Mame Conversion PC

As of September 2012, the official Mame development website suggests that you will need a PC with the following minimum system requirements:

* Any MMX-capable AMD or Intel processor (Pentium III or later recommended for current versions)
* Windows 98 or later (Windows 2000 or later preferred)
* DirectX 5.0 or later (included with all versions of Windows 98 or later)
* A DirectDraw or Direct3D capable graphics card
* Any DirectSound capable sound card

These are minimum requirements only, and some games may not run at full speed or even be playable, especially those games that were released most recently. If you plan to use a front end on your Mame conversion, you will need to take into consideration the system requirements for the front end, your operating system along with system requirements of Mame.

As a very basic guide, you will need:

1. A CPU. Mame can now make use of CPU's with more than one core. Almost all current CPU's (As of September 2012) will have more than one core.

2. A compatible motherboard for your CPU.

3. A sound card if you don't plan on using the on board sound card that come with most motherboards.

4. A video card if you don't plan on using the on board video card that come with most motherboards.

5. A hard drive. Any new hard drive will have more than enough capacity for the standard Mame files & roms. If you plan on using a front end and also emulating other computers and/or consoles you will need to take this into consideration when choosing the size of hard drive.

6. A CD-ROM drive. This can be either left in or out of your arcade machine and will help greatly when upgrading/adding ROMs or updating your operating system.

7. Wireless internet access is also strong recommended as an easy way to update your system or to live stream your game play to the world.