Windows Mame versus PiPlay- What is the difference for the power demand?
  • dman777
    I asked on Mame forums and they said that I would need about an Intel I5 to run Mame and 16 bit games. What I don't understand is... since PiPlay uses a Mame version that is not even close to be as demanding, what are the differences between Mame and the PiPlay fork? Does Mame do upscaling for a 1080p or something?
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    piplay is just the frontend. we use the mame4all-pi source code. it's based on a much older version of mame and customized to run on the ARM processor that the raspberry pi uses.
  • dman777
    I used to play mame port on Xbox original on a CRT and was pretty happy with the game play. What would be the difference between the much older version of mame and the current Windows mame? Trying to understand what I would be missing by not having a intel I5 system that would run the modern version of Mame. The only thing that that I could think of is the graphics to be up scaled and look good on a blown up 1080p TV.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    Yeah, I'm probably not the guy to ask, since I don't play much on the MAME emulators (mostly snes and genesis for me). But I imagine that it is probably scaling, and I know that sometimes there are some sound issues. but most things seem to run pretty well.
  • beta_tester
    on RaspberryPi you can not/should not enable the features to make the view more realistic like monitor pattern (to get a look of an old CTR monitor)
    the RPi is not strong enough to do that with a good performance.
    vector games cna not support all features like best AA to make everything super smooth. and the flickering features are not well working as well.

    modern games are not working and even some old roms have glitches, that are fixed in newer versions of mame.

    the sense to use a RaspberryPi for using it as GameConsole is more:
    - it is small,
    - it is cheap,
    - it is not powerhungry as a big PC or modern GameConsole
    - it is the magic of - "i do it, because i can do it"
    - it is absolutely silent - no fan noise, no HDD noise
    - you can use the GPIO to build your own joystick (controller)
    - many games are working with good performance
    - lot of fun
  • englischdudeenglischdude
    interesting thread.

    i have had a bartop arcade cab running mame for several years now, but it is loud, power hungry, bloody heavy...
    i am currently changing the inner workings to a rpi2. i have a fan already installed on the back panel just to keep some airflow in there, this I will modify to run off the powered usb hub.

    the older technology pc components will run mame no problem, the i5 comment you mention is completely unrealistic. my old cab components were 1ghz single core 512mb ram with basic onboard video!! this is a great advantage of linux OS generally, that it will run on old "outdated" hardware very very well!
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    yeah, I don't know why they would suggest an I5, I can't imagine anything that they throw at it needing that much power.
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    I have been quite happy with the number of roms that I am able to run just using the pi.
  • Nitrogen_Widget
    i5 would be for some of the 3d games like Gauntlet legends & NFL Blitz.

    I don't know off-hand which games specifically have issues in mame4all or advmame.
    I can just say every game i've tried on mame4all runs full speed on the RPI 1B.

    advmame is more useable on the rpi2 and performance seems to match an older 1.4 ghz p4 that I have on advmame .106 which means games like mortal kombat still won't run. :)
  • beta_tester
    i think, the discussion about the need of an i5 as minimum for MAME makes less in the context of using RPi + MAME4All + AdvMAME.

    MAME4All (0.37b5) was developed and made for DOS in the year 2000,
    AdvMAME (0.106) was developed and made 2006 for windows.
    the lower versions of MAME were developed with speed/size optimization in mind.
    because the computers were not really strong and the arcade machines were not as powerful and not as many different machines were available.
    many optimization were made like dirty hacks.

    i don't know the exact date, but the MAME developer changed the philosophy and now the main priority is the accuracy of the emulators and the possibility to maintain the code by defining standardized interfaces between virtual devices.
    they were able to make that decision, because the computers were become more powerful, so writing good code was more easy, because ugly performance hacks were not needed any more...
    so the because of got rid of dirty ugly optimization hacks, the newer MAME versions do need a more powerful CPU - even for old school games
    (compared to an old MAME version. you also can see sometimes that MAME4ALL is a bit faster then AdvMAME)

    an other decision to make nicer but potentially slower code is the merge of MAME and MESS so with that decision the internal code must be able to maintain arcade and multiple computers as well, do enlarged the number of virtual devices that have to been implemented a lot.

    also the newer MAME version has much more options to tweak the look and feel to make the emulation more realistic. and newer MAME supports more features of roms, that earlier MAME versions were not supported - like some sounds, chd, and other features - lower versions were faking some feature or features simply were missing.

    the current MAME (0.159) is far away from that, what MAME4ALL and AdvMAME was many years before.
    with an very old computer and a most recent MAME you would not be very happy.

    wait few years, and maybe an i5 is way too powerless for a modern MAME, even for playing old school PONG or PAC-MAN... ;) ;P ;D

    that was my cent to that...
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