If your game is running poorly there are a few things you can do for speed boosts.
First the lower your monitor/screen resolution the easier it is for mame. Note that these games did not run in high definition so it really doesn't if you have an hd card/monitor or not (in fact your graphics card makes little difference...mame uses RAM and CPU). On a fresh mame.ini mame will make the game the resolution that your monitor is when you start it.
Second if you are using shading effects turn them off (this does use more of your graphics card to overlay the effect and some CPU).
Third you can lower the sound-settings (again most games did not have top notch sound). This is done by looking at the mame.ini and looking for the core sound settings:
#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound 1
samplerate <-- here
samples 1
volume 0
change the samplerate. 48000 or 44100 or 22050 or 11025 are your best choices.
Forth is your core video options:
#
# VIDEO OPTIONS
#
video <-- here
numscreens 1
window 0
maximize 1
keepaspect 1
unevenstretch 1
centerh 1
centerv 1
waitvsync 0
syncrefresh 0
scalemode none
Change the video setting here. Linux use opengl or soft. Windows use d3d or ddraw. Mac (someone tell me so i can fill it in) Choose either and see which one works better.
Last is the frame skip. You can press F8 while in game to cycle down or F9 to cycle up. You skip drawing frames every number of frames that you pick. You gain speed but too much can make it choppy and unplayable
It can be harder on your system to run it too fast for too long..you have been warned.To make the changes permanent so that you don't have "to skip every time" look for this in the mame.ini:
#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip 0
frameskip <---- here
seconds_to_run 0
throttle 1
sleep 1
speed 1.0
refreshspeed 0
Change the frameskip from 1-10. Note that this will set frame skipping for ALL games if used this way. To change it for a particular game that is outlined later on
If you simply can not get it to run then you need a better (faster) computer, mame does not support it at full speed yet (nothing you can do but wait) or you can try another emulator.
Final Burn Alpha
http://www.fbalpha.com/ (mame version 0.168 based?)
Raine
http://raine.1emulation.com/download/latest.html (uses it's own sets (can be converted from mame roms))
Note: the above will do arcade games..but are "selective" that is they will not run ALL games so they may or may not run the game you want.
Advance Mame
http://www.advancemame.it/ (mame version (0.106 based)
Fast Mame
http://www.zophar.net/mame/fastmame.html (mame version 0.94 based)
(Note that these emulators
DO NOT use updated mame sets! You will have to have the right version of the rom for the version of the emulator!)
The mame .ini file:
This file is a configuration file for mame. Any changes made here after being saved will take effect the next time you start mame. however other ini files work with mame also as long as they are the same format as the original. (easiest way is to copy the mame.ini and rename it.)
Mame reads ini files this way:
game.ini example dkong.ini when you start this game mame will look for this game name.ini file..if found it uses that ini file and ignore the mame.ini file. Thus you can make the game act, sound or look different.
system.ini Example neogeo.ini This will effect *ALL* games that use this driver. Example here would be all neogeo games. For my neogeo games I like to use the uni-bios. So I would open my neogeo.ini and change the bios settings:
#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
drc 1
drc_use_c 0
bios unibios30
cheat 0
skip_gameinfo 0
uifont default
Now when I start any game it will use the unibios on start without me doing anything. It will not effect other games though. If you change the mame.ini and use the uni-bios to try to load say frogger, mame would halt (frogger can't use the unibios). More on the unibios here :
http://unibios.free.fr/vector.ini having this will effect only your vector based games. You can use this to add more effects to make them look more arcade like..will only effect vector games (e.g. asteroids, tempest, star wars) This is done so that you can tweak vector games differently than raster games (e.g. pacman, donkey kong) You can tweak vector games to have more "glow" like they used to look in the arcades. That is outside the scope of this writing.
At the top of the mame.ini you will see this:
#
# CORE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
#
readconfig 1
writeconfig 0
Changing the write config to on (make it a 1) will tell mame to write a new config or ini file every time a game is started (Thus it makes a "game.ini" file..If you turn that on and start frogger mame will make a frogger.ini file.)
"I hate the box that comes up every time telling me about the game information!" You can turn that off.
#
# CORE MISC OPTIONS
#
drc 1
drc_use_c 0
bios unibios30
cheat 0
skip_gameinfo 0 <-- make that zero a 1
uifont default
Note: the copyright notice can not be turned off and
it will never be made to be turned off. That was the agreement. However it will only come up the first time you start load a game. On your second start the
same game it will not be seen again.
"Why are my high-scores not being saved?"
That was removed from the official version of mame. Why? I have no idea. You will have to download a version that supports that feature or compile your own and "patch it in" yourself.
Here are some helpful pages to read on that:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,64298.0.html http://mrdo.mameworld.info/compile.php http://highscore.mameworld.info/ 
