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Post by zzz on Sept 3, 2008 11:06:28 GMT -5
I'm currently stuck on a really old, really shitty computer.
So, I wanna know, what's the fastest version of MAME, official or otherwise?
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Post by ReyVGM on Sept 3, 2008 13:52:35 GMT -5
If you mean the actual games speed, then they are all the same. MAME doesn't allow game hacks to speed up the games.
If you mean the actual emu, then the fastest one is normal command line MAME.
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Post by zzz on Sept 3, 2008 17:12:52 GMT -5
What about the many unofficial versions of MAME? Like MAME PLUS PLUS, etc.
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Post by r0ck3rz on Sept 3, 2008 17:47:31 GMT -5
just try em out and see what works for ya
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Post by zzz on Sept 4, 2008 2:01:48 GMT -5
Yeah, I could do that. But the whole reason that I asked was to save myself from having to go through the process of trial and error.
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Post by r0ck3rz on Sept 4, 2008 7:38:56 GMT -5
seriously, grab 5 versions, and try 1 game across all of em. unless that games addicting as all hell, it should take about 5 minutes to do that. now, if your computers really that old, you'll probably want to stick with the basic versions, regular mame, or mame32, but with pcs, who can tell? which is why you can't just ask someone to predict what version will run best for you. regular mame might not go so great if you're on a windows os after windows 98, that has no real dos.
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Post by ReyVGM on Sept 4, 2008 8:44:41 GMT -5
Unofficial versions of MAME only add stuff not supported by the official MAME team, such as kaillera or hiscores but they will NOT make the games faster. To change the game's speeds they would have to reprogram each driver and add a speed hack.
MAME doesn't work like other emulators, that's why a mega powerful video card or RAM won't do shit for the game's speeds. MAME works strictly by CPU power. Not even having a dual core or quad core do anything for your games unless MAME allows multi core CPUs. Which I think is what MAME UI 64 bit does.
I don't know what you are trying to play, but you can always try other emus that are much faster, such as RAINE which supports a lot of games, Nebula/Kawaks/Final Burn Alpha which support Neogeo, CPS1/2/3, IGS. There's that Model 2 emu, Viva Nono and NullDC for Naomi, Model 2 and Namco's boards.
MAME32 (now MAME UI) has a fast forward option that really helps A LOT. Not that silly frameskip on F9/F8, but an actual speed button. I don't know if your computer will be able to handle it though.
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Post by zzz on Sept 4, 2008 9:22:13 GMT -5
Aha. Thanks for the info.
One last question: Is there any way to speed up MAME or MAME32 (besides turning on frameskip)? Like turning the sound off, or whatever.
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Lord Dalek
Full Member
WHY DOES HE HAVE A SECOND/THIRD/FORTH/ETC. FORM?!?!
Posts: 249
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Post by Lord Dalek on Sept 4, 2008 17:43:48 GMT -5
Turning the sound off will work on a lot of games (on Atari games that chug a lot like Hard Drivin' and Stun Runner, this will require using cheat.dat to bypass a glitch built into their boards). Its not going to work THAT much but its good to try.
My solution 90% of the time is just to use auto frameskip. Seems to work on a lot of games like Scramble Spirits that are slow on my Semphron for some bizarre reasons.
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Post by roushimsx on Sept 4, 2008 18:03:35 GMT -5
Depending on the game, you can also gain some speed by underclocking the CPU of the game (enable cheats, change speed of the CPU). Does wonders for Cruisin' USA.
If you're running a straight ghetto PC, you can always roll back to MAME 36b16, but good luck finding proper romsets for it (or other similarly old versions). Also extremely low game compatibility compared to modern versions, but generally pretty peppy.
I'm with ReyVGM on trying alternate, specialty emulators for a lot of stuff. Final Burn Alpha, Nebula, VivaNono, Aaron's Radikal Biker's emulator, Zinc, etc.
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Post by zzz on Sept 4, 2008 18:31:20 GMT -5
Depending on the game, you can also gain some speed by underclocking the CPU of the game (enable cheats, change speed of the CPU). Does wonders for Cruisin' USA. Is "enable cheats, change speed of the CPU" supposed to be how you underclock the CPU of a game? I'm curious: Any reason for this particular version?
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Post by roushimsx on Sept 4, 2008 19:20:22 GMT -5
Is "enable cheats, change speed of the CPU" supposed to be how you underclock the CPU of a game? Yea, and you can also overclock the CPU as well if you want to play around with either trying to remove slowdown or occasionally completely break a game with random unforseen bugs, depending on how the game was written (some were limited by the hardware, some were just coded to run that way). Always fun to try on Neo Geo games and bullet hell shooters. Drop Cruisin' USA down to ~65% or so and see how that works for you. I can't remember the exact version number where they switched the audio core for the driver used in Midway games, but it's mostly just a problem if you're really hard up to play Mortal Kombat 2, 3, NBA Jam, etc. Really, tracking down the specific last version and compatible ROMs is more trouble than it's worth unless you're batshit crazy for the games. Doing some light digging through the changelog to see if I can turn up a specific version number for you, though.
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Post by ReyVGM on Sept 4, 2008 19:49:44 GMT -5
Yeah, if you press the ~ key in MAME UI (MAME 32) you can under and over clock the CPU. Just press up or down to browse through all the options.
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Post by butanebob on Sept 4, 2008 21:50:38 GMT -5
Overclocking works wonders for games with heaps of slowdown like Metal Slug 2 and Double Dragon 2. Bump all the cpus up to about 2 or 300% of their original speed and those games stop slowing down and play so much better!
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Post by chaoticgood on Oct 8, 2008 16:09:09 GMT -5
I'm currently stuck on a really old, really shitty computer. So, I wanna know, what's the fastest version of MAME, official or otherwise? Don't use MAME on old shitty computers, other emulators can run the same games 10x faster, like Neo Final Burn Alpha, or NeoRageX even. Of course they aren't as handy as MAME since they only run some games, but is you actually want to play them on an old computer and not just look at a slideshow, use specialized emulators.
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