Ultimate Emulation Machine

[zedrein]

Hey all, I am new here so I'm sorry if this particular subject has been done to death.

So just as the title reads, I would like to build an awesome emulation CPU for NES, SNES and other 8-16 bit consoles. I currently use emulators like ZSNES and NEStopia, but I just don't like how they look on my VGA monitor. I've heard that their is a 15kHz video card on the market for Arcade monitors, so could I technically install the appropriate video card and then run a good RGB monitor like the Sony PVM series on it for my console games? That would be great because the scanlines would be naturally preserved and games would likely never look better.

If you guys have helpful tips on what has worked for you I'd love to hear them. My goal is to try and preserve these older games as best as possible, and I think if I can get good video quality, I'd be very happy.

[FatTrucker]

With most standard videocards you can use a solution like Soft15khz (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66402.0) or Powerstrip (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=169) both of which will convert your video signals to work with a conventional arcade monitor or TV.

Alternatively you can use an ArcadeVGA (http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html) graphics card from Ultimarc. This comes in both AGP and PCI-E variants and is based on the Radeon 9250 or Radeon HD2400 range respectively.

It has to be said though, you can achieve very satisfactory results using a PC CRT by enabling things like Bilinear filtering and using the in-built scanline filters that come with most emulators.

The only real necessity for using something like an ArcadeVGA is if you are running Mame on an Arcade monitor where the resolutions flip from game to game and use lots of very non-standard resolutions.

Hope that helps.

[zedrein]

With most standard videocards you can use a solution like Soft15khz (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=66402.0) or Powerstrip (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=169) both of which will convert your video signals to work with a conventional arcade monitor or TV.

Alternatively you can use an ArcadeVGA (http://www.ultimarc.com/avgainf.html) graphics card from Ultimarc. This comes in both AGP and PCI-E variants and is based on the Radeon 9250 or Radeon HD2400 range respectively.

It has to be said though, you can achieve very satisfactory results using a PC CRT by enabling things like Bilinear filtering and using the in-built scanline filters that come with most emulators.

The only real necessity for using something like an ArcadeVGA is if you are running Mame on an Arcade monitor where the resolutions flip from game to game and use lots of very non-standard resolutions.

Hope that helps.

^^^It does, thank you. Like I said, most of the time I play NES and SNES games, and occasionally Sega and Turbografx games. I am happy with the sound of these emulators, I just don't care for the image. Do you have a particular monitor that you would reccomend for old games? It just seems that LCD and the newer technologies don't look all that great for old games.

[FatTrucker]

You can pick up 21" Sony Trinitron CRT's (the black and silver Dell ones) for about £30 -£50 nowadays. Ideal for emulation. If you use the correct filters with each emulator you lose the heavily pixellated look you get with a high res display. Applying a bilinear filter usually works.

For Nestopia go to 'options' > 'video' then hit the settings option in the display box. Check the bilinear filter box.

For Zsnes go to 'config' > 'video' then click the filters tab and check the box for interpolation.

Should look great then.