running dolphin? what are you specs? (gamecube and wii)

[Venomouse]

So I'm looking to update my arcade cab pc but I'm kind of on the line atm of deciding if its worth it.

I can't run ps2, gamecub or wii emu well enough to play atm.

Anyone running this smoothly?

If so what are your system specs and OS?

cheers

V

[DazzleHP]

Hi there,

I can run PS2 @ 2xnative res (1024x1024) with full 60fps on all games i've tried, same with dolphin gamecube. Only tried 2 games on the Wii side - Monster Hunter Tri which yoyo's between 45-60fps and Mario Kart which is always constant 60fps

SPECS:

2nd gen i3 @ 3.4ghz

4gig DDR3 @ 1333

Radeon HD5750 1gig GDDR5

EDIT - XP SP3 <-yeah, that old dog!

GC games that run full 60fps (that i've tested):

Wind Waker

Mario Kart

Mario Sunshine

Pikmin

Killer 7

Skies Legends

Luigi's Mansion

PS2 games that run full 60fps:

FFX

FFX-2

Devil May Cry

Jak & Daxter

I'm sure most other games will be fine too, it's just this is a fairly new rig and haven't gotten round to testing everything.

Bottom line is though, fast memory and a semi decent GPU should do it - and you get more for your money if you go ATI /my2c

[Venomouse]

excellent, thats pretty much what I thought I'd need

anyone else ?

[shanti]

sorry for the OT and the noob questions, but, there is a PS2 emu??? :|

[Draco1962]

Google found this site for me with a few.

[nullPointer]

Yep. May I direct your attention to PCSX2. If you intend to try it out you'll want to use relatively beefy machine.

[Venomouse]

Thanks again all, think that will do for my research, now to convince the wife...

[shanti]

wow, I still have my PS2 laying around... thats why I never looked for one, but I am impress by PCSX2 looks amazing!

[snarls]

I'm running Dolphin smoothly - all the Gamecube games work fine (gotta love Super Mario Sunshine). The only Wii game I've tried is Super Mario Kart which works fine mostly and is certainly playable but might be a couple fps short. I run dolphin at 1280x720 currently.

my htpc is:

AMD Phenom Triple Core 8750 2.41Ghz

4Gb RAM

ASUS M3A78-PRO motherboard w/on-board ATI Radeon 3200 HD w/HDMI

Win 7 64bit

My PCSX2 PS2 games barely are playable at Native res- but things like GTA San Andreas look awesome at 4X res even without AA turned on - but like 5fps when set like that. So I just bought a very cheap AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 Ghz CPU chip off amazon and hope that helps when it arrives. If not I might buy a MSI Geforce 660 Ti card to giveit some 3D grunt and let me play all the games at 1920x1080. Think that'll work? It's really just the PS2 games that need a boost. Dreamcast & PS1 work fine w my current setup.

Can't wait to play We Love Katamari in ultra high-res

[snarls]

wow, I still have my PS2 laying around... thats why I never looked for one, but I am impress by PCSX2 looks amazing!

Yeah I was blown away at how well that emu works and how easy it is to setup. I just used the freeware Imgburn and ripped some of my old PS2 games to isos (though it also played the discs fine) and it was good to go!

[Stu1983]

On my i7 2600k with GTX 560 pretty much every Wii/Gamecube games works fine though there are few games that no current system will play at a decent speed.

I recently built a small media HTPC and used an i5 760 and GTX 460 this handles most games fine but there are quite a few that it struggles with:

Mario Galaxy 1

Mario Galaxy 2

Donkey Kong Country Returns

I'm just shy of full speed on those 3 usually about 55fps instead of 60fps but does dip to 50 so not ideal. I think if I overclocked the CPU I could hit full speed but I have it in such a small box that there's just not enough room for a decent cooler.

I have an old Core2Duo E8500 with a ArcadeVGA and it handles Mario Kart Wii perfectly fine so there really is quite a mix of hardware supported.

[Venomouse]

excellent, i totally forgot about my macbook pro sitting on charge neglected for the last 3 months, seems to run it pretty well, no frame dropping etc...

I'll look to buy a new mb and cpu and mount them in the cab itself...

Im in the I want to buy hardware thats enough to run it to keep it cheaper vs overkill and $$ (will end up the arcade will be faster than my home pc

cheers

again

EDIT : or maybe ill wait, lol looking at about $300 for cpu alone.

[Stu1983]

I got the i5 760 for £105 which is about $170 and that's with 20% VAT included, it was a really good bargain at the time... I had been eyeing them up as I already had a motherboard for it but they where always nearer £200 then one day I seen it on offer for nearly half price... snapped it up in an instant

[Venomouse]

no rush anyways playing consoles on arcade cab is ok, but im starting to run out of buttons.

[Draco1962]

One thing to consider is using wireless controllers (Xbox 360 controllers for PC are a favorite) for your console emulations. Adultery and a few others have used them successfully with their Arcade cabs (for that matter, Adultery doesn't have a CP on his). That way you can augment your arcade cab instead of trying to build a CP with so many buttons it looks like a Skittle spill!

[snarls]

my htpc is:

AMD Phenom Triple Core 8750 2.41Ghz

4Gb RAM

ASUS M3A78-PRO motherboard w/on-board ATI Radeon 3200 HD w/HDMI

Win 7 64bit

... I just bought a very cheap AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 Ghz CPU chip

Don't mean to hijack, but do you guys think an AMD quad core 3.4Ghz cpu will be noticeably faster for emus like Dolphin & PCSX2?

Or does it all boil down to GPU? and if so a Geforce 660 Ti will kill that onboard ATI 3200 HD - right? Just trying not to buy the gfx card unless have to- still waiting on the cpu to arrive...

[Draco1962]

I think it better to go to a GPU card to onboard video. No sharing of RAM with the CPU. Easily replaced/upgraded. I don't run any of the more recent emulators such as these just yet, so not sure how to advise you regarding.

[nullPointer]

Don't mean to hijack, but do you guys think an AMD quad core 3.4Ghz cpu will be noticeably faster for emus like Dolphin & PCSX2?

Or does it all boil down to GPU? and if so a Geforce 660 Ti will kill that onboard ATI 3200 HD - right? Just trying not to buy the gfx card unless have to- still waiting on the cpu to arrive...

From my experience I've found PCSX2 to be a bit more power hungry than Dolphin. If I had to choose between spending a bit more on CPU or GPU, it's going to be CPU every time for the purposes of these emulators. That's not to say that the GPU isn't important, but great looking graphics aren't going too mean much if they're running at 30 FPS. Having said that, Draco is absolutely right that using onboard graphics will likely cause a bottle neck with these demanding emulators. Here are some guides that might be helpful. I tend to use PCSX2 system requirements as the benchmark since as I mentioned it seems to require a bit more horsepower than Dolphin. Both emulators have similar recommendations in terms of supported CPU instruction sets, so beyond that it becomes a question of how much power you're pushing through the CPU (The number of cores is a secondary concern since PCSX2 is only going to use three cores at max and even then only when you're using a specific speed hack. Most of the time it will only use two cores). Maybe this is your opportunity to get into some overclocking.

Will PCSX2 run fast on my computer?

Does (PCSX2) support 4 cores?

Dolphin Requirements (I couldn't find more current requirements than this as the Dolphin web site seems to be a bit flaky ATM)

[Stu1983]

If I had to choose between spending a bit more on CPU or GPU, it's going to be CPU every time for the purposes of these emulators.

Can't agree more... always spend as much as you can afford getting the best CPU for you money, GPUs come and go, you can easily pop one out and stick in a better one later as new models come out and force the price down on old models. The CPU on the other hand, you're pretty much stuck with the CPU as replacing it will generally mean a new motherboard and even new ram as well.

You definitely want to avoid on board graphics though but a 660 way more than you need for emulation. I was running my 460 on my i7 2600k gaming rig before upgrading to the 560 but I don't notice any difference at all in Dolphin, Battlefield 3 on the other hand is silky smooth with the 560.

Remember your GPU can only work as fast as the CPU can send data to it.

[Stu1983]

Just to add... the official Dolphin page has moved, it's now http://dolphin-emu.org

They have a bit more information on requirements in the new faq they are recommending the i5-2500k

[snarls]

Thanks for the tips guys! Originally I got this box a few years ago as a good HD video playback & DVB-T htpc so gaming wasnt that much a concern, and I chose AMD for that & spent more on the case which had remote controls and a mini LCD. Looks like the fastest cpu my ASUS motherboard can take is a quad core 3.6Ghz or a 6-core 3.3 Ghz- but all of those are crazy expensive and I'm not going to spend that dough unless I replace the whole thing- which I'm happy to, but this works pretty damn well 24/7 for 90% of what I use that box for. I got that X4 3.4Ghz for $75 new w fan/sink so I hoped it would be a noticeable bump from the trip core 2.4Ghz.

Good to know these emus like clock speed - but don't think I'll get into overclocking as that sounds like it could be a time sink getting it stable and cool (I'm gonna use the stock AMD fan) and I don't wanna worry about voltages and thermal paste - it all sounds so time consuming - and this htpc box is on 24/7 so prob better keep it cool and quiet... I'll worry about the GPU later after I test this I guess.

[simbamame]

I have ran dolphin on a medion AMD athlon dual core 2.70Ghz with 4 gig ram and an ATI radeon HD4500 and it runs pretty quick almost full speed on most but mario kart lags a bit, even using the wiimotes via bluetooth, but ps2 lags real bad what would u recommend overclock the cpu, more ram or faster gpu ? dont wanna go overboard as i dont really use ps2 much but like dolphin as my wii is no longer modded as the latest nintendo fw made it invallid :-( as it was only softmod and cant remember how to it and im not gonna buy lego starwars to do it lol.

[Draco1962]

If you got a good rig for most everything else, I would stay away from overclocking. I know there are those that love to push their systems beyond spec but I have found it better to live without a few programs until I can make my next upgrade or build than losing my current machine altogether because I fried something.

[nullPointer]

I've got the i5 650 in my HTPC overclocked at just shy of 4GHz (very stable and no serious heat issues). I've only made adjustments to memory timings insofar as to accommodate the OC on the CPU, and I haven't touched the GPU (for some reason mine gets pretty hot when I'm running Crysis so I don't want to push that envelope too far - maybe I need to double check my settings). I get pretty good performance from PCSX2 except for those games with known compatibility issues or major speed problems.



Over on the PCSX2 forums they keep a running benchmark test for PCSX2 (they use FFX-2 for the test). I've always thought it gives a pretty good indication of the requirements necessary to get good performance from PCSX2.

[simbamame]

If you got a good rig for most everything else, I would stay away from overclocking. I know there are those that love to push their systems beyond spec but I have found it better to live without a few programs until I can make my next upgrade or build than losing my current machine altogether because I fried something.

Good point i would hate to loose my rig just cos 1 emulator i dont really run lags.