ATI vs nVidia?

[funk]

For groovy MAME CRT setups I've noticed over the years people gravitate toward ATI cards, is there any technical reason for this in general?

 

[big10p]

It used to be because crt_emudriver used a hacked version of the ATI drivers to create the 15KHz modes used by groovyMAME. Things have moved on since then and a greater number of graphics cards - including newer, more powerful ones - are supported. Think some nVidia cards are supported these days (not sure as I haven't messed with this stuff for quite a while), but ATI cards are still preferable.

 

[funk]

I know the more modern ones are meant to be power hungry, think I need to source one with passive cooling.

 

[John Bennett]

For what it's worth, games don't use graphics 2D or 3D acceleration in the actual MAME emulation - it's all manually pixel-plotted for accuracy, so I can't see the sense in spending a fortune on a graphics card for a MAME setup - better spent on a fast CPU (and even then, it's more about clock speed than lots of cores).

 

[funk]

For what it's worth, games don't use graphics 2D or 3D acceleration in the actual MAME emulation - it's all manually pixel-plotted for accuracy, so I can't see the sense in spending a fortune on a graphics card for a MAME setup - better spent on a fast CPU (and even then, it's more about clock speed than lots of cores).

That's been my understanding for years, lots out there to say differently now. I'm assuming that's based on things like 3/Naomi titles etc that are more likely to tap into gpu tricks.

 

[John Bennett]

For emulation in general, then yes there's high-level emulators out there using 3D graphics acceleration - been like that since the 00's with stuff like Vivanonno.

Pretty sure MAME intentionally doesn't use 3D acceleration though (does it even run Naomi games?).

edit: there is the shaders used to emulate CRTs, but I didn't think there'd be any need for a monster GFX card for that.

John Bennett2020-08-29 09:18:31

 

[funk]

Yeah you're right, I was using crazy taxi as an example. It's in there but unplayable.

 

[chubsta]

So what would be considered the 'top-end' CPU to use for Mame. I currently use a Pi so obviously there is a lot of room for improvement, but is it possible to run all the cave shooters, Gauntlet legends and dark legacy, without any slowdown using scanline filters?

 

[funk]

From what I've read is it uses what you throw at it, so if you hand it a high speed i7 it'll use it. There are benchmark charts kicking around but I've struggled to decipher them in terms of what the figures actually mean in regard to actual user experience.

 

[chubsta]

From what I've read is it uses what you throw at it, so if you hand it a high speed i7 it'll use it. There are benchmark charts kicking around but I've struggled to decipher them in terms of what the figures actually mean in regard to actual user experience.

Yeah, Im the same, I use an iMac so am completely out of touch with all the variations of processors and speeds and turbo-speeds, multi-thread/core, nM etc etc and their relative benefits in real terms - is there any point in getting this years i7 etc or would a model from 5 years ago work just as good in Mame?

 

[big10p]

There are other emulators around (I forget the names) that run things like Cave shooters much faster than MAME. Can't vouch for the accuracy of emulation, though. My Pandora's Box 6 even has some Cave games that run fine.

 

[John Bennett]

Coffee Lake i7's and the better Ryzen's with near 4GHz turbo speed seem to have no bother running the 90's Sega/Namco 3D stuff in MAME, so I'd hope they'd manage a CAVE shooter.

As I said above, I don't think you need loads of cores (6,8), unless you're running multiple instances of MAME for linking up games on one PC

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