Area51

[P-Funk]

Came across this article on Waxy.org:

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2002/11/15/cojag_ga.shtml#000693

It says to really get Area 51 and some other games running at full speed you would need a 4 Ghz+ machine.  My question:

Does anyone have Area 51 running close to full speed on there cab?  If so, what are your machine specs.

Thanks,

[Frostillicus]

After reading some of that thread here is my response:

A good document to read is Arcade Emulation How-To.  

Basically, the issue that people have with speed stems from the fundemental way you are playing it - on your computer.  You aren't just loading up the game into memory like it's half-life or quake.  Mame is emulating the hardware of the machine and then it's running the software (or roms) on that emulated hardware...and that's not counting 3d acceleration (which is absent in MAME I believe).  That's a lot of processor power required for a newer machine like Area51 and Cruisin' USA.

The whole concept of emulation is to emulate just the hardware of each machine - you shouldn't have to know the actual code of the game in question.  Perfect emulation should be able to just load the roms into the hardware and the game would work 100%.

[u_rebelscum]

Came across this article on Waxy.org:

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2002/11/15/cojag_ga.shtml#000693

It says to really get Area 51 and some other games running at full speed you would need a 4 Ghz+ machine.  My question:

Does anyone have Area 51 running close to full speed on there cab?  If so, what are your machine specs.

Thanks,

It says you need lots of memory to play area51, nothing about how fast area51 needs the CPU to be.  
It says the Cruis'n games need 4 Ghz.

Area51 can run full speed on 1.5 Ghz CPUs, I hear.  My 1 Ghz AMD with 384 Meg RAM system runs Area51 at mostly playable speeds (~30 FPS).

[Chris]

Area51 plays great on my Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB of RAM; it only bogs down a bit when both players are firing rapidly and there are a lot of sound effects playing at once.

--Chris

[jakejake28]

my 2.9 ghz handles the cruisn games at around 55 fps most of the time. no 4.0 ghz there

[IceCold]

I know this isn't the "true experience", but why don't you guys play the cruisn games on an n64 emulator until the modern PC's are fast enough to play it in MAME well?

[AlanS17]

I know this isn't the "true experience", but why don't you guys play the cruisn games on an n64 emulator until the modern PC's are fast enough to play it in MAME well?

Shame on you for even suggesting such a thing.   j/k

[Chris]

I don't mind waiting for the processors to catch up, because once they do (and espetcially if California Speed gets emulated), I'm gonna have to build a dedicated cockpit driving cab...

--Chris

[shmokes]

Overclocking past 4Ghz is now possible with phase-change cooling