Mame Vs. Console Specific Emulators

[MechaPumpkin]

Hi there,

I am new to Wiz, but I have used MAME for years (albeit I'm not a very sophisticated user).

My question is, what are the advantages to using console specific emulators, when MAME can handle many of them? I know there are some performance increases in some of the more specific ones, but is it an increase across the board for that console, or is it hit or miss and sometimes MAME performs better?

Also, and please excuse my ignorance here, are the ROMs for the console specific emulators different per emulator, or do all of these emulators use the same ROMs that are used with MAME?

I have only ever used MAME.

Thanks for any advice you can give, and I apologize if this question is really obvious or stupid. It's just a really simple basic noob question that I can't seem to find an answer for (maybe it's so simple everyone assumes it's obvious).

Thanks!

 

[slaanesh]

Hi there,

I am new to Wiz, but I have used MAME for years (albeit I'm not a very sophisticated user).

My question is, what are the advantages to using console specific emulators, when MAME can handle many of them? I know there are some performance increases in some of the more specific ones, but is it an increase across the board for that console, or is it hit or miss and sometimes MAME performs better?

Generally specific emulators will perform better than MAME. Case in point is FBA which emulators CPS1/CPS2 very well. However, FBA also emulates other games like Sega System 16 but MAME does these better... much better in fact.
One of the reasons is that MAME isn't totally generic. Each driver for a game (or set of games) can vary greatly in efficiency. MAME used to be more efficient but now the MAME team strives for "more understandable code and methods" in an effort to document the way the games function. As a result, earlier versions of MAME can be faster than later versions.