500MHz is probably pushing it a bit, but as a comparison, BBH told me
that his PC runs CPS-2 games in MAME at a frameskip of around 3 with
sound enabled. His PC runs at 450MHz, btw.
<p>
Video cards can make a difference in MAME's performance, although the
difference these days is pretty minor. A GeForce 2 based card is
perfectly fine (I have a cheapo 32MB TNT2 M64, which works
brilliantly with MAME). The problem you mention does sound somewhat
like a common timing problem with DOS MAME running under Windows.
Easily fixed, just use a Win32 version of MAME (either Win32 console
or MAME32).
<p>
RAM should be fine for most games, although the Neo Geo games with
encrypted GFX will take some time to start up.
<p>
Also, before anyone gets any strange ideas, while it's true that
Direct3D support is being worked for MAME, this does NOT mean that 3D
games will be 3D accelerated. Simple reason is that it would be
inaccurate to the arcade.
And no, that doesn't mean that 3D arcade hardware isn't being worked
on for MAME either.
--
bsr@hnpl.net