HyperSpin requirements explained

[SophT]

There's a LOT of threads around here where people ask if they can use HyperSpin with XXX processor or XXX video. Go ahead, try a search- there's tons of these questions.

There are many reasons for this. One being that there's no 'official' list of minimum PC specs for HyperSpin. Another being that, even if there were, every emulator has different requirements. Yet another being that a BYOAC is usually a budget project and our wives/girlfriends don't understand why we need $2k to build a video game machine to play Pac-Man, and for some reason "because" isn't a good enough reason.

Generally, the consensus has been that a dual core, 2.0Ghz processor and 2Gb of RAM will get you through just about anything. For some people, who have been in the scene for a while- this doesn't sit well. It's too much of a resource hog, too expensive, and unnecessary.

Here's some information on why: As we all know, MAME has 0 GPU acceleration, it's entirely processor intensive. MAME will run with a 16mb integrated graphics chipset, doesn't matter. So the catch is- the faster your processor, the better emulation you're going to get.

As a rule of thumb, you need 8x-10x the processing power of the emulated hardware (if it's truly a different chipset than your rack) for smooth emulation. For a LONG time, this wasn't a problem. When early arcades and consoles were running in the neighborhood of 8Mhz (x10) means you needed an 80Mhz processor. The original Pentium was clocked to 100Mhz. But as the catalogue has increased, and emulation of more modern games has become standard- their specs have increased, and the processing power needed to continue emulating them has increased. For example, look at Blitz or Dolphin, if you want to see your computer chug along through them.

What people don't usually understand is that HyperSpin operates this same way! Usually new users see the animations, the flash, the videos, the particle effects, and think that it's GPU accelerated- well it's not. It's all handled by your CPU. Think of HyperSpin like a newer game that you want to emulate- you're going to need to have a faster processor.

Why doesn't it use GPU acceleration? HyperSpin is written in ActionScript 3.0 (Flash 10 OCX). That platform doesn't support GPU acceleration.

But won't Flash 10.1 support GPU acceleration- I'll just install that?

Here's the thing- yes, Flash 10.1 will support GPU acceleration, BUT Flash and Flash OCX (programs written in ActionScript and compiled) are 2 different things. HyperSpin doesn't care what version of flash you have on your computer (if any) it's written and compiled with flash 10. For GPU acceleration to be added BadBoyBill would need to rewrite the core with the Flash 10.1 OCX (which, by the way, is still beta and would be a bad idea). BUT he has said he's looked into it and it wouldn't really add anything. So for the forseeable future- HS will continue to be CPU only (no GPU acceleration).

Now, for those of you that still want to use an older processor, to emulate older games, perhaps HyperSpin isn't the front-end for you. Or maybe it's time to consider an upgrade.

Techreport.com just did an article stacking up every AMD and Intel processor from the P4 through the i7 Extreme. And the i3 530 (~$100 USD) and Athlon II x2 255 (~$75 USD) both just blow the Pentium 4 out of the water.

L4D2 (common graphics card)

P4: 42FPS

i3: 116FPS

x2: 109FPS

that's 2.5 to almost 3x the performance increase for less than $100 USD.

Read the article for stackups of things from games, media encoding, picture editing, multi-tasking, 3D rendering, F@H, and more to get a 'feel' for each processor.

So, a small processor upgrade (small in cost) is going to significantly improve your performance- in HS and in MAME.

Hope this answers some potential questions, and gives some beginners an explanation of HS (and MAME) work the way they do- and why the system requirements are so 'high'. It's not your grandma's Front-End!

[BadBoyBill]

Amen.

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

It's not your grandma's Front-End!

lol

that statement is so true

[Jochitko]

Thanks for the input! I just figured that If I get a pc that can handle Dreamcast emulation then HS shouldn be a problem for that same setup, right?

[stovies]

Very pleased that this has been explained. I'd never fully understood this before now.

[shimoda]

Excellent article SophT! Fabulous explanation on many fronts.

[cathaldub]

Great article, I upgraded mine when hyperspin first came out to a low cost Dual core as my p4 couldn't hack it

[rrcade]

O.k, so not being a Expert computer builder, can I upgrade my processer on my p4 machine or do I need a completely new mother board? Aren't the processors soldered in with a billion traces? I know what I need to run certain games smoothly but is there anywhere on this site that lists the Minimum Requirements for HS and ALL its themes to run smoothly?

Thanks

[SophT]

O.k, so not being a Expert computer builder, can I upgrade my processer on my p4 machine or do I need a completely new mother board? Aren't the processors soldered in with a billion traces? I know what I need to run certain games smoothly but is there anywhere on this site that lists the Minimum Requirements for HS and ALL its themes to run smoothly?

It's possible that you may be able to upgrade from your P4. Some of the newer (2-3 y/o) Intel Chips use the same socket as the last series of P4s did. What's the processor speed, or when did you buy your P4?

Processors have billions of transistors. Processors are not soldered to the main board- they sit an a "socket" there are different "sockets" on different motherboards/processors, so changing a processor is nothing special.

Minimum requirements for HS don't change from wheel to wheel or from theme to theme. It's a constant, and recommended hardware is a dual core processor running at 2Ghz and 2Gb of RAM.

[sosfx]

Just though I would chime in and say that SophT is right dual core processor running at 2Ghz and 2Gb of RAM is what I am using on one of my pc's and HyperSpin works great.

Great post SophT !!

one last question my HyperSpin start up vid stutters .... JOKING HEHE

[rrcade]

I'm sure I have a 2Ghz Pent 4 laying around, do I absolutely need a dual core? I mean the P4 runs Simpson Bowling smooth...

[phoenix]

i have a 2.0 ghz P4 and that works with hyperspin ok - HOWEVER - i turn off all the animations to get it run smoothly.

The P4 does the job for me as i am not emulating the newer systems. But when a dual core comes past my nose i will be snapping it up!!

[BadBoyBill]

It varies so much from pc to pc ,it is really hard to put requirements on HS exactly. Some people report running HS fine on an atom, but others have trouble on semi decent pc's , best way to tell is install it and run the main wheel. Theres enough action going on there to really tell if your pc can handle it.

[mr_tap]

From my testing I found resolution seems to have a great deal to do with it. If I run it on my main i7 PC with 1920x1080 (widescreen) res I will see spikes on many of the cores up to around 60% but if I run it at 640x480 which is a pretty standard cabinet res then it seldom jumps over 5%.

[Dazz]

From my testing I found resolution seems to have a great deal to do with it. If I run it on my main i7 PC with 1920x1080 (widescreen) res I will see spikes on many of the cores up to around 60% but if I run it at 640x480 which is a pretty standard cabinet res then it seldom jumps over 5%.

Umm, yeah... this is due to the fact that native res for HyperSpin is 1024x768. All themes are made at this resolution. Resolutions above this then HyperSpin has to re-scale each image. 1920x1080 from 1024x768 is a big jump, so yes you will see higher CPU usage. HyperSpin also has to scale down when running at lower resolutions so you will see more CPU usage. Running 1024x768 should give the best performance.

[kevin_lane]

Great Post!

[sp3ctr3]

ive just built a htpc and want to put HS on there but its runs like crap. really really bad. I bought a Zotac ION board w/ 4gb ddr2 ram and a nvidia 9400m.

Ive tried everything. Res set to native 104x768 turned all the bling off. Still very poor performance. Its not small hick ups here and there, its 1-5fps stuff. wheel not spinnig smoothly, artwork takes ages to load. hdd is a sata2 btw...

what gives? The processor is a intel 1,6ghz dual core. HS runs perfectly fine on a 1,5ghz amd single core with 512mb ram and a shitty geforce4 mx440

Only flash related stuff Ive installed (on XP) was google chrome. Can I up the performce by installing a flash app? My guess would be yes, but where to find it?

[SophT]

Well, I'm about to find out the answer to your question, as I've recently purchased a Lenovo Q110

it's probably a very similar spec to your zotac: 1.6ghz atom, 2gb ram (512 dedicated to video) and nVidia ION (which - again, doesn't matter at all for HS)

I'm going to say that it's probably not going to run very well (if at all) - because:

1) processor is too slow. 1.6ghz is 20% slower than the minimum recommended speed

2) 2Gb of RAM -512 for video = 1.5Gb usable mem, 25% below the minimum recommended amount

3) atom is a mobile chipset (less powerful than a desktop chip)

What I would recommend is turning off all the advanced transitions, etc... that you can find. You also may want to try a 32bit version of Win7 - My computer came with a license of Win7 HP, so that's what I'm going to be using. Don't forget to kill as many system processes, services, and scheduled tasks as possible to free up RAM and cpu cycles.

That means: disable Hyper-V, DEP, Windows Defender, Firewall, Automatic Updates, Aero, advanced window transitions - and finally grab the latest version of instant sheller from gameex (thanks guys!) to keep explorer.exe from ever running.

and no - the installed version of Flash (or no version) won't matter, see the first post.

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

I hate using atoms, we use them at work on different things and to me they really suck when even trying to push them just a little bit. Sorry it comes from bad experiences I bet alot of people love them but not me

I agree that when using hyperspin you need a min of dual core 2ghz and 2gb ram

I recently installed an i7 and now am using win7 64bit I must say hs and mame have never worked better

[kfchow]

Atom processors are good to keep power consumption down. We utilise an arm-v5 processor in our product and the machine (which has a video outputs, 2 outputs, relay outputs, serial outputs, infrared outputs and a zigbee chip) utilises 10w only.

Each processor is built based upon specific requirements. For gaming though you are right oooPLAYER1ooo i wouldn't utilise an Atom processor. Not enough grunt. Probably enough for pacman though:)

[SophT]

well I bought this particular machine for the ION chipset - and it's $175 price tag - it's going to run XBMC primarily, but I figure I'll probably end up seeing if it can be a good home for HS too

[kfchow]

XBMC is quite CPU intensive as well however the new beta is supposidly utilises the GPU or something. I could be wrong. I'm just going by what all of my dealers tell me.

[kfchow]

For those interested i integrated XBMC into the Control4 Home Automation System. This means that you can get cover art on any touchscreen, utilise the OLED display on your remote to pick movies, utilise your panasonic pbx phone to select movies on the LCD display, make lights turn down when you watch movies, curtains open/close, plasma/projector lifts move up/down, etc etc.

[stgdz]

So if hyperspin is such a cpu hog why does everyone recommend the 8800 chipset?

[SophT]

because it's a powerful but cheap GPU for the few emulators that have graphics acceleration (PSX, DC, NAOMI)