MAME Emulation help

[Moleburt]

I'm trying to decide if I need to update the GPU of my mame pc, I currently have two PC's, my old one has been setup as my mame/emulator PC that I will be putting into the cabinet that I'm building, for the most part this PC is probably overkill for any emulation, but I have noticed with CHD games like NFL Blitz it drops the fps really badly once the game actually starts playing. My specs for the mame PC are this;

• AMD FX 8350 8 Core Processor 4.00Ghz
• 32 GB RAM
• Dual GTX 760 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 (SLI)
• 256 GB SSD (Programs and OS installed onto)
• 4TB HDD for storage

This runs everything just fine, but there seem to be games like NFL Blitz that can't run without dropping fps to like 50% in game, but if I open them on my newer (very good) PC they run without a hitch, and I know that that PC is way more than overkill

• i7 6950X 10 Core 3.00Ghz
• 128GB RAM
• NVIDIA Titan X Pascal 12GB
• 256GB SSD (Programs and OS installed onto)
• 4TB and 8TB HDD for storage

Now I know that PC running games without fps loss isn't a surprise, but the processor on my old PC should still be running everything really well, the only thing that seems like it would be significantly worse is the GPU, would upgrading to a 970 or 1050 or something likely help with games like this? I feel like this PC for the most part should be more than enough to emulate anything I could want, but would like to be able to have those games that are struggling a little start to run smoother. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Headrush69]

A better GPU won't make a difference in your case. Core speed is king when it comes to MAME. (for the most part)

The Intel chip is just better in real benchmarks. Doesn't that chip turbo up to 4.5 Ghz?

 

Edit: According to this that Intel chip looks considerably more powerful: UserBenchmark comparison

Edited December 15, 2019 by Headrush69

[Moleburt]

Ya it is way better, do you think overclocking my CPU would improve performance quite a bit? I’ve just never overclocked anything before.

[Headrush69]

19 minutes ago, Moleburt said:

Ya it is way better, do you think overclocking my CPU would improve performance quite a bit? I’ve just never overclocked anything before.

Yes but impossible to say by how much and per game will differ. (I have a dual core i3 @ 3900Ghz that makes a massive difference over a 4 core i5 @ 3500 Ghz in another machine)

If you have a suitable cooling system, doesn't hurt to test and see how much difference it makes and how much you can increase clock speed.)

Do you have auto frame skip enabled in MAME? My cabinet has a much lower benchmark CPU than yours and with frame skipping NFL Blitz 2000 Gold is very playable.

[Moleburt]

I tried enabling that earlier and it didn’t make a difference really, maybe I’ll try overclocking my CPU and enabling that and see what happens. I may not have everything optimized for my setup or something too, I’m still learning how to properly set everything up with MAME.