PC specifications for emulation esp Teknoparrot

[Outrunner]

I'm interested in getting a PC for living room emulation purposes, especially Teknoparrot and Outrun. Am wondering about costs/specifications and if anyone has recommendations please.

 

From what I can glean an Intel chipset with Nvidia graphics is the way to go as I'd originally looked at a Ryzen box but apparently thats a no go. What kind of specification do I need and is there any type of machines you can recommend that are small, quiet and affordable? Budget is around £500 and I don't mind buying used.

 

I've noticed these Chinese Mini PCs on youtube:

 

 

 

Are they reliable and fit for purpose? Bit over my current budget as I was initially looking at Lenovo M93P:

 

 

But don't think its powerful enough with Intel HD Graphics? Ideally I want to emulate upto Dreamcast/PSP/Gamecube at 1080P/60FPS with no frameskip so what do you recommend?

 

Thanks

[juice]

i am running tekkno parrot all working and up to ps2 ,game cube , you shuld hit 1080p with that spec, and i could run almost anything on the intel onboad graphics not teknoparrot tho but (mame,psp,gamecube,ps1, saturn and below)but i would et a grafics card to run your games with shaders/better resolution that will make them look better , i would recomend a better setup then what i got. good luck

myspec

win7

16gb rame

i7 3770k

asus mb

gf 750ti

[Outrunner]

Thanks.

 

The thing thats confusing for TeknoParrot is that if you look at the specs for O2 they are quite low:

 

CPU : Intel Celeron 2.8ghz

GFX : NVIDIA GeForce 7600gs 256mb AGP
GFX Memory : 512MB (256 bit GDDR3)
Operating System : Montavista Linux
GFX Capabilities : Vertex Shader 3.0, Pixel Shader 3.0
Audio : On-board audio.
Video output: One analog D-Sub, Two Digital DVI outputs.
Display : Single or dual monitor support. Can output the same picture to each monitor or different pictures on each monitor, the resolution for each of the 2 monitors can also be different.
Sound output: The two front speakers have RCA connectors, SPDIF for full surround.
Resolution : HDTV (High Definition)
RAM : 1024MB 184pin DDR SD-RAM PC3200 (2x 512MB DDR 400 sticks)
LAN : 10/100/1000 TBase Gigabit Network
Other : DVD Drive Support, USB2.0 (x4) - Sega ALL.NET online support.
Connector Format : JVS
Protection : A PIC microcontroller, looking similar to the one used on NAOMI/Triforce/Chihiro but containing considerably different information, locking both the HDD and Compact Flash Cards.

 

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=984

 

And considering that TP seems to interface/overlay more than actually emulate the hardware I'd have thought an average modern system would handle it easily? The info online is quite contradictory with some saying low specs are cool and others saying you need loads of power?

[Guest petje]

 

Very nice build below 

As you can see a full height, but not full length GPU fits.

Neither a standard ATX size PSU, and ordering a high wattage (non atx size) sfx size psu is a PITA world wide delivery problems

Or something like this

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-SST-RVZ02B-USA-Computer-Motherboards/dp/B07KTC2SX9

 

Or try a HTPC case that fits in your AV rack 

Edited February 13, 2021 by petje

[Outrunner]

Thanks but those options are way out of my price range plus I'd prefer not to have to build a PC, especially with how overpriced components are at the minute. 

 

Does Tekno really need that much power? I've spied a couple of second hand machines that are specced as follows:

 

• Intel Core i5-8400, 3.90GHz, 6 Cores Processor
• Storage 1TB 7200 RPM HDD. 16GB Intel Optane
• GeForce GTX 1050 2GB GDDR5 Dedicated Graphics Card
• Memory RAM 8GB

OR:

• Intel Core i5-9400F, 2.90GHz, 6 Cores Processor
• Storage 256GB SSD for top speed
• GeForce GTX 1650 4GB Dedicated Graphics Card
• Memory RAM 8GB

Both of these are within my budget and come in a regular style PC box. The main aim is to play Outrun 2 SP DX in 1080p/60FPS perfectly smoothly. I know the rest of Retroarch stuff will work perfectly anyway as its already handled by a Playstation Classic so getting a decent enough spec for Tekno is the main thing here whilst spending around £500, tops.

[Guest petje]

45 minutes ago, Outrunner said:

I've spied a couple of second hand machines

Both are fine and have better specs than I have, so you are good to go

Make sure you have more than enough storage space
1TB fills pretty quick with a few arcade games

So a 500 GB SSD and a 2 or 3 TB HDD should work out fine, or bigger if you want

Should you go for 1 big SSD or HDD, use multiple partitions to seperate windows from all your other data

Should windows fail, only data on that partition will be deleted

C:\Windows <500GB SSD

D:\Games < HDD

 

Intel optane is not needed (outdated / obsolete)

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-gives-up-on-making-optane-ssds-for-consumer-desktop-pcs/

 

Get yourself a motherboard with a M2 / NVME slot for a SSD, it is much faster than SATA

 

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by petje

[bedums]

Le 11/02/2021 à 18:41, Outrunner a dit :

I'm interested in getting a PC for living room emulation purposes, especially Teknoparrot and Outrun. Am wondering about costs/specifications and if anyone has recommendations please.

 

From what I can glean an Intel chipset with Nvidia graphics is the way to go as I'd originally looked at a Ryzen box but apparently thats a no go. What kind of specification do I need and is there any type of machines you can recommend that are small, quiet and affordable? Budget is around £500 and I don't mind buying used.

 

I've noticed these Chinese Mini PCs on youtube:

 

 

 

Are they reliable and fit for purpose? Bit over my current budget as I was initially looking at Lenovo M93P:

 

 

But don't think its powerful enough with Intel HD Graphics? Ideally I want to emulate upto Dreamcast/PSP/Gamecube at 1080P/60FPS with no frameskip so what do you recommend?

 

Thanks

Hi 

i Was in the same situation. and i choose a estetic pc.

Msi trident artic 10sc With a gforce rtx 2060 

its expensive but every emulator RUN on this. No problème for ps3 too 

sorry for my english its not perfect 😅

this is a link of my pc

https://www.bol.com/nl/p/msi-mpg-trident-3-arctic-10sc-013eu-intel-core-i7-16-gb-2512-gb-hdd-ssd-desktop-wit/9300000005458057/?Referrer=ADVNLGOO002021-G-115058519693-S-1036228503753-9300000005458057&gclid=CjwKCAiAjp6BBhAIEiwAkO9WutvlKq2up3RdrIicbWwPt-mQLwjgFDE9OXG_xMF7YlVmG3gGFMsv9xoCzaQQAvD_BwE&country=BE&approved=true&language=fr-BE

Edited February 13, 2021 by bedums

[Outrunner]

57 minutes ago, petje said:

Both are fine and have better specs than I have, so you are good to go

 

 

 

Thanks, both are HP Pavilions and according to what I've quickly checked online aren't upgradeable due to the OEM PSUs being a bit different and only having enough power for the standard rig. HP don't sell upgrades either.

 

See things like this are why I don't like PC.

 

56 minutes ago, bedums said:

Msi trident artic 10sc With a gforce rtx 2060

 

That looks absolutely awesome, thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'd been looking at those small Alienware Alphas but apparently they have cooling issues and can get super noisy. That MSI is the kind of thing I had in mind but the prices are absolutely sky high but it comes from a branded company as opposed to no name Chinese boxes so at least you know the quality/durability will be there as thats a concern with these small boxes.

 

 

If someone started punting out small HTPC sized gaming boxes that were quiet and reasonably priced they could clean up as that sector of the market seems to be being ignored.

[Zebra]

Asking about the specs needed for Teknoparrot is like asking what specs you need to play PC games. Every game is different.

 

It's not the same as running a console emulator which is always emulating the same hardware regardless of which game you play.

 

Teknoparrot isn't an emulator. It's software that allows you to play arcade games that ran on regular PC hardware with your own controls on a regular Windows PC while bypassing security checks.

 

The devs describe it as a "compatibility layer" (a bit like Steam). It's really just playing PC games on a PC.

 

In other words, a PC can easily be enough to run one game in TP but be completely inadequate for another - just like with any other PC games...

 

The easiest way to see what sort of specs would be needed for a particular game in TP is to look up what CPU and GPU was used in the original arcade PC.

 

For the most part, any hardware that is the same or superior to the original PCB will be fine. It's not like emulators that need to be many times more powerful than the original hardware

 

Sometimes games that used Nvidia GPUs work better on PCs with Nvidia GPUs and same with AMD but there are usually patches to get around such issues. 

 

While most arcade PCs are low spec compared to home gaming PCs, there are some of the latest ones that will require something decent when they eventually become playable (like House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn). So.... It's best to leave yourself some head room...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ZX3000GT1]

If you want to future-proof your PC I personally recommend 2060 Super. ALLS UX (Arcade PC used for HOTD Scarlet Dawn, Sega Worlds Driver Championship, FGO Arcade, etc.) uses 1070 and 2060 Super is more powerful.

[Outrunner]

9 hours ago, Zebra said:

For the most part, any hardware that is the same or superior to the original PCB will be fine. It's not like emulators that need to be many times more powerful than the original hardware

 

Sometimes games that used Nvidia GPUs work better on PCs with Nvidia GPUs and same with AMD but there are usually patches to get around such issues. 

 

While most arcade PCs are low spec compared to home gaming PCs, there are some of the latest ones that will require something decent when they eventually become playable (like House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn). So.... It's best to leave yourself some head room...

 

Thanks, that makes it much easier and helps to clarify the confusion. Outrun 2 is mainly what I want to play and that natively ran on:

 

CPU : Intel Celeron 2.8ghz

GFX : NVIDIA GeForce 7600gs 256mb AGP
GFX Memory : 512MB (256 bit GDDR3)

 

Which is super low specs in a modern machine whilst I've got other folks saying you need an absolutely cutting edge, huge, sound like a turbine engine with LEDs all over the place PC just to play Pong! Is there a resource for Tekno of what supported games ran on what hardware anywhere?

 

I had a feeling that this worked via interpretation layer and not emulation due to the shared hardware and that was why it didn't make any sense when there was such divergence. So as a rule of thumb just look up the specs of the game you want to play in TP and make sure you've got more grunt.

 

Also following on from your other post about getting a full size PC, I really don't have the space nor inclination for that which is why I've never been a PC gamer. Believe me if I could mod a console to run TP I would, happily, as I dislike Window as an OS and all that comes with it, especially those ugly ass machines. Thats why I'm trying to find an aesthetically pleasing solution and am thinking about the HP Pavilion:

 

 

As they are within my budget second hand and have the specs listed above. What is putting me off about this HP is that it apparently uses non standard parts and can't be upgraded which means I might as well buy the small Chinese box listed in the OP instead as its got a far better spec and much more agreeable form factor:

 

CPU	Intel Core i7-9850H
Core	6 Cores 12 Threads, 2.6GHz, Up to 4.6GHz
Cache	16M
Display core	NVIDIA GTX 1650 4GB (soldered on board, Can not upgrade)
RAM	16GB DDR4-2666 included
Hard Drives Capacity	0GB
Solid State Disk	Support 1* M.2 2280 SSD, (NVME 512G SSD Included)

 

5 hours ago, ZX3000GT1 said:

If you want to future-proof your PC I personally recommend 2060 Super. ALLS UX (Arcade PC used for HOTD Scarlet Dawn, Sega Worlds Driver Championship, FGO Arcade, etc.) uses 1070 and 2060 Super is more powerful.

 

But truly there is no end when it comes to PCs, is there? There is always something faster, better, stronger, harder coming along.

 

I use a Playstation Classic for emulation and that is tiny, instant on, no messing around and handles everything I could ever want on arcade upto a point. Getting this new machine would replace that and add Dreamcast, Tekno and PSP and possibly some PS2 but not essential. Mainly I'm dropping this cash just to play Outrun so you can see why its a bit nuts from my POV...

[Guest petje]

15 minutes ago, Outrunner said:

Thats why I'm trying to find an aesthetically pleasing solution

Form follows function

[Outrunner]

6 minutes ago, petje said:

Form follows function

Maybe but if they can cram everything inside a gaming laptop or Xbox then why would a PC need to be so large it can be seen from outer space?

 

I get it, its OK for you lot who sit in your bedrooms playing games but my requirements aren't the same which is why I'm quite specific with what I outline but grateful for the help and insight you professionals provide as I know next to nothing about being PC.

 

From what I've learned since posting this thread it seems the huge box option is what all the purists would go for because its cheaper, more durable and upgradable. The tiny quiet unobtrusive box that can be hidden away when not in use that I like is more expensive, may have cooling issues and has a fixed spec. The middle ground of those Mini PCs I've looked at seems to be a halfway house with none of the benefits of the big box whilst being not much cheaper than the small box.

 

Looking at the spec of the small box above its actually quiet powerful and should easily handle anything I throw at it. The tech tests online about temperature and throttling seem to be OK as the fan management works pretty well and really for what I'm using it for it shouldn't be sweating anyway as I'm not pushing that much through it. That combined with the insane price jacking on graphics cards at the moment (which is something I only discovered when reading old threads and finding out people are selling year old tech at more than they paid for it due to shortages) are really making the small box seem to be the best fit for my needs.

 

Reddit reviews on these cheap Chinese Mini PCs seem quite good as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That said I just found this video when searching:

 

 

 

Very interesting as you can get those machines from £100 - £250 and Dell are good quality so all in all with the extra parts its still below budget and looks reasonably decent/small.

[Guest TomW1972]

Teknoparrot runs well for me on what must be at least a five or 6 yea old sff  HP Z230 workstation with a 3.4 Ghz quad core Xeon E3, which I had lying around my office, not a powerhouse of a processor by any stretch of the imagination even in its day, but very stable, on tits side it did have 32gb  of Ram, the limiting factor really was the graphics card having to be low profile to fit in the case, I replaced the old Quadro card which was in a word pathetic with a 2gb NVidia 750ti I had lying around at home and bought a new SSD for the OS drive, the performance is still good enough to run everything on Teknoparrot and the Nessica live 2 games pretty well, and has loads of usb ports, perfect for inside a cab.

[Guest petje]

On 2/14/2021 at 11:35 AM, Outrunner said:

Thats why I'm trying to find an aesthetically pleasing solution

Maybe this ?

Or this ?

No idea how well the integrated GPU will perform with Teknoparot games

Probably good since PS3 emulation runs fine

There are AMD shader patches / fixes for some arcade games

 

Ask on the forum how well those Radeon 7 IGPU's perform with Teknoparrot games

Edited February 16, 2021 by petje

[Outrunner]

Thank you, that is very handy but from reading up about Tekno it works best with Nvidia GPUs so I'm going to stick to whats recommended for the simplest option. They do look great though, perfect aesthetics and size on the second one.

 

I've been looking around and it seems repurposing old SFF is the best option overall as they are quite capable for emulation and inexpensive, quiet and relatively small. How does this spec seem please? Took your advice about the dual drives as it makes sense.

 

Intel i5 4590 3.3Ghz Quad Core

MSI 1050TI 4GB Low Profile

12gb RAM

240GB SSD + 2TB HDD

 

It appears the graphics card can only be fitted into the black PCIe x4 slot, not the blue x16, due to there not being enough room in the case. Is that a major issue? 

This does seem the best option for me as they are little over the size of a console, quite quiet and very cheaply available. Not to mention how Dell make decent quality, reliable stuff. Wonder why these aren't spoken of more as I was totally unaware of this option until a few days ago

 

Inspired by:

 

 

Bonus for spec info differences:

 

 

 

[Outrunner]

Purchased a SFF with these specs:

 

Intel i5 4590 3.3Ghz Quad Core

MSI 1050TI 4GB Low Profile

12gb RAM

240GB SSD + 2TB HDD

 

And it plays Outrun perfectly. Would recommend anyone looking to get started in emulation or whoever wants a relatively small, quiet and cheap PC for the living room to check these out as they tick all the boxes.

 

Getting used to Windows and its general crappiness as an OS however is another thing. Quite possibly the most user unfriendly experience ever, esp Windows Defender with its "Hai, I just deleted loads of files just because, kthanksbye!" and all of this install this driver then that driver and this update and blah blah blah.

 

A Linux based fork of Tekno would be most welcome at some point but for now this will do.

[Guest petje]

49 minutes ago, Outrunner said:

A Linux based fork of Tekno would be most welcome at some point but for now this will do.

And run a windows based arcade game, in WINE in linux ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)

 

49 minutes ago, Outrunner said:

Getting used to Windows and its general crappiness as an OS however is another thing. Quite possibly the most user unfriendly experience ever

So, you got experience with Linux ?

There are loads of Linux based arcade games

So could you have a look at those games to get them to run in Linux or Window$ as TP does ?

This is one of them, yes it runs on Linux, you would not want to reset a arcade machine 37 times a day

https://rawthrills.com/games/halo-fireteam-raven/

Compressed HDD image .img file is 57 GB of a 64 GB Transcend SSD

Runs on 64 bit Porteus Linux

Core is based on Slackware

https://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7742

 

LABEL RAW_THRILLS_NON_INTEL
MENU LABEL Raw Thrills Non-Intel
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND 3 nomodeset login=root cliexec=/rawsrc/configs/gfx_non-intel.sh

LABEL RAW_THRILLS_INTEL
MENU LABEL Raw Thrills Intel
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND 3 login=root cliexec=/rawsrc/configs/gfx_intel.sh

LABEL RAW_THRILLS_UEFI_NON_INTEL
MENU LABEL Raw Thrills UEFI Non-Intel
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND from=/mnt/sdb2 3 login=root cliexec=/rawsrc/configs/gfx_uefi_non-intel.sh

LABEL RAW_THRILLS_UEFI_INTEL
MENU LABEL Raw Thrills UEFI Intel
KERNEL /boot/syslinux/vmlinuz
INITRD /boot/syslinux/initrd.xz
APPEND from=/mnt/sdb2 3 login=root cliexec=/rawsrc/configs/gfx_uefi_intel.sh

Edited February 23, 2021 by petje

[Zebra]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:28 PM, Outrunner said:

Purchased a SFF with these specs:

 

Intel i5 4590 3.3Ghz Quad Core

MSI 1050TI 4GB Low Profile

12gb RAM

240GB SSD + 2TB HDD

 

And it plays Outrun perfectly. Would recommend anyone looking to get started in emulation or whoever wants a relatively small, quiet and cheap PC for the living room to check these out as they tick all the boxes.

 

Getting used to Windows and its general crappiness as an OS however is another thing. Quite possibly the most user unfriendly experience ever, esp Windows Defender with its "Hai, I just deleted loads of files just because, kthanksbye!" and all of this install this driver then that driver and this update and blah blah blah.

 

A Linux based fork of Tekno would be most welcome at some point but for now this will do.

 

You must be young if you think "Windows is the most user unfriendly experience ever". You obviously never had to wrestle with loading games from cassette on a Spectrum 48k or a Commodore 64. Or deal with all the silly command line BS of Dos. 

 

Windows, in my experience, is the most intuitive and user friendly experience of any multi-purpose computer. You literally just point n click to load games. It's designed to be simple enough for a monkey to operate. 

 

You can run emulators on multiple different consoles but none are anywhere near as easy to set up or versatile. 

 

Windows let's you run games and emulators from multiple systems without any evil corporation trying to brick your computer.

 

Sony won't even let you use your own controllers on their consoles. The rest of the world has moved to standard USB devices while Sony force you to use their "approved" gamepads. They act like North Korea... telling what you can use and who you're allowed to buy games from etc...

 

You can also easily upgrade a Windows PC to keep up with the times while continuing to play the thousands of games you already have. Consoles keep making you start again. It's only cheaper the first time.

 

I used to be a console guy but I got sick of all the BS after the PS3. Being forced to play HOD4 with the Sony dildo (AKA eye n sharp shooter) was the last straw for me. 

 

 

[ducon2016]

On 2/11/2021 at 9:41 AM, Outrunner said:

I've noticed these Chinese Mini PCs on youtube:

 

 

 

A friend has one of those and it is a pretty good machine. Only problem was storage, I think he only got 1TB drive which is a little tight if you want to put a lot of games. Other than that the machine is a beast, and runs many RPCS3 games much better than my arcade setup.

[Outrunner]

14 hours ago, ducon2016 said:

 

A friend has one of those and it is a pretty good machine. Only problem was storage, I think he only got 1TB drive which is a little tight if you want to put a lot of games. Other than that the machine is a beast, and runs many RPCS3 games much better than my arcade setup.

Is it quiet under full load? That was the main thing that put me off as its a lot of power in very small form factor. It does look great though and the power is perfect.