FreeBSD... MAME and MESS.
 

I'm considering crafting a FreeBSD based system using a mini-PC such as this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856107127

to create a small home gaming system for classic games from consoles and arcades. I'm just curious as to how well MAME/MESS performs in FreeBSD compared to other UNICES.

Whilst that 'mini' is similar to my EeeBox, it is capable of running BSD specs wise, but a gaming machine it won't be.
It will be OK with simple stuff like mahjong, shisen & card games. (PySolFC for instance.)

Guess it would depend on the games then?
I can't say I have seen any real advanced games on the Mame stuff I have seen. Typically Pacman, Galaga, generation. The most advanced one I saw, was several years ago, I think on a Pentium 2 and that was Dragon's Lair.

People have started running 5th generation consoles (no experience with them) on Raspberry PI 2's from what I have read (they were using Adafruit as an example).