Best upgrade for full Wii Optimization?

[Way2much]

Hey guys.

I've had my rig for the better part of three years now and it runs virtually all GC games with ease, no slowdowns what so ever. However, when I play a lot of my Wii games, I experience a lot more slowdown than I would like; I certainly can tweak the settings so it becomes 'playable' but never buttery smooth outside of some titles like Mario Kart Wii.

So, I was planning to upgrade my rig slowly over the course of this year but I'm not sure if my CPU or GPU is the primary problem here so any advice would be greatly appreciated. (P.S all parts will be upgraded eventually, I just want an idea where I can start to remove or reduce this problem)

My Specs

Intel Core i5 -3470 3.4 ghz
EVGA GTX 650 Ti
12gb of RAM

Thanks.

[Aleron Ives]

Which games are you trying to play? Some games won't run smoothly all the time no matter what hardware you have. Dolphin doesn't have perfectly efficient emulation on modern hardware on all titles. That being said, upgrading your CPU to a Haswell chip would give you the most improvement, although the leap from Ivy Bridge to Haswell isn't as big as what you'd get if your existing hardware were even older.

[admin89]

You have CPU bottleneck . In Dolphin Benchmark , Haswell performs 30% better than Iny Bridge
If you have Asrock Z77 mobo , you can overclock your non K i5 3470 up to 4.0GHz
Latest Dolphin (not the outdated 4.0.2) is faster than older Dolphin version
You can start with i5 4690k + Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 -> OC to 4.4 or 4.6GHz if possible
Or build a new PC from scratch , Pentium Anniversary G3258 @ 4.6GHz is on par with i7 4790k @ 4.4GHz in Dolphin Benchmark but the Pentium only cost 75$ .
If you hate overclocking , you can buy i7 4970k + Asrock B85 Anniversary . With 4.4GHz default turbo clock , most games will run full speed

[Way2much]

Which games are you trying to play? Some games won't run smoothly all the time no matter what hardware you have. Dolphin doesn't have perfectly efficient emulation on modern hardware on all titles. That being said, upgrading your CPU to a Haswell chip would give you the most improvement, although the leap from Ivy Bridge to Haswell isn't as big as what you'd get if your existing hardware were even older.

My Mario Kart Wii and Fire emblem Awakening work relatively fine. But when I try to play games like Samurai Warriors 3, Sengoku Basara 3. One Piece Unlimited Cruise, hell even SSB Brawl sometimes slows down quite a bit. I was considering upgrading to Haswell but then I'd have to get a new mobo, which would kinda suck considering I brought a new mobo the other day. Just to be clear, Im not trying to play at super max setting or whatever, just trying get the game to run relatively well without looking too bad.

[Way2much]

You have CPU bottleneck . In Dolphin Benchmark , Haswell performs 30% better than Iny Bridge
If you have Asrock Z77 mobo , you can overclock your non K i5 3470 up to 4.0GHz  
Latest Dolphin (not the outdated 4.0.2) is faster than older Dolphin version
You can start with i5 4690k + Asrock Z97 Extreme 4 -> OC to 4.4 or 4.6GHz if possible
Or build a new PC from scratch , Pentium Anniversary G3258 @ 4.6GHz is on par with i7 4790k @ 4.4GHz in Dolphin Benchmark but the Pentium only cost 75$ .
If you hate overclocking , you can buy i7 4970k + Asrock B85 Anniversary . With 4.4GHz default turbo clock , most games will run full speed

I'm relatively suprised that its my CPU and not my GPU, considering its older. If I was just playing Dolphin, I probably get a G3258 but I am also a video editor so if anything I was looking to get like an i7 2600k or 2700k and just overclock it rather than downgrading because it would hurt my video editing. So just be clear, it would be smart to upgrade my CPU before my GPU?

[admin89]

Your GPU isn't a problem as long as you don't go overboard with the graphic settings . The maxium graphic it can handle is 4xIR , no AA, 16x AF

if anything I was looking to get like an i7 2600k or 2700k and just overclock it rather than downgrading

So i assume your current mobo is Z77 , correct ?
i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz is as fast as i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz / i7 3770k @ 4.4GHz . I'm not sure i7 2600k would be a good choice for Dolphin .
The old Dolphin Benchmark
Btw , Skylake will be more future proof for emulation if you wait for a few months . RPCS3 PS3 Emulator can run a few games now , Watchdog PS3 is bootable too ...RPCS3's progress is much faster than PCSX2's progress

[Way2much]

Your GPU isn't a problem as long as you don't go overboard with the graphic settings . The maxium graphic it can handle is 4xIR , no AA, 16x AF

if anything I was looking to get like an i7 2600k or 2700k and just overclock it rather than downgrading

So i assume your current mobo is Z77 , correct ?
i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz is as fast as i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz / i7 3770k @ 4.4GHz . I'm not sure i7 2600k would be a good choice for Dolphin .
The old Dolphin Benchmark
Btw , Skylake will be more future proof for emulation if you wait for a few months . RPCS3 PS3 Emulator can run a few games now , Watchdog PS3 is bootable too ...RPCS3's progress is much faster than PCSX2's progress

Yeah my chipset is LGA 1155. If the i5 2500k got relatively good benchmark scores in those tests ( 12th and 17th respectively) why wouldn't the i7 2600k do just as well or even better because they are essentially the same chip? (P.S that i3 score was in Linux, not windows) Im gonna keep my eye on RPCS3 but it looks like it will be a couple of years before its actually viable.

[admin89]

LGA 1155 is your socket , not chipset
LGA 1155 include Z77 H77 Q77 B75 Z68 Q67 P67 H67 H61 B65
Only Z77 and Z68 and P67 support overclocking . Since your mobo is paired with a non-k CPU , it's unlikely a Z77 nor Z68 mobo

why wouldn't the i7 2600k do just as well or even better because they are essentially the same chip?

You should look at the benchmark again . These CPUs were not running at the same clock speed
i5 2500k was oced higher than i7 2600k , that's why it has better result

[Way2much]

LGA 1155 is your socket , not chipset
LGA 1155 include Z77 H77 Q77 B75 Z68 Q67 P67 H67 H61 B65
Only Z77 and Z68 and P67 support overclocking . Since your mobo is paired with a non-k CPU , it's unlikely a Z77 nor Z68 mobo

why wouldn't the i7 2600k do just as well or even better because they are essentially the same chip?

You should look at the benchmark again . These CPUs were not running at the same clock speed
i5 2500k was oced higher than i7 2600k , that's why it has better result

Ah yes my bad   I just checked and its z77 so I can overclock using it. I know they werent the same speed, I was saying theortically if I could get a similar OC with the 2600k, would I get similar speeds to the 2500k in the test?.

[admin89]

I was saying theortically if I could get a similar OC with the 2600k, would I get similar speeds to the 2500k in the test?.

That's right . Dolphin is a dual core app . So no matter how may threads that i7 has , you still get the same performance as i5