MAME Versions with Older PCs

[XyloSesame]

Alright, I've spent the past couple days reading and searching both the BYOAC and mameworld forums and still don't quite have an answer. I've read the wikis, the FAQs, benchmarks, and numerous posts regarding older machines, older versions of emulators, blah blah. I think I'm just too dense to fill in the blanks from all of the information.

I've not upgraded since .62 and figure it might be time. I'm running an AthlonXP 1900+ with 1GB RAM and have no idea what version of MAME would perform best on this older rig.

Any opinions or thoughts?

[SGT]

Are there some roms you want to play that Mame .62 doesn't support?  I like Mame .100 for some older machines, but you can obviously run later versions depending upon what games you play.  Its real easy to try out different versions of Mame at the same time as you probably already know. 

Put each version of Mame in a different folder, use "mame -cc" to create a mame.ini file, and then edit rompath in the mame.ini file to point to your roms.  Obviously some of your roms will not work with the newer versions, but at least you can get an idea of the newest version of Mame you can run without an obvious slow down with your machine.

 

[gonzo90017]

I would go with FastMame 84. I don't see too many games added since then. And if there are it's not worth the speed hit. I'm using it on an AMD Sempron 2200. And it runs great.

[XyloSesame]

Are there some roms you want to play that Mame .62 doesn't support?  I like Mame .100 for some older machines, but you can obviously run later versions depending upon what games you play.  Its real easy to try out different versions of Mame at the same time as you probably already know. 

Put each version of Mame in a different folder, use "mame -cc" to create a mame.ini file, and then edit rompath in the mame.ini file to point to your roms.  Obviously some of your roms will not work with the newer versions, but at least you can get an idea of the newest version of Mame you can run without an obvious slow down with your machine.

I'm not interested in too many newer games; I think some of the fighters already in the .62 release I have are as flashy as I'd ever want to get. Of course, I don't really know, since I've neither had a newer release, nor stepped foot in a decent arcade in many moons...

I've been hesitant to try a newer version of MAME with older ROMS as I didn't think it would be a true test. As I understand the development, ROMS are both added and modified with releases; if I used a newer version with older ROMS, wouldn't I miss out on the corrected/modified ROMS?

There's a (very) good chance I've misunderstood how releases are handled; I guess I ought to visit the dev page again...

I would go with FastMame 84. I don't see too many games added since then. And if there are it's not worth the speed hit. I'm using it on an AMD Sempron 2200. And it runs great.

I've read a lot of folks who like to stay in the .84 to .89, and some who go up to to .100; I figured I'd try to find a set in this range, but wasn't quite sure...

[brandon]

why only up to .100?  because of the changes to the video drivers in Mame?

[ahofle]

I've been hesitant to try a newer version of MAME with older ROMS as I didn't think it would be a true test. As I understand the development, ROMS are both added and modified with releases; if I used a newer version with older ROMS, wouldn't I miss out on the corrected/modified ROMS?

There's a (very) good chance I've misunderstood how releases are handled; I guess I ought to visit the dev page again...

Sounds like you understand it pretty well.  There will be a fairly large percentage of your old roms that do not pass the audit with a newer MAME version.  So you will basically have to find an updated set.

[XyloSesame]

I've been hesitant to try a newer version of MAME with older ROMS as I didn't think it would be a true test. As I understand the development, ROMS are both added and modified with releases; if I used a newer version with older ROMS, wouldn't I miss out on the corrected/modified ROMS?

There's a (very) good chance I've misunderstood how releases are handled; I guess I ought to visit the dev page again...

Sounds like you understand it pretty well.  There will be a fairly large percentage of your old roms that do not pass the audit with a newer MAME version.  So you will basically have to find an updated set.

OK, thanks. My head was starting to spin.

So if that is correct. in order to accurately test different builds of MAME, you would need at least some ROMS from that release, correct? And if I were to do a "real world" three-version MAME comparison, I'd pretty much need a full set of ROMS from each release I wished to test - if not a full set, at least most, if not all of the primary ROMS that interest me...

[SGT]

I don't agree that there will be a large number that will not work with ANY newer version of Mame.  A lot of your roms will work with versions newer than yours. Obviously when you start getting into versions above .100 then the amount of roms that have changed increase dramatically.  However you do not need to get a full rom set for just testing purposes.  You'll find enough roms that work which will allow you to make an educated guess on which Mame release is best for you.   Once you decide upon a Mame version to change to, then get the full rom set for that version.  That's just one man's opinion.

[XyloSesame]

I don't agree that there will be a large number that will not work with ANY newer version of Mame.  A lot of your roms will work with versions newer than yours. Obviously when you start getting into versions above .100 then the amount of roms that have changed increase dramatically.  However you do not need to get a full rom set for just testing purposes.  You'll find enough roms that work which will allow you to make an educated guess on which Mame release is best for you.   Once you decide upon a Mame version to change to, then get the full rom set for that version.  That's just one man's opinion.

Thanks, that's what I was hoping. In effect, I'm trying to avoid reading the changelogs on every release as there are quite a few (esp from .62).

Am I correct in the assumption that versions above .100 might actually show a slowdown in older machines rather than performance improvements?

Does anyone know of significant improvements in specific ROMS that would warrant a PC upgrade?

[Hoopz]

Golden Tee was added at .92 or pretty close to it.  If that's important, I would say a version around there would be good.  I used .94 for a couple of years and found everything to be good.  My system in the cabinet is close to yours... P3 1.8 Ghz with 512 ram. 

SF3 came out recently too.  The video code changed around .105 or so and that had a big affect.  Tiger-Heli had a post awhile ago with the big changes (video, sound etc).  There was a sound change I believe in the early .90s also.

[Hoopz]

My memory was a little off.  Here is the thread that Tiger-Heli replied in:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=64291.0
It wasn't a video change but an artwork change.

[XyloSesame]

Golden Tee was added at .92 or pretty close to it.  If that's important, I would say a version around there would be good.  I used .94 for a couple of years and found everything to be good.  My system in the cabinet is close to yours... P3 1.8 Ghz with 512 ram. 

SF3 came out recently too.  The video code changed around .105 or so and that had a big affect.  Tiger-Heli had a post awhile ago with the big changes (video, sound etc).  There was a sound change I believe in the early .90s also.

Perfect, thanks for the info and thread link. I'll check out .108 for the new artwork...

[MAME TIME]

can't go wrong with 106 , im running it on a old machine in my cocktail, hiscore support and no nags, no fuss no muss. But upgrading from 62 to 106 you might have to check your rom set..im not sure

[Stray_Catalyst]

I'm building a console that will never have any of the newer games on it - as it's running a 13" vertically-aligned monitor in a cocktail case, I can't fit a full sized computer in it!  It has a P4 1.0GHz cpu with 512MB of RAM, 80GB of HD, and either XP or Win98SE, depending on which one is less painful (I have both available for this project).  Any advice on which MAME to use?  I haven't done as much research as the original poster.

Stray Catalyst

[Hoopz]

I'm building a console that will never have any of the newer games on it - as it's running a 13" vertically-aligned monitor in a cocktail case, I can't fit a full sized computer in it!  It has a P4 1.0GHz cpu with 512MB of RAM, 80GB of HD, and either XP or Win98SE, depending on which one is less painful (I have both available for this project).  Any advice on which MAME to use?  I haven't done as much research as the original poster.

Stray Catalyst

What games do you want to play?

[SGT]

Am I correct in the assumption that versions above .100 might actually show a slowdown in older machines rather than performance improvements?

I think version .106 had a big video rewrite that created a substantial performance hit on older machines.  Seems like there was something done with audio on another version, but I cannot remember for sure nor when. 

Edit:
Looking on mamedev.org, it looks like the big audio rewrite occurred in version .93 which I assume caused performance problems on older machines.  Anyone feel free to correct me on any of these points.

[TOK]

I stopped at .99 here... Robotron video speed properly emulated, runs good on older machines, Golden Tee is in there, Hiscore.dat works properly. They started going backwards right after this, IMO.

[XyloSesame]

I think version .106 had a big video rewrite that created a substantial performance hit on older machines.  Seems like there was something done with audio on another version, but I cannot remember for sure nor when. 

Edit:
Looking on mamedev.org, it looks like the big audio rewrite occurred in version .93 which I assume caused performance problems on older machines.  Anyone feel free to correct me on any of these points.

You're correct, v0.93 had the audio rewrite. However, according to mamedev, v0.107 is the first full release for the new video code. While we're talking release changes:

hiscore.dat was removed (and replaced with save state) in v0.108

CPS2 decryption was added in v0.112

There was a big Donkey Kong update in v0.116

CPS3 decryption added in v0.116u2

Edit: Is there anywhere that has a running list of major changes and ROMS added/changed in one place? The only way I've been able to research this stuff is by reading each whatsnew, which is a real PITA

Edit#2: In reading the "whatsnew" files from mamedev, I'm finally up to the video rendering changes. SGT, you're correct: the video rewrite actually happened with version 0.106u1 - version 0.107 was just the first full release to feature the change.

[Hoopz]

Edit: Is there anywhere that has a running list of major changes and ROMS added/changed in one place? The only way I've been able to research this stuff is by reading each whatsnew, which is a real PITA

Kinda.  MAWS will let you search/sort by "cumulative change".  So you can select .120 (or whatever version) and hit search.  When you see the data that it outputs, you can sort by version.  You can easily see then what roms changed in what versions.  It'll show you the "u" changes also.

[XyloSesame]

Edit: Is there anywhere that has a running list of major changes and ROMS added/changed in one place? The only way I've been able to research this stuff is by reading each whatsnew, which is a real PITA

Kinda.  MAWS will let you search/sort by "cumulative change".  So you can select .120 (or whatever version) and hit search.  When you see the data that it outputs, you can sort by version.  You can easily see then what roms changed in what versions.  It'll show you the "u" changes also.

So close...

When I search MAWS for "cumulative changes since," the recordset returned only shows the version in which the ROM was added. The main problem is, without clicking on each of the titles you can't see when it was last modified...

Edit: Realized that when I search for cumulative changes for one release only, the results show both new and changed for that release... D'oh! This'll work, thanks!