Advice on laptop purchase

[nameisjon]

I'm going to pick up a Surface Pro 3 and I'm leaning toward the i3 over i5 because I'm cheap. Will I still be able to use dolphin Wii emulator with the i3 over i5? Here are the stats for both:


1.5GHz Intel Core i3 (Intel HD Graphics 4200), 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB storage
1.6GHz Intel Core i5 (Intel HD Graphics 4400, Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz), 4GB of RAM, 128GB storage storage

[Shonumi]

Neither will be suitable for many games in Dolphin. Dolphin needs a very strong CPU, and all of the CPUs in the MS Surface Pro are Ultra Low Voltage (MS uses either -U or -Y based Intel CPUs to my knowledge). These CPUs are designed to use less voltage (to reduce the generation of heat) which in turn makes them lower powered than other non-ULV CPUs. You'll also rarely hit the maximum specified Turbo Boost while playing Dolphin since the CPU will almost always throttle down in an attempt to keep temperatures from reaching certain limits (which makes sense given the form-factor).

For laptops, you'll ideally want something like the i7-4800MQ or the i5-4200M (not the i5-4200U!). Depending on the games you want to play (please specify which you'd like to play, all games don't have the same HW requirements) it may be possible to go for something else as well.

[kevlahnota]

(06-14-2014, 03:15 PM)nameisjon Wrote: I'm going to pick up a Surface Pro 3 and I'm leaning toward the i3 over i5 because I'm cheap. Will I still be able to use dolphin Wii emulator with the i3 over i5? Here are the stats for both:


1.5GHz Intel Core i3 (Intel HD Graphics 4200), 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB storage
1.6GHz Intel Core i5 (Intel HD Graphics 4400, Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz), 4GB of RAM, 128GB storage storage

Upon searching Surface Pro 3 specs, the current cpu choices:

Dual core Intel Haswell extreme- or ultra-low power processor:
i3-4020Y (3 MB cache, 1.5 GHz, 6 W)
i5-4300U (3 MB cache, up to 2.9 GHz, 15 W)
i7-4650U (4 MB cache, up to 3.3 GHz, 15 W)

I don't know if the i3 can run dolphin at decent speed...

[Shonumi]

Yeah, that 6W TDP has "no way" written all over it.

[nameisjon]

Thanks to both of y'all for the information and help!