AdvMenu (?)

ahmer · « **Reply #22 on:** July 27, 2005, 08:18:20 am »

Nice question.

Quote

Why do people always recommend AdvanceMenu with AdvanceMame? Can we not use GameLauncher with AdvanceMame?

Quote

Minwah wrote:I think because AdvanceMAME works with an arcade monitor...so I guess the configuration of AdvanceMenu would be similar.

I'm sure GameLauncher can be displayed on an arcade monitor too, I just suppose people find it easier to use AdvMenu (?)

yes Gamelauncher or ever ArcadeOs can be configure with advmame,but it will be Pain to set advancemame with them.

the most important thing is to set advancemame,and if you done it advancemenu is nothing else.

Btw, Advancemenu has some very nice features,You can not compare it with any other Dos/windows/Linux frontend.

custard80 · « **Reply #23 on:** July 27, 2005, 11:49:41 am »

If i were to switch to advance mame and dos would i be able to use my usb analog joystick any more? Can a gameport on a soundblaster be configured to use an alagoue joystick under dos and arcade os as i also have an old one of these albeit not nearly as nice as the usb one.

I have basically decided not to worry about console emulation as i can do it on my regular pc but choose not to but i always could with a gamepad if i desired! I do however want to keep Star Wars working with an analogue joystick as this is my favourite game. plus space harrier etc.

I have a disc that will install dos, arcadeos and advance menu but have yet to try it because of the analogue concern.

I just now want to get the best arcade setup i can with what i have.

Im adding my dreamcast to the cabinet as well for some of the games my pc cannot handle.

Any advice on the usb in dos greatfully appreciated. Joystick is a saitek.

Cheers

ahmer · « **Reply #24 on:** July 27, 2005, 04:48:39 pm »

There is no USB support in DOS. $:-\$
This feature is only works with Windows and Linux.

Minwah · « **Reply #25 on:** July 27, 2005, 07:38:56 pm »

Quote from: custard80 on July 27, 2005, 11:49:41 am

If i were to switch to advance mame and dos would i be able to use my usb analog joystick any more? Can a gameport on a soundblaster be configured to use an alagoue joystick under dos and arcade os as i also have an old one of these albeit not nearly as nice as the usb one.

Yes your gameport analog stick should work under dos fine. As ahmer says, not the USB one tho

RayB · « **Reply #26 on:** August 10, 2005, 10:52:05 am »

ADVMENU is a PITA. Who can sanely say it's easy to configure?

ahmer · « **Reply #27 on:** August 10, 2005, 10:56:23 am »

Advmenu is very difficult to configure,or it is the most typicall frontend.
It requires a lot of reading.lol


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