MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Old single core pc debating if to upgrade to a duo core pc

@dcapper: any boot less than sixty seconds is fine for me. Take a moment and breathe. Literally. Breath all-time equals greater life.

Second, what does boot time have to do with when the machine is on? But let's look at this a little differently. Electronics like to be left on rather than switched on and off. I have a digital arcade multisync I bought in '07. From '08 through at least some of '10, I used it as my main monitor. After getting a nice LCD* in '11, I would often leave my (main) arcade rig on the whole day so I could slide over and play games when I wanted. It's on behind me right now. Yeah, it's seen probably 90% non-play versus on time since I've owned it, but it's still a magnificent image and color palette. It's tough tech. Note that I have my screensaver set to blank (all my machines have been for aeons), at three minutes.

*My first 19" LCD screwed up my vision, which took at least six months to fix itself after I stopped using it. Until this monitor I got in '11, I'd strictly used CRTs.

Now, here's another point of interest: the last year or so I've mosttly been using HLSL on my main arcade rig. The desktop is 1024x768, so perfect with most horizontal games. For 224 vert games, I use one of the pngs. For 288 vert games (Pac, etc), I switch to 800x600 and use the scanlines png, that's been rotated and saved that way. (And I haven't even gotten into using GLSL shaders.....)

I love native resolutions, and my monitor and GeForce 6800 kick ass for this. But since I'm not longer bothering with that, and not bothering with something like GroovyMAME (tried it, was not as easy as AdvanceMAME, so I bagged on it), and I'm starting to run into performance issues on some games (like Zookeeper!) with this machine, I'm starting to think about getting a new machine that will take me into the future.

But like I said, if you aren't having any real issues, leave it be.

@Heihachi:

I think he's in the US, and there isn't that kind of recycling here. Maybe in a few big cities, but I doubt it. People try to resell everything on Craigslist and ebay.

I remember you talking about your super fast boot. Some of it may be the small drive. Only my first computer, my Dell S4500, with XP (pre-SP) booted quicker than thirty seconds. Right now it's probably around that (though I don't recall whether it's running TinyXP or standard SP3).