*DONE* Looking for a video card

[ClassicGMR]

GOT IT. THANKS EVERYONE.

 

I was given a tower after helping a friend of mine do an upgrade.

 

"Get my new PC set up and I can give mine to my son-in-law. It's better than what he has now. I'll get you the old computer and you can have it or chuck it for me. It's REALLY slow though." I'm expecting a 486DX2/66 or something like that.

 

Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be a 1.7GHz system. The slow bottleneck was a whopping 128MB of SHARED RAM! I threw $20 at 1GB of RAM and now it runs pretty good!

 

Here's what I have for my "new" emulation box project for the game room:

ASUS P4SGX-MX motherboard

1.7 GHz processor

1GB PC2700 RAM (could go to 2GB but I don't think I need it(?))

64MB onboard graphics

300W power supply

1 20GB WD HDD 7200 RPM (OS, emulators)

1 40GB Seagate HDD 7200 RPM (ROMS)

1 Playstation-style USB controller (generic)

1 Smart-Joy USB adapter for an actual PS1/PS2 controller

1 wired XBox 360 controller

 

I'm also looking into getting a USB adapter to run a pair of SNES controllers and replacing my Smart-Joy with an adapter to run a pair of PS controllers.

 

Trouble is I have to use a frameskip of 7 to run MAME and the NES emulator FCEUX runs REALLY slow when not in a 10% window. As a side question... will I see any better performance with the games on the same drive as the emulator or does it really matter? On my 3.06GHz system the emus are on C and the games are on D and it doesn't seem to have any issues.

 

What I think I need is a 128MB or - even better - a 256MB AGP 4x video card. I think this should fix all the stuttering I get in MAME and even FCEUX.

 

Anyone got a card they're done with? I'll look at 256MB cards over 128MB but at this point I'll take what I can get.

Edited February 8, 2010 by ClassicGMR

[jaybird3rd]

That motherboard seems to have SiS 650 integrated graphics, which is pretty slow by today's standards but should be good enough for most MAME games. One of my emulation machines uses Intel 810 video and a 533MHz Celeron processor, and even that is good enough for about 80% of MAME. Have you tried running the emulators in full-screen mode? Running in a large window taxes the video because it has to stretch every frame generated by the emulator, but in fullscreen mode it can match the native resolution of the game (or at least come close to it). Putting the games on the same drive as the emulators shouldn't be a problem; the games are resident in RAM once they are loaded by the emulator, so it doesn't matter where they are on the hard drive. Another thing to try is updating the video drivers to the newest available versions; if you're using Microsoft's built-in drivers, you may not be getting the full performance of the video.

 

There aren't that many AGP video cards being made anymore, but most of the new ones would probably come with at least 256MB of video memory (this is one that I like). That might be overkill if all you want is MAME and FCEUX, though, since they would never use that much video RAM; it was intended more for textures and 3D graphics. I'd offer to sell you some of my old cards (GeForce 2, etc), but I doubt they'd be much of an improvement over what you already have, at least for the emulators.

[ClassicGMR]

Thanks for the ideas!

 

Well one of my favorite games in MAME is Mania Challenge so that was the first one I booted. It has to play that or I'm not a happy boy. The onboard chip IS a SiS 650 but even sharing the full 64MB for onboard video it still stutters a lot. It took me a long time to find the most recent driver but it is the right one and not Microsoft's generic.

 

I tried it full screen as well as windowed. No change. I had to push it to frame skip 7 to get it to run about ~93% to ~100%. As for FCEUX I was VERY surprised that it ran so slow. I might check out a few of the other emulators out there and see if they run better. I have always used FCE so this is new territory. Surprisingly zsnes runs perfect.

 

Overall I thought it would work better but I am willing to put my experience behind the belief that the video card would fix my troubles. Everything else in the system is way overspec for the emulators except the bottleneck at video.

 

I have a potential offer for a 256MB card. If it pans out I'll be a happy guy.

[Rybags]

A better card won't necessarily help much with MAME.

 

Practically all the games only use 2D capabilities, and there's a fair chance the more modern ones are taxing your CPU beyond it's ability.

 

An original P4 1.7 is very slow by today's standards - it's about equivalent to an Athlon 1200 of the same era. Yes, the orignal P4s were that bad.

 

I'd recommend get something along the lines of an nVidia 7600GT or ATI X1650 or better. I recently bought an old X1950XT on behalf of a mate for all of $50 or so.

 

So, you might even try for one of those. They were top of the line and still perform well by todays standards.

 

But... don't expect it to deliver any miracles. The CPU will become a huge bottleneck of your system.

Still, you can always upgrade the CPU, even something like a P4 2.8 would do wonders and you should pick one up for next to nothing.

[ClassicGMR]

Ever the pessimist I have had this bookmarked just in case. I still think the video card will do it but hey... I've been married. I know what it is to be wrong.

[jaybird3rd]

Ever the pessimist I have had this bookmarked just in case. I still think the video card will do it but hey... I've been married. I know what it is to be wrong.

That's the next thing I was about to suggest. If the processor is indeed the bottleneck, an upgrade to that would help you more than the video. I guess the original P4 really was as bad as I've heard.

[shadow460]

How does an Athlon 1700+ and an MSI board sound to you? I've got two extra Socket A motherboards, an extra CPU and perhaps some SDRAM for one of the boards. I purchased a stack opf them recently looking for one good board and several of them worked. Since I got my money's worth out of them, just pay shipping if you want some of this stuff.

 

Board 1: MSI with a KT266A/686B chipset. Takes SDRAM, but I'm not sure how much SD I have left on the shelf.

Board 2: Foxconn with a SiS 530 (I think it's a 500 something) chipset. Has onboard everything, the graphics chip goes to 128 MB. Runs up to 400MHz and up to PC3200 memory.

 

BTW, the Athlon has a Palomino core, and it's still installed in a computer. I plan to install the Barton 3200+ I just got into it. Green stuff Rare Atari games might be able to make me change my mind and trade off the Barton instead...

Edited January 30, 2010 by shadow460

[northerngames]

128MB video card would be good for a system like that.

 

something like a radeon 9700 pro or X800 would be good anything else would be overkill for the pc where the card could handle it but not the cpu also any higher then tham and you would more lthen likely need a goood name brand psu to run higher cards correctly without freezing or heating issue's.

 

for mame a 64MB or a 512MB video card will get you pretty much the same results performance wise.

 

ram/cpu is more important then video cards when it comes to mame.

 

I would also try another nes emu as that pc should run that fce flawless as it is becuase it runs on pc's with half of what you mentioned with no issue so something is goofy with your emu or its settings becuase it should run 60+ frames as it sits already.

[ClassicGMR]

Got my video card but just for the curious that have been helping me out:

 

I bought an ATI Radeon X1050 AGP 256MB 100-X1050AGP-V Video Card for $21 shipped and it works perfectly.

 

I also did purchase a CPU (figured it would be a cheap upgrade anyway) but it came in DOA so I am still using the 1.7GHz processor. With the video card and staying with the 1.7 everything runs full speed. MAME needs zero frameskip and FCEUX runs full screen at 100% speed. Turns out the video card is all I needed after all.

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I appreciate how the community helps out on things like this.

 

Now... on to the game cabinet!

[northerngames]

Got my video card but just for the curious that have been helping me out:

 

I bought an ATI Radeon X1050 AGP 256MB 100-X1050AGP-V Video Card for $21 shipped and it works perfectly.

 

I also did purchase a CPU (figured it would be a cheap upgrade anyway) but it came in DOA so I am still using the 1.7GHz processor. With the video card and staying with the 1.7 everything runs full speed. MAME needs zero frameskip and FCEUX runs full screen at 100% speed. Turns out the video card is all I needed after all.

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I appreciate how the community helps out on things like this.

 

Now... on to the game cabinet!

 

 

wow you got a great deal on that card and glad to hear everything worked out for ya.