Are you happy with mame performance on your rig?

[Keatah]

Are you happy with how MAME is performing on your rig? I recently got around to testing a basic mainstream i7-8700 by the numbers.  And in a status update I mentioned that most classic arcade cabs idle along at 1-5% CPU utilization. That's great. And not really any more even if BGFX/HLSL/GLSL is in use - with all the ratbaggy CRT effects like spillage, scanlines, shadowmask, edge distortion, blooming, convergence failure, and NTSC noise. Of course doing all that takes the graphics card (1080GTX) out of idle and uses about 20% it. Still none of that spins up the fans yet. This is for games like Tempest and Tac/Scan, or even Assault and Blasteroids. And that's on a single CPU core floating around 2.2GHz more or less. The other 5 cores are probably causing mischief or looking for something to do. Or doing nothing because their respective charts are essentially flatlined.

 

In Altirra the situation is even better. Playing Star Raiders or BallBlazer, one core hovers around 1GHZ and the rest are asleep or off screwing around with something else. GPU is at about 20% with or without TV effects and distortion and scanlines. If I hit the turbo button (F1) I can get like 2000FPS.

 

So clearly mainstream hardware is a good thing and you won't go wrong with it. And the 8700 is clearly a refined part that enjoys doing emulators! ss'yeheh...

[mr_me]

Is that with a current version of mame? 

 

It runs perfectly fine on my 14 year old PC so performance is pretty good.

[Flojomojo]

Most of the pre-1990s stuff I like in MAME and others can run on a netbook. Not much point in throwing away real hardware like an i7 on tasks that are beneath it. 
 

Yeah, I'm happy with my setup. 
 

RetroArch is great. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

I play mostly 90s shmups... and only my desktop can handle them without having low framerates or choppy audio. Well actually my old desktop could with its 8GB of RAM, Athlon X4, and 2GB GPU. My new desktop with its 16GB of RAM, i7, and RTX 2080 (8GB) might be overkill but games run great.

[Swami]

I wonder if you could run all your 8 and 16 bit emulation through dolphin just like the emulators on the real Wii. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

Having more than one layer of emulation is bad...

[Swami]

3 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Having more than one layer of emulation is bad...

It was, but there’s some kind of eight core i9 coming out next year. 

[Keatah]

@mr_me This is recently released 216.

 

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Having more than 1 layer of emulation is amusing. You can go as deep as CPU power allows more or less. But be cognizant of diverging accuracy. Accuracy should be a main goal of all emulators. I've only done multiple levels for shits & giggles.

 

I'm not a big fan of the latest hardware. Make no mistake I enjoy reading about where the stuff is going and all the developments. But to purchase it - that usually becomes a bank breaker. You're paying a premium price to troubleshoot stuff the industry is still refining. Not my job. And this year's performance hardware becomes next year's mainstream.

 

I always think of the "cutting edge" experience I had with the Pentium 4. Lousy IPC efficiency and even more lousy heat generation issues. Especially on the, you guessed it, higher end of the product lineup. All it did was cut my wallet.

 

Configuring and setting up for mainstream or slightly behind is where it's at. Everybody seems to have something in those ranges. And currently an i7-8700 is mainstream. Albeit at the top of the category perhaps.

 

Processors with advanced instruction sets are always a good thing. The more comprehensive and versatile the instructions the more work gets done even with slower clock speeds.

[Swami]

13 hours ago, Keatah said:

@mr_me This is recently released 216.

 

---

 

Having more than 1 layer of emulation is amusing. You can go as deep as CPU power allows more or less. But be cognizant of diverging accuracy. Accuracy should be a main goal of all emulators. I've only done multiple levels for shits & giggles.

 

I'm not a big fan of the latest hardware. Make no mistake I enjoy reading about where the stuff is going and all the developments. But to purchase it - that usually becomes a bank breaker. You're paying a premium price to troubleshoot stuff the industry is still refining. Not my job. And this year's performance hardware becomes next year's mainstream.

 

I always think of the "cutting edge" experience I had with the Pentium 4. Lousy IPC efficiency and even more lousy heat generation issues. Especially on the, you guessed it, higher end of the product lineup. All it did was cut my wallet.

 

Configuring and setting up for mainstream or slightly behind is where it's at. Everybody seems to have something in those ranges. And currently an i7-8700 is mainstream. Albeit at the top of the category perhaps.

 

Processors with advanced instruction sets are always a good thing. The more comprehensive and versatile the instructions the more work gets done even with slower clock speeds.

I’d agree with all that. My comment was about state of the art , which is always interesting. Not sure why I would routinely use emulation on emulation. 

[Swami]

Close, although I still hate every OS since XP. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Legion-Desktop-Intel-i7-8700K/dp/B07FJZK34T/ref=sr_1_20?keywords=i7+32GB&qid=1577089241&refinements=p_89%3ADell|Lenovo%2Cp_n_feature_two_browse-bin%3A5446815011|5446816011&rnid=562234011&s=pc&sr=1-20

 

FYI, the 8 core i9, but don't like HPs, too little hard drive memory and STILL want a DVD drive on hot plug

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QNZ8228/ref=psdc_13896597011_t1_B07FJZK34T

 

[Kombalar]

I'm very happy. Even the newer Atari games like STUN Runner and Steel Talons run flawlessly.

 

I also play more 80's games but there are a lot of great and overlooked stuff among the 90's games as well. They weren't playable with my old machines but now I can play and view them in their full glory.

 

This is why MAME is great. They never made any cheap "speed hacks" but documented the games for the future as they knew the CPU's will become much faster eventually. I played my first MAMEs in PC 486. Those were the days.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Kombalar

[Zoyous]

My interest in arcade games starts to wane after the mid-'90s, but I like running MAME on a somewhat overpowered rig because I like messing with all the CRT shader effects. "Happy with it" is an understatement... I'm amazed!

[+mizapf]

MAME performance highly depends on the emulated system. The systems that I maintain in MAME (TI-99 family) have a good cycle precision and require at least a Core i5 for 100%. I once did some tests with various host platforms; see the bottom of my MAME page: https://www.mizapf.de/en/ti99/mame

[Keatah]

On 1/2/2020 at 1:47 PM, Kombalar said:

This is why MAME is great. They never made any cheap "speed hacks" but documented the games for the future as they knew the CPU's will become much faster eventually. I played my first MAMEs in PC 486. Those were the days.

 

Indeed! Great times living in relative's basements and attics, playing MAME on a DX2/50. Just starting out with simple games like Amidar, Pengo, Pac-Man, Galaxian..

 

I remember being totally blown away by the sound. Having just come from a stint with the Amiga I was biased with the notion that sound and graphics needed highly specialized chips. And here were real ARCADE games, the epitome of custom hardware, running on what was a generic sound DAC and an even more generic bitmapped 1MB VGA card. Basic SOHO-class stuff more or less. No fancy multitasking blitters or "independent" sound generators. No custom bus arrangements or other one-trick-pony gimmickry.