I've been benchmarking MAME since I got involved with the project in 1997 on the MAME and MAMEUI teams.
My current i7‑12700K @5.2GHz replaces my 2016 i7‑6700K OC'ed to 4.5GHz. The 12700K provides a six‑generation jump and a considerable performance uplift.
Each game is run for an emulated 90 seconds (mame -bench 90) which normally gets to gameplay in its demos. Some need to be set up beforehand and/or use CHDs; see the legend. Games have been chosen as historical performance pain points for MAME (analogue sound, DRCs, netlists, etc.) as it's matured, and others are just favorites. The runs mainly function to show PC power progress over time, though they often expose performance dips and increases in released code. You'll typically want a bench result of over 200% to ensure full‑speed through actual gameplay.
Numbered tests are run with the official builds from MAMEDEV.org. The nightly runs are my own builds using a simple make -j21 STRIP_SYMBOLS=1. The results are percentages of “full speed” in the emulation.
Keywords: IV/Play, MAME, MAME32, MAME32QA, MAMEUI, MAMEUI64, Benchmarking, Benchmarks, John IV
