some PC hardware questions

[s8n]

hi RB members , i got some PC questions for my older MAME PC...............


after using CrystalDiskInfo with my main PC i thought id check the health of my MAME PC's HDD's and one of them says Caution. So im in the market for a new HDD , the Motherboard supports SATA II and i was wondering if i buy a SATA III HDD will it work ?


next issue im thinking of getting another Video Card as my ArcadeVGA 2 ( X550 ) is dated , the other card im looking at is a DirectX 10 card and i was wondering if it will do DirectX 9 also


chat soon

[Ghudda]

hi RB members , i got some PC questions for my older MAME PC...............


after using CrystalDiskInfo with my main PC i thought id check the health of my MAME PC's HDD's and one of them says Caution. So im in the market for a new HDD , the Motherboard supports SATA II and i was wondering if i buy a SATA III HDD will it work ?


next issue im thinking of getting another Video Card as my ArcadeVGA 2 ( X550 ) is dated , the other card im looking at is a DirectX 10 card and i was wondering if it will do DirectX 9 also


chat soon

As far as Sata III goes with backwards comparability to Sata II, it will work just fine. DirectX works the same way, with each revision being backwards compatible with the last. Sorry I can't suggest any hardware based around your needs, but both of those components will support their previous revisions.

[s8n]

hi Ghudda , fantastic info supplied thanks for your help............


i pretty much expected the info but i wanted to be sure

[Ghudda]

hi Ghudda , fantastic info supplied thanks for your help............


i pretty much expected the info but i wanted to be sure

Yeah, no worries!
Some reference material if you need more info on either one:
Sata II/III
DirectX 9/10

[Hobie-wan]

next issue im thinking of getting another Video Card as my ArcadeVGA 2 ( X550 ) is dated

Unless you're questionably emulating more recent 3D games, this is pointless. Old 2D arcade games and even early 3D ones will not be using a fraction of the card's capability.

[s8n]

hi Hobe , im hoping to run Atomiswave and Naomi through demul i also have slowdown with CAVE SH3 cv1k games.


the MAME PC is a 3.16Ghz Core2Duo , im looking into overclocking it too

[Hobie-wan]

That seems like it should be powerful enough to me, though I haven't tried emulating those. Is the PC bogged down with other crap going on?

[s8n]

i actually just installed Win XP SP3 as an experiment to using SP2 and i did get a small speed increase the SP3 install is really clean just installed Drivers and AntiVirus

[Hobie-wan]

Why AV? Download stuff on another machine and scan it there before moving it over. If you've got XP on it you don't want it connected to the net at all anyway. Remove all the windows components you don't need too.

[Anapan]

I was looking at arcade forge's website and saw that they have a vga dongle that they say will allow any videocard to use soft15khz. Haven't ordered it yet but it sounds great - choose any slimline card that meets your needs.
The only drawback is you'd lose the sd resolution for the bios/boot and dos text mode that the arcadevga has hacked into it (assuming you're using an arcade/sd resolution rgb crt for your display).