Using Linux, Geforce 210 and 1920x1400 resolution. I want to use the higher resolution possible since I'm using cocktail mode on horizontal games and I want to use as much resolution for each as possible. In this case it would be 2x 1400x960 screens, so 960 lines for each to emulate the scanlines.

I've configured GLSL in my setup and everything seems to work fine, however when I play the games they seem to lag, as if the fps is really low.

Mame fps are ok, but I guess that since GLSL is a post process, I would need to measure the fps after GLSL is applied. Is there a known way to do this? if not a MAME option, maybe an external program to measure fps in linux.

I've searched but didn't find anything.

The MAME FPS does include any slowdown caused by GLSL (ie, if GLSL slows down, it will cause MAME to wait, just as HLSL does on Windows). That said, you can get video-only FPS (it should be the potential peak performance for your video chain, not necessarily what you're actually getting) with -sdlvideofps.

Are you sure about this?, maybe I'm doing it wrong, but running: "mame pacman -nothrottle -str 300" with and without GLSL gives the exact same "Average speed" output.

However, the "-sdlvideofps" did the trick and told me that I was actually rendering at ~24 fps. I was hoping this card could handle GLSL at this resolution, will keep trying options and resolutions now that I have a way to measure.

For 1080+ resolutions with GLSL you need a high-end card, at least a Fermi x60/x70/x80.

I know there probably isn't an easy or straight forward answer, but what spec I'm looking at here? raw GFLOPS or additional shaders, etc?

With my card the limit seems to be 1280x1024, I start getting less than 60fps around that resolution.

This card is rated at ~67GFlops

I wonder if a 440 rated at ~300GFlops (~4.5 times) will be enough to move the resolution I want, which is about 2.4 times the amount of pixels.

The 440 is the biggest I find fanless, which is a requirement for me.

Might be, but fanless doesn't generally mix well with GLSL at high resolutions. Unfortunately there's no benchmark set for GLSL or HLSL.

Had a 9800GT lying around and it works at full speed with room to spare at 2048x1536.

Now this doesn't really tell me if the 440 will work, but at least it's something, what I want to do is possible.

I don't know the relative specs of the 440 and 9800 but that does sound promising at least.