MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Re: MAME 0.72 Working On 98 So Far

> So far, I used version 0.72 DOS version on 98 and tried playing aero fighters 2 along
> with the neo geo rom. It appears to be working so far.

Why the DOS version? Is it quicker than the Windows one? Unless you mean you're using the regular Windows command line version (which isn't quite "DOS"). My only advice is to find a copy of XP (disable the unneeded background processes which slows it down) or a light Linux and ditch Windows 98 for good. On a side note, has anyone ever tried MAME under ReactOS?

Personally, I wouldn't use anything older than a 2 GHz Pentium 4 for MAME - even my twelve year old 2.8 GHz Celeron (Northwood) system has finally reached the limit with MAME, unable to make use of the new video requirements of 0.180. OpenGL is around a 30-40% drop in speed which can turn borderline games into slideshows (PBO isn't supported in my Radeon 9550), and GDI has even worse performance since it's a non-accelerated software mode. I haven't had that much trouble since I tried to get later MAME running on my 1.2 GHz Celeron (Tualatin) with an S3 Trio shoved in it (just for 32-bit graphics output), since the Intel 82810 video chipset sucked major ass and didn't even support 32-bit graphics modes, which left it in the dark ages when MAME dropped 24-bit from its DirectDraw mode (all i810-based PCs lack an AGP slot, which was on i815-based boards instead, and decent PCI video cards were a pain to find, not to mention expensive). I have about 30 old PCs ranging from 486 systems to 2010-era dual cores, running anything from Windows 95 through Vista (yes, one PC still has Windows ME on it! Sadly though, it's also got a failing HDD so soon it will be just a board, a power supply and some extra parts).