MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - extreme newbie help needed

hello all, i am painfully new to MAME, so i apologize up front for my severe lack of knowledge. i have set up MAME Plus! on an older lenovo pc which was given to me, from about 2005-ish or so. i put new refurbished hard drive, installed XP with service pack 3 and .net framework. MAME is the ONLY thing i will be using this machine for. i don't know all of the specs, if anyone knows how to check that i could certainly find out. i have 2 4 gb RAM cards (i'm not sure if that means it's 8 gb or 4 gb total, in how this stuff works.) i'm using an older x-arcade tankstick single player i found for a solid price. i'm now able to open and play many roms, which is what i've struggled with up to now, but everything moves painfully slow, the audio is a mess, and there's something funny with the resolution, although that could be just an effect of using a modern screen, but at the same same there could be more to that in the settings, perhaps?

i've read up a bit, and it seems a computer of this age ought to be able to handle games from the 80's and 90's, but i could be wrong for sure. i am not running a graphics card, but that is something i have in mind if that would help this issue. it is my understanding that something under 1 gb should be enough to run this era quite well, if one was added? ANY help that can be offered is massively appreciated. any questions on details i will happily provide, i may need a bit of instruction on how to find some info, though. many thanks for anything that can help me get this all working!

EDIT: tried posting a quick video but my phone shoots in mp4, which the site won't let me attach. i'll shoot something and export in a different format as soon as i can, after my work computer finishes exporting a job in premiere, so you can see how this is running.

[ATTACHED IMAGE - CLICK FOR FULL SIZE]

Edited by rushfanyyz (05/21/16 01:50 AM)