Best Hardware for under $800 (changed)

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

I'm building a computer and want to know a complete set of hardware that will allow me to play games including Wind Waker, Brawl, Mario Kart, and etc. at full speed 1920 1080p. I don't need antialiasing, which I think is unnecessary.

The website recommends an i5. Will an i7 actually slow Dolphin alone down if it accidentally puts two threads on the same physical core? Or will it speed it up significantly?
Apparently, recent AMD CPUs have gone downhill and are no good for Dolphin. Is that true?

And the site recommends a 6850, but there are many barebones kits with nvidia 660's and i5s. Is there some really serious problem with AMD cards, are they not as good overall, or do there just happen to be less?
Do Nvidia cards support real opencl? I read somewhere that before they used an opencl to cuda converter that didn't work well. But does OpenCL even make a performance improvement at all?

Is there any difference between motherboards, other than the universal presence of Restricted Boot?
Will different hard drives or SSDs fail quickly?

... How do I edit the poll?

[ExtremeDude2]

You mean 1080p?

[rafael]

I already bought this hardware and its very good for 95% of all games:

I5 3470
gtx 550 ti
8gb gskill in dual 2x 4gb
mobo gigabyte b75
ssd 128gb
Power 500 wats

I only have small decrease of speed with mario kart Wii 4 players, last story and mario galaxy 1,2.

[admin89]

None of them
i7 doesn't matter since Dolphin doesn't benefit from Hyper Threading

AMD CPUs have gone downhill and are no good for Dolphin. Is that true?

AMD Pile Driver / Bulldozer are outperformed by i3 or Pentium Ivy/Sandy Bridge in single threaded benchmark . So yep , current AMD CPUs are no good for Dolphin (Dolphin is a dual core application , 8 cores don't matter)
Recommend
i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz + Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 or 6
Antec 550W 80+ PSU
Gigabyte GTX 660 (non Ti version)

[Venomx1]

for a 1200 dollar build i would go with a

i5-3570k
Radeon 7950 or GTX 660 TI (Nvidia GPUs are typically better in Higher end emulation than radeons. PS2 emulation i know Nvidia is better not sure about Dolphin).
Z77 Motherboard

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

None of them
i7 doesn't matter since Dolphin doesn't benefit from Hyper Threading

AMD CPUs have gone downhill and are no good for Dolphin. Is that true?

AMD
Pile Driver / Bulldozer are outperformed by i3 or Pentium Ivy/Sandy Bridge in single threaded benchmark . So yep , current AMD CPUs are no good for Dolphin (Dolphin is a dual core application , 8 cores don't matter)
Recommend
i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz + Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 or 6
Antec 550W 80+ PSU
Gigabyte GTX 660 (non Ti version)

I've never overclocked before. Is it dangerous to CPU life?
Does it really make a large impact with the speed of games?
(Wasted integrated graphical processor. Don't they have any high-end ones without it?)

for a 1200 dollar build i would go with a

i5-3570k
Radeon
7950 or GTX 660 TI (Nvidia GPUs are typically better in Higher end emulation than radeons. PS2 emulation i know Nvidia is better not sure about Dolphin).
Z77 Motherboard

Is this going to cost the full $1200? Less money is better, I want to have some left over. I don't exactly need any more GPU power than is neccesary to render high-end games at 1080p without AA. I really don't think I need 660 Ti or 7950.
OK: I really don't need a 660 Ti or 7950, looking at the 3x rendering requirements in "that other thread."
Do I need a 660 or 7870?

[DefenderX]

The 660 Ti is stronger than the 7870.

[Shonumi]

Do Nvidia cards support real opencl? I read somewhere that before they used an opencl to cuda converter that didn't work well. But does OpenCL even make a performance improvement at all?

I'm not sure about the OpenCL to CUDA converter, but as far as OpenCL concerns you for Dolphin, the OpenCL texture decoder is actually slower than the default one (and probably slower than the OpenMP texture decoder too). The situation could be changed if Dolphin were programmed to take advantage of the latest version of OpenCL, but I wouldn't worry about OpenCL when considering the GPU, at least not for Dolphin.

I've never overclocked before. Is it dangerous to CPU life?
Does it really make a large impact with the speed of games?

Done properly, OCing is not dangerous to the lifespan of your CPU. An OCed CPU does have a shorter lifespan than one that isn't OCed, but by the time an OCed CPU does die on you, you really should have a new CPU by then. An OCed CPU will most likely last longer than you'll ever need it.

A lot of games need to be OCed to run properly on Dolphin; there's no getting around it. OCing makes all the difference in a game like The Last Story (very CPU intensive) or even F-Zero GX. We're still a long way when you can just about any desktop or laptop to flawlessly run most games a la SNES or Genesis emulation.

OK: I really don't need a 660 Ti or 7950, looking at the 3x rendering requirements in "that other thread."
Do I need a 660 or 7870?

My GTX 550TI can do 3X IR on graphically demanding games (e.g. SMG2) with a good amount of MSAA too. Anything at that level or above well meet your needs. If you do any PC gaming, you'll preferably want something stronger (I don't, so the 550TI suits me).

[ShadowFlash]

Done properly, OCing is not dangerous to the lifespan of your CPU. An OCed CPU does have a shorter lifespan than one that isn't OCed, but by the time an OCed CPU does die on you, you really should have a new CPU by then. An OCed CPU will most likely last longer than you'll ever need it.

It's quite simple - proper cooling and don't overdo with voltage - best is not to set it any higher than stock one, just squeeze anything you can on the normal voltage of you CPU until it will give you errors in tests like SuperPI, then one step back. If you're lucky it will be possible even lower voltage and reach 4+ GHz :

Code:

atk0110-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
Vcore Voltage:      +1.26 V  (min =  +0.85 V, max =  +1.60 V)
+3.3 Voltage:      +3.34 V  (min =  +2.97 V, max =  +3.63 V)
+5 Voltage:        +5.02 V  (min =  +4.50 V, max =  +5.50 V)
+12 Voltage:      +12.03 V  (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V)
CPU FAN Speed: 2787 RPM  (min =  200 RPM)
CHASSIS FAN Speed: 1377 RPM  (min =  200 RPM)
CPU Temperature:    +33.0°C  (high = +60.0°C, crit = +70.0°C)
MB Temperature:     +39.0°C  (high = +45.0°C, crit = +75.0°C)

4.2GHz at 1.26v here

For video card yeah, 550Ti will do just fine, since even cheap cards like 440 can do up to 1080p with 1.5-2x IR and 2-4x AA

[admin89]

But why the Old Fermi 550Ti ? The new Kepler 650 or 650Ti is much better
EVGA 650 only cost around 100 bucks on Newegg