MAME PC - What type to buy?

[Marty Machine]

Hi to any 'MAMErs' on AP.

I'm looking to buy 2 NEW PC's to setup 2 homebrew MAME cabinets with.

I read that MAME has no benefit (or VERY little) with Dual-Core/Quad-Core PC's....

I figure i may as well just grab a basic Pentium4, 3GHZ cpu, with 2-4Gb Ram (more?) and i guess a decent video card, maybe nVidia 9500 with 1Gb Ram onboard etc?

Trying to keep it 'down there' in price, something around $450-500 is what i've been working on so far.

Does anyone have any other preferences i should consider??

Thanx in advance,
MM.

[MartyJ]

Hey MM,

I've had a little experience a while back, but certainly what I don't know could fill a warehouse!

Are you using PC screens or the original arcade monitors?

I ran mine with a P4 (2.?), 1 GB RAM and an ArcadeVGA card (as I was using arcade monitor).
JPAC interface card and a 100g HDD

The only purchase for the PC was the video card, the rest was old parts.
It ran the classics fine, but Sys22 games didn't like it (Rave Racer etc).

[ddstoys]

Im running a 2.9ghz P4 2 gig Ram and a nvidia video card (Not sure on its specs) Runs all mame games except ones with CHD files, Future Pinball, Virtual Pinball.  I purchased a brand new Dual Core and Quad core the Dual Core allowed me to play Crusing Usa but the quad Core was worse than the p4. So i suggest you use a Single processor

[pinballist]

Before I sold mine recently I had everything running beautifully on an old Pentium II with 256MB ram.  It ran even the most power hungry games like the Street Fighter Zero with no discernible probs.  Any vintage P4 would be absolute overkill - UNLESS!!! you are going to run PinMAME & Visual Pinball, then get a good P4 dual core with 1 gig of ram and a reasonable video card :) 

[Marty Machine]

Hi Guys,

Thanx for info so far.

I'll be using 21" VGA CRT/PC Monitors, as the plasma/lcd's are still a bit ghosty with arcade games (so i keep reading, but maybe the newer lcds are better now?)..

I'll probably still opt for the dual-core boxes, which are fairly grunty inside and decent video card, at least it'll be fairly future-proof if Mame heads further in that direction..

At worst case, i have 2 reasonably useful PC's for other stuff anyway ;-)
(i'm buying 2x grunty Quad-Core boxes anyway for my own use, and 2x 'lesser' boxes for my Mame cabs).

Thanx again,

[pinballist]

Sounds like you're gonna build a super machine :)

I'm looking to build a VP PinMAME (virtual pinball table) but on a short scale using a portrait mounted 24" LCD for the PF & a 17"LCD for the head box.  Screens & computer hardware is relatively cheap, the real problem is designing and building the small scale pinball cabinet when one sucks at cabinetry :(

[Marty Machine]

Ahhh, you might be in luck when i release my range of pin & mame cab's onto the world... 

Realising that many techs and geeks aren't so good with powertools and 'trades', i'm going to help fill that void ;-)

stay tuned...

[pinballist]

Wow Marty, definitely be looking out for that, keep us in the loop with developments :)

[FirePower]

Hi to any 'MAMErs' on AP.

Does anyone have any other preferences i should consider??

MM.

My Mame cabinet runs happily on a 800Mhz P3 with  640M of ram, but my arcade interest doesn't go much past the eighties - Space Invaders, Galaxian, Packman etc. I also don't use the latest version of Mame - I stopped at the last one that maintains hiscores (V1.07 maybe?)  OS is XP.  Machine also runs ArcadeJukebox.
Depends a bit on what frontend you use, MameWare for me, but if you plan to run in cocktail mode then I suggest making sure the video card will support rotation in hardware - I think all nVidia chipsets do, then I use a shareware program iRotate.  Makes life a lot easier I reckon.

Having just bought a pin my Mame machine is not seeing much use!

cheers,
David.

[pinballist]

Having just bought a pin my Mame machine is not seeing much use!
cheers,
David.

I laughed when I read that David, I sold my MAME machine on fleaBay recently for the same reason.  I also can't get into those arcade games made in the 90's that use more than two buttons and a joystick ;)