Hi,
I know this is a FAQ but bear with me.
Since nowadays modern CPUs are evolving to multiple cores but at the same time lowering clock frequencies for each one how does that affect emulation like mame?
I mean, say I have a AMD single 3x00+ core that runs at x freq. If I upgrade to a dual core 4000+ the actual frequency for each core is slower.
Since MAME doesn't make use of dual cores does that mean performance will suffer greatly? How are things beeing done by mame users to improve performance? Faster single core or good dual core?

I'm looking at upgrading in the very near future and right now I'm leaning towards the Athlon64 X2 4400+ because I hear it can run pretty much anything in SSF at full speed, but I'm curious how it handles other applications or if perhaps there's another chip I should be looking at.

My end goal is basically full speed Saturn emulation via SSF and strong performance in DOSbox and SolVBE. Actually, if anyone has the 4400+ or something similar, I'd love to bounce some stuff off of you to get some performance numbers. Mainly, I've got an OEM demo disc of Terra Nova that I'd like someone to run some tests with :)

Some games uses multi CPUs... I suppose it would be possible to distribute each on separate threads so that each core can process one. Maybe this is already done, I'm not familiar with MAME's sourcecode in this area... anybody knows?



[download a life]

> Some games uses multi CPUs... I suppose it would be possible to distribute each
> on separate threads so that each core can process one. Maybe this is already
> done, I'm not familiar with MAME's sourcecode in this area... anybody knows?

There's like one monster thread each month on mame.net/msg about this "issue" and the bottom line is : not worth the hassle. Multi-CPU games run full speed on today's single-cpu PCs and there's no speed gain splitting CPU and graphics on, say, sfrush - same framerate with or without rendering. Splitting one emulated CPU on 2 physical ones would probably generate more overhead than speed and no one wants to undertake this kind of experiment since it would be a lot of work for very uncertain results and an obfuscated source code.
That said, PCSX2 seems to have a lot of multithreading going on and people who are interested in the subject should look at that project instead of MAME - it makes more sense in every way.