iGPU strong enough for HLSL?

[bytestorm]

Thinking about making a portable mame setup built into a custom stick. But I am not sure if I can safely skip a dedicated GPU when using HLSL.. my thought was an i3 with hd4600 intergrated and a mini itx motherboard . Or a g3258 anniversary edition with a dedicated gpu.. but that will add size

Anyone tried mame with Intels iGPU instead on a dedicated card?
I want to be able to run most games but have low interest in 3D fighters so mostly 2d..

[gray117]

Should be absolutely fine for mame. More than enough...

[Fudoh]

HLSL's features range from very simple to extremely GPU hungry. Really depends on what you want to do.

[bytestorm]

Well I would like to add scanlines as close as possible to a crt..
I do have a lot of the games already in pcb format but it would just be fun tu bring them over to a friends house without taking my supergun and 29" trinitron crt with me..

So I really want as good crt emulation as possible with the help from the HLSL thread here where I found really good settings. . Although I have no idea how much they pressure the GPU.

[Xyga]

I think any desktop i3 Haswell w/ HD4600 can run PCSX2 @ 2x native resolution (except crazy and badly optimized games like Shadow of the Colossus).
So I would be surprised if it couldn't handle HLSL easily...

EDIT: by the way CRT-Royale shader under RetroArch is better than HLSL.

[bytestorm]

I think any desktop i3 Haswell w/ HD4600 can run PCSX2 @ 2x native resolution (except crazy and badly optimized games like Shadow of the Colossus).
So I would be surprised if it couldn't handle HLSL easily...

EDIT: by the way CRT-Royale shader under RetroArch is better than HLSL.

Nice info, thanks.
Yeah I have seen that shader and it looks awesome. But can I rum newest mame in RetroArch? I'll need to Google that right away

Thanks all so far!

[Xyga]

They update the MAME 'core' from time-to-time, current is called 'MAME 2015' and you have to get it in their buildbot: http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/win-x86_64/
Don't know how often it's updated though...

RetroArch isn't user friendly at all, but that damn CRT-Royale shader has no equal. Good luck with it.

By the way OpenGL and GLSL are now working in MAME and some shaders are being ported to other builds like MAMEUIFX (only one for now though).
The future is relatively bright.

[bytestorm]

They update the MAME 'core' from time-to-time, current is called 'MAME 2015' and you have to get it in their buildbot: http://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/win-x86_64/
Don't know how often it's updated though...

RetroArch isn't user friendly at all, but that damn CRT-Royale shader has no equal. Good luck with it.

By the way OpenGL and GLSL are now working in MAME and some shaders are being ported to other builds like MAMEUIFX (only one for now though).
The future is relatively bright.

Hmm I found your posts in the shader thread and you have a more beefier setup than the one I am planning and using a dedicated gpu instead of my planned intergrated one, and you still experienced lag?

I wonder wich needs least gpu power?

[Xyga]

Depends on what you call lag but no emulation setup is perfect, i mean it's not my setup but the limitations of the emulators and the OS that leave a level of delay and some slowdown bugs.

Emulators as far as I know can't perfectly sync games with a refresh rate originally far-off 60Hz without a bit of forcing or buffering.
And sometimes something goes wrong and you get a slowdown issue but that's not your hardware's fault.

Of course a dedicated GPU is better but I wouldn't know how much of its power could be too much compared to a decent iGPU like the HD4600.

For instance I have a low profile Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti (the fastest low profile nVidia available I believe) and I think the poor card is getting bored with only RetroArch, PCSX2, Dolphin, etc.

Sometimes I wonder maybe an i3 4360 alone or even 4330 would have been enough for everything, dunno...

[bytestorm]

Ok i see. By the way, the i3 I have been looking at is this one:
Intel Core i3-4370 (3.8ghz stock with hd4600)

Seems like the king of the dual cores at the moment..
It's so hard to know just what will work.. but my main goal is mame, and perhaps ps1 emulator is the highest I need to go but mainly mame. I thought at first that the lowest 4th gen i3 might also work perfect, but it would greatly suck if it would not.. since I am actually thinking on selling my pcb collection I might just get some spare cash . Nothings decided yet but I ain't got that much time to play to justify all the money I have bound up in many of the great classics I do own on pcb :/..

Now next step will be to check for a good chipset motherboard in mATX or mITX formfactor.

And i know that emulation will never be perfect it just might be close enough for me to enjoy it..

[Xyga]

I think an i3 4160 w/ HD4400 iGPU is well enough for MAME with shaders and whatever 32 or 64bit emulation. (I think...)

That big i3 4370 on the other side is a beast, but maybe for the price you can have a lesser i5 that will be way more powerful with its 4 cores.

Not sure it can handle PCSX2, Dolphin and the like though...

Man, I wish hardware websites would use emulators in benchmarking sessions. ^^

[bytestorm]

Hmm the spec difference is really minimal to the 4160 but the price is much better... argh!
Although I think I found a shop that'll let me return it if I'm not happy so I could try the 4160 perhaps.. but it must be done within 14 days of recieval. Man I would have wanted a benchmark list for all cpus with mame. they always test them with farcry /bf /skyrim engines blabla calculate pi or whatever. . I need to tell them that nobody is interested in that crap.. we wants to know how well it runs mame!? And also how old can it make my new TV look! ?

[Xyga]

This won't help much again but what they say on PCSX2 forums is that if you want to use this emulator you need a CPU with at least a score of 2,000 in this bench: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
(i3-4160 scored 2,072)
They don't tell about its iGPU performance though, but they say the minimum dGPU requirements are:
Radeon R7 260 (or) Geforce GT-740 (GDDR5 version)
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Low-budg ... -for-pcsx2
As you can see bigger i3's as a standalone solution are deemed powerful-enough.

[bytestorm]

This won't help much again but what they say on PCSX2 forums is that if you want to use this emulator you need a CPU with at least a score of 2,000 in this bench: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
(i3-4160 scored 2,072)
They don't tell about its iGPU performance though, but they say the minimum dGPU requirements are:
Radeon R7 260 (or) Geforce GT-740 (GDDR5 version)
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Low-budg ... -for-pcsx2
As you can see bigger i3's as a standalone solution are deemed powerful-enough.

hmm.. and the 4370 isnt that much higher.. scored 2,234. + 50$
But the main thing is mame, and hopefully all the way up to cave SH-3.

I wonder how high the CPU+cooler would be? I thought at first that I would build this one into a custom arcade stick, since the mITX boards are only 17x17cm, but I am starting to wonder it thats possible at all..

Plus I need to read up on how the choice of chipset will affect the performance.. there are so many chipset variations and I honestly dont know how to compare them.
After that, there are low profile rams.. 4gb should be enough but the iGPU will use some part of it so I might just get 8gb, even thou thats prolly overkill.

[Lord of Pirates]

I think you'd be better off with a portable mITX tower than trying to fit everything into an arcade stick.

[bytestorm]

Was thinking something like this

http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepecon.htm

But yeah.. you do have a valid point.. it would be easier and since I already got a great Usb arcade stick that I could use.. hmm

But building is really fun though!