Just finished my cabinet and looking for a new MAME/emulator PC. I have an a raspberry pi in the cabinet now but there is no way it will play the 3D stuff. I'd love to play Blitz, golden tee, and the 3d Gauntlet version. So I guess I need to get a new machine. What do you think about this system as a dedicated machine? http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1413265
I'd love to hear thoughts as well on this particular machine. At the risk of hijacking the thread, I'm a complete noob when it comes to pc's and MAME. I've acquired a DATA EAST 4 player cab and will be using an ASUS 27" LCD monitor and have a budget of $700 to spend on a pc. I'm simply trying to find a place to start so any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks for posting the link, Husar! I hope we get some feedback on it.
that should deal fine with mame, and if needed it has PCI-E slot free so you can add a dedicated graphics card later if you wanted or needed any extra power.
What about one of those Intel NUCs? Like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102052 It has HD 5000 onboard graphics. There are cheaper options with other HD onboard graphics: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102001 I'm thinking on getting one of these (cheaper ones) to be my emulator machine. Add a msata SSD + 4GB Ram for the OS and emulators and it will be super fast, small, practical and won't use much electricity. Then you can use a USB pendrive or external HDD's for roms.
that's way more than enough for MAME, im using a standard intel dual core and its fine. one thing to remember is your gonna play 1 game at a time so if you look at the specs of the most demanding game in the MAME library and keep within that spec the other will run no problem.
For MAME you'll need the fastest CPU available, but most games will run at full speed on something like i3-3120M. You don't need discrete video card (unless you're planning to run other emulators like Dolphin, PCSX2, also Model2 emulator requires more powerful video card than Supermodel, sounds weird but it's how it is, i'm getting sound hiccups on my laptop with HD4000, and no such thing on desktop with weaker CPU and GT440). You don't need tons of RAM either, 2-4Gb will be enough for everything.
Could you link me to a couple of options as far as a dedicated graphics card goes? One that will work with the pc in Husar's post? And correct me if I'm wrong, but if I purchase the pc in Husar's link, the only thing I'll need to add, besides a possible graphics card, is an OS like Windows 7? Everything else is a go? This pc will literally be for MAME use only. I'm into everything from the classics like Kong to modern day fighters, etc. I see people commenting about 3D games and I have no clue what they're talking about. Lol. I'm assuming those are fighters like Tekken 3, etc.? Thank you for all of the help, peeps. I'm sure this stuff gets repetitive for those of you who eat, sleep, and breathe it, but everything you're sharing here helps a guy like me TREMENDOUSLY.
I had no idea about that one! Thank you! I see that they are currently out of stock. Does that happen frequently?
