Before I drop money on BigBox...

[Ninjadog]

Few things I want to make sure about first.

Will my computer handle those graphic intense themes? Laptop from 2010 i3-2310M 2.10GHz 4GB RAM, Acer Aspire, pretty much a entry level machine. I am specifically wondering about that theme on the home page that shows that beautiful Galaga and Moon Patrol game selection thing with the cab art style foreground and video snaps behind it.

I don't really want to sacrifice ROM load times just for a nicer GUI, but if it would be good to know the graphic intense themes  will make load times suffer a bit. Got used to using MAME64 and I expect that level of snappiness to launch now, I mean a second or two is fine but more than that takes away from the experience IMO. When I first installed LaunchBox I made the mistake of adding a full ROM set and it took like 7 seconds to launch a game, now it's just my curated ROM list of like 100 games and it launches games acceptably.

Safe to assume with BigBox my joystick will work without a mouse like pointer like in LaunchBox, and be able to launch games with a button click instead of the double button click like in LaunchBox?

I think I had more questions but drawing a blank now...

 

 

[Lordmonkus]

I will tell you straight up that system won't run BigBox with all the bells and whistles of a heavy theme without issues, it will be laggy and slow.

It won't impact the load time of the roms themselves but navigating it would be a chore.

You could run it with a more streamlined theme without all the eye candy like transition effects and videos and clear logos but judging by what you are describing as what you want. BigBox does benefit greatly from a dedicated graphics card and that laptop doesn't have one so that will hurt it as well.

For reference I have an old system with BigBox on it will a simple theme (Fundamental Dark) and it runs BigBox fine, not as well as my other higher end PCs of course but it isn't a bad experience at all.

Here are the specs on it:

Windows 7
AMD Athlon 3800+ @ 2.4 GHz
2 gigs ram
Radeon 7850 (1 gig DDR5 vram)

[Kondorito]

One of my sets is very similar to yours (it has 8GB RAM, basic intel card and little better i3). Except for the default theme and the Unified ones, you will not get snappy themes at all (unless you disable some of the artwork). So I dont know if you will have a positive experience from the get go. 

Second question; yes. You will be fine with a gamepad in BB. 

Edited November 20, 2018 by Kondorito

[Ninjadog]

Thanks for the input.  Hmm might look into a used PC with a decent graphics card, but seems so overkill just to run pretty themes. I don't really play Steam games anymore, just consoles and mostly MAME these days. Something to think about when I build my cab, but kinda sucks for my dedicated lappy retro gaming rig.  Do you guys think even video snaps will make it laggy?

What kid of card and CPU are recommended for those heavy themes?

I'll probably still upgrade just for the joystick support

[Lordmonkus]

1 minute ago, Ninjadog said:

What kid of card and CPU are recommended for those heavy themes?

Any dedicated GPU is fine, as I show in my low end system specs above I am using a very old now Radeon card with only 1 gig of ddr5 vram.

[Ninjadog]

3 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

Any dedicated GPU is fine, as I show in my low end system specs above I am using a very old now Radeon card with only 1 gig of ddr5 vram.

You also said that's good for the simple themes, whats about the bell and whistle eye candy ones?

[Lordmonkus]

I turned all the bells and whistles off but I think the performance bottleneck there was the lack of system ram (only 2 gigs).

If you are thinking about a new system I suggest taking a look at a video ETA Prime did on the Ryzen 2200G / 2400G, it's pretty darn cheap for a new system and rocks for emulation and even some modern PC Gaming. You don't need a graphics card in it but you can throw one into it later on if you wanted.

 

[Ninjadog]

37 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

I turned all the bells and whistles off but I think the performance bottleneck there was the lack of system ram (only 2 gigs).

If you are thinking about a new system I suggest taking a look at a video ETA Prime did on the Ryzen 2200G / 2400G, it's pretty darn cheap for a new system and rocks for emulation and even some modern PC Gaming. You don't need a graphics card in it but you can throw one into it later on if you wanted.

 

Thanks coach