Posted by StephenH on 16, 2001 at 4:49 AM:
In Reply to: PC hardware requirements posted by willebear on 14, 2001 at 4:30 PM:
The more complex the game hardware, the more CPU power and RAM you need to emulate it.
For example, many of the early 80s Z80/6809/S2650/6502 games did not use very complex hardware, and will probably run on a Pentium 166 at full speed.
However, the late 80s/early 90s games that were 68000 based (Sega System16/18, Capcom CPS1/CPS2, Taito F1/F2, Neo-Geo, etc) and use a bit higher resolution will probably need about a P3/450 or faster to run. Ones with multiple 68000s (i.e. Space Harrier, Out Run, Galaxy Force 2, many of the early 90s Namco games, etc) need even more CPU power (like a P3/550 or faster) to emulate.
Many of the newer games with TMS34010 and/or ADSP chips take an enourmous amount of CPU power to emulate (Mortal Kombat Series, NBA Jam/Hangtime, Stun Runner, Hard Drivin, etc) need over 1GHZ or more to run at full speed.
Games with 32 Bit chips take even more power to emulate (Sega Model 1, Taito F3 System, Street Fighter: The Movie, Capcom ZN-1, etc). These need about 1.2GHZ or more to emulate at full speed. Some of these even use high-level emulation (such as in Impact, U64Emu, etc).
: it seems to me that i won't need to use my pII 350 mhz processor w/ 64 MB of RAM to run my MAME Arcade machine. How true is this? It seems like i could get away with a very minimal machine. What are the minimum hardware specs for running a MAME arcade machine?
: thx
: will
: wmarussell@home.com
: http://www.mydot-com.com