Topic: Final burn neo on very low end hardware (Via C7m 1GHz)

[fosamax]

Hi,

I have a lot of old thin clients to repurpose and would like to use final burn neo to build some dedicated arcade bartop/tabletop.

The hardware is really outdated (it relies on this motherboard : a gigabyte V7C7RH https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/vxl/itona/23159.pdf) which is running a via C7M processor ? 1GHz

I have those running micro XP 0.82 on a 8gb compact flash card plugged on the IDE port (there's no SATA on my boards)
CF card is made fixed by the appropriate hitachi driver. I have 512 mb of ddr2 ram, on which 64 mb is shared video memory.
There's 256 mb of dedicated virtual memory on the second IDE port.

dx9 is installed but doesn't work. D3D7 works great.

The performance is in fact more than correct with a lot of older games working fullspeed.

My question is about the possibility to get more speed in MC68000 games. Do you think using some faster MC68000 core like FAME or Moira could help getting more fps or is it totally useless ?

Currently I'm trying to run games in fullscreen at 1024x768 with scanlines ON. FPS usually are above 30 FPS on that resolution (frameskip = 1 I think), but there's some artifacts like shadows flashing on games like 1944.

If I run games at 640x480, I usually get 50-60 FPS with 68000 games

Does anyone attempted to use those alternate cores or is it too much work for a "niche" requirement ?

Thanks for reading so far !

[dink]

Hi,
Using old 68k cores is kinda problematic, because they're buggy.  I know it kinda feels good to repurpose old hw, but, in this case, you'd be much better off with something in the p4, core2, i5 or i7 era.  I'm saying this mostly because mini pc's with those processors can be had for almost nothing these days, with the added benefit that everything across the board will work without issue.  For example, there's a ton of hp mini pc's w/i5 for around $40 on ebay, the price of 2 dinners (2024-era dinners.. ugh.  but still..).  Also, i5/i7's run super cool when sitting idle.  I remember my p4 3ghz & amd xp-era cpus were always hot, regardless of how loaded down the processor was.

Anyhow, just my 2 cents

best regards,
- dink

[fosamax]

Thanks Dink for your answer.

I understand that re-adding old ASM 68k cores may do more harm than good and in fact won't give me any advantage if I can't reach fullspeed.
I already use 3rd or 4th gen i3/i5 which can emulate the more demanding cave games at fullspeed with shaders on. I recently got a dell micro 3040 with a i3 6100T /16 Gb RAM /256 mb SATA SSD for less than 50 $ delivered.

I think that I will anyway try to make use of my thin clients for less demanding games (I was thinking in something like the 60 in 1 board for vertical games) since they are quite low power, passively cold and so totally silent.
Performance is similar to Raspberry pi 2 I think.
I would not bother with pentium 4 since they are way too power hungry.

Alternatively, those tiny thin clients may also be great with no graphical filter at all ,lowest resolution and a CRT monitor.

-Marc

[dink]

Just a warning: those xx-in-1 arcade boards are usually based on late 90/early 00's-era emulation, and the games are buggy as heck. 

good luck & best regards,
- dink

[fosamax]

Yes that's the plan. Use the original unhacked rom of those individual games to simulate something like the 60 in 1.
Not sure if all games will run perfectly but i think I have enough power (60 in 1 is based on ppc xscale arm processor which may not exceed 300 Mhz)