mame32 and video cards

[chazbeenhad]

When using mame32 109 is there any advantage to using a "better" 3d card?
 
I have a mame cabinet built and I have 2 graphics cards. Both are Nvidia, a geforce 2 mx and a 5900xt. The XT is a pretty good card and requires a plug from the power supply. If I use the newer card stictly for running mame32 in my arcade cabinet do I gain any performance or does the lower power requirment geforce 2 give me the same performance for this application?
 
Thanks!
 
-Charlie
 

[buges]

I could be wrong here (if so the experts will be along shortly), but there has been simular disscusions over on other boards about this, since the introduction of D3d.

I have 2 cards, A ati radeon 7000, with 32mb & A nvidia Geforce 4 Mx 4000 with 128mb & i can see no perfomance difference between the 2 cards.

Buges

[krick]

I think to run MAME 109, you want a DX8 level card that has 64 Megs of memory if you plan on running the new high res artwork.  Remember that MAME 109, with it's default settings, runs as the same resolution as your Windows desktop.  The higher the desktop resolution, the more video memory will be required by MAME for the artwork.


The first Nvidia DX8 part was the GeForce3.  Note that the GeForce4 MX products used a budget core based on the GeForce2 and were NOT DX8 parts.

More nvidia info here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_NVIDIA_Graphics_Processing_Units


For ATI, their first DX8 part was the Radeon 8500.

More ATI info here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units



If you're thinking about picking up a card just for MAME, this is probably one of the best cheap AGP cards you can get...

$54 - XFX Nvidia GeForce 6200 256MB DDR
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=XFX-6200A2

There's also a $10 mail-in rebate until Oct 31.

Plus, it's fanless which is always a big plus in my book. I HATE video card fans.