What's great about these 3 emus is that you can run NeoGeo, CPS1, and CPS2 full speed on older hardware. You can run them with as little as 128mb ram. But 256 is recommended since it greatle decreases load times on Neo Geo games.
Final burn for me crashes alot. It uses less resources than both winkawaks and Nebula. And some newer games are being added all the time. Some that aren't available in older versions of mame. (in case you're using older mame version for speed reasons.) It can run all games at 60fps with no frameskip on my 400mhz pc. It can run from the command line.
Nebula runs great too but uses more resources (new gui). It also runs full speed on my pc. It also runs from the command line. Exits using Shift+ESC. Nebula is also the only one of the 3 were I could get games to display with their proper aspect ratio.
Winkawaks also runs full speed on my pc. Does not run from the command line. You need to use a wrapper for it.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=57045.msg561021#msg561021 And the only way to exit is by using Enter to pause the game. Then pressing Alt+F4 to exit. Pretty easy to solve if you're using joytokey, xpadder or a controller hack. It also has the added benefit of saving decrypted c's
Ok, You got the emu and got the roms and now you notice that in the support games list that it list some games with 2 roms.
EG: NeoGeo Metal Slug 3 (predecrypted) mslug3nd.zip / mslug3.zip
the first zip (mslug3nd) mentioned is the decrypted set and for many other games it has n or nd at the end of the zip name. also the size fo this zip will be small due to the fact that it only has decrypted c roms and s1 rom. (in mslug3 case tho decrypted p roms as well)
the second zip (mslug3.zip) is the original "big daddy" of its set of roms and will be big in size 70mb+ and it is encrypted.
So now you're left with a choice:
1. You get both encrypted and decrypted sets in your roms folder to play the game.
or
2. You can decrypt the roms and make one zip that will work in kawa-x
the bad thing about 1. is that it takes up more space where 2. takes up less space since everything is smaller and only 1 zip to use instead of 2.
To make 1 fully decrypted zip for kawa-x you can either get a decrypter/encryter called NeoEncrypter or get winkawaks for pc.
for this tut I'll use the kawaks method:
1. Download winkawaks and place anywhere you like and add your roms to the roms folder (don't forget the neogeo.zip).
2. Run winkawaks and before you load the game, go to tools and check off save decrypted c's.
3. Now load the game and you'll notice there will be a slight pause, this is normal and when the game starts, that means it done decrypting the c roms.
4. Go to the directory where winkawaks.exe is at and the c roms and s1 rom should be there (mslug3 doesn't use a s1 but all other games do).
5. Now extract everything but the c roms from the encrypted zip (in mslug3's case p roms aren't needed cuz you need decrypted p roms).
6. Now make a new zip with all the files you extracted/decrypted and name it as the main decrypted set. that varys from game to game but most are end with nd, use your supported games list on what to use. and you're done
If you're using mamewah you can have all your games appear in one list regardless of emulator. Here's a link to a small tutorial I made
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=70828.0