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MAME has to be able to reprogram a given video card's timing registers to run
at the correct horizontal scanrate
It does this by writing directly to the VGA regsiters on the card
but these days the VGA 'registers' are not physical registers at all -
instead, the register set is emulated by the card in software to comply with VGA standards
What this means is that reprogramming these registers may not produce the expected results,
especially if they are set to values well below or above the normal VGA 'envelope'.
Which is exactly what we need to do to generate an arcade compatible/TV mode
What follows are a list of known working and non-working cards
| ATI 3D Rage II+ |
| ATI 3dExpression PC2TV |
| ATI Xpert@Work |
| ATI Xpert@Play |
| Matrox Mystique (BIOS 1.8 is known to cause problems - 1.6 works) |
| Matrox G100 |
| Trident 8900 |
| Cirrus Logic (GD7543 chipsets) |
Video Card/Chipsets which DO NOT work
| All S3 cards tested |
| NeoMagic 128 (laptop) |
| STB Velocity 128 AGP (Riva 128 chipset) |
| ET6000 chipset cards |
| All 3Dfx cards |
So, what's the best video card to use with MAME on an arcade monitor ?
before I get to that, I really like to stress one thing -
One of the reason's that MAME is such an incredible piece of software is that it's open source
- if it lacks something, if it emulates a game incorrectly, if you've spotted a bug...
you can download the source - add, change, fix - contribute
The 'best' video card to use with MAME on an arcade monitor is any recent ATI card
but especially a 3D Rage Pro II
Why ?
because that's what all the arcade modes and the ATI SVGA driver in MAME we're developed on
but there's nothing to stop you from downloading the MAME source and adding modes/drivers
for whatever card you're using....