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NOOB here... Please give me the advice I need!!!

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kelemvor:
I was just going off of what I've heard from other people here too.  My Mame machine will be strictly that and won't run anything else on it so I don't know what, if any, increase I'll see.  But yes, if you are running other things on the same system, then a dual core CPU might be better.  I guess we just have to have someone do a bunch of tests and see what they get.

And I'm assuming this will be WIndows XP as well.

weasel-like_animal:
I think you already have very good answers here, but I'll add that keeping the cabinet as-is is a cool idea (not cutting up existing wires). That is the cool thing about the J-pac, you can use your existing controls and monitor to interface with MAME.

If you have to clean or replace controls, that is super easy and a ton of people on this site could help you do that, or supply cheap parts. In my opinion, it's way cooler to have a real cabinet with stock graphics and controls, running MAME.

Good luck.

u_rebelscum:

--- Quote from: kelemvor on October 23, 2007, 08:28:42 am ---... a fast CPU (get the fastest, single core CPU you can afford) ...

--- End quote ---

Two things here.  First, even when mame was still single thread, it should read "...get the faster per core CPU you can afford)...".  Mame on Core 2 whatever at 3.0 GHz is faster than on Core (1) whatever at 3.0, even if only one CPU is being used.  Going Duo or Quad didn't slow mame down so no reason to limit to single core (dual/quad coring does increase cost, but that's already listed as a separate point).

Second, to my amazement, mame is moving partway to multiple threading now.  Some games already see 25% speed increases in multithread mode.  Of course, not all (read "very few") games benefit yet, and it's still very much WIP.  But I didn't think mame would be at this stage for a few years, and it's still working at going more multithread.  Apparently it's not like most people (me included) have thought it would break the threads (each CPU and other chips per thread), but some other way that's far more scalable.


Of course, if you never upgrade mame from 0.120, [shrug] most games will see zero benefit from a second core.  But remember, one core from a "Core 2" family CPU still kicks P4, "Core", and athlon CPUs back sides in mame.  (The last two not as much as the P4 gets whipped, but still.  Come on AMD, I've bought your CPU my lst two computers; if you don't catch up I'll have to go back to Intel.)

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