Best Value 720P Dolphin Low Profile PC

[RepWolf]

Hi All,

Long time reader and first time poster. Nice to meet you!

I would like to play SMG 1,2 LOZ (WW, TP, SS), Xenoblade Chronicles, and The Last Story in 720P. I would use the Pentium G3430 (3.3GHZ Haswell) but the unlocked Pentium Anniversary Edition is coming in June so I will wait for that. Everything on my list is negotiable in order to play these games (I thought about an R7 250, i5 4690K and even waiting for Broadwell). However, my goal is best value for 720P.

My specs are:

275W PSU (Free, comes with case)
ASRock Z87M PRO4 ($104.99)
Pentium Anniversary ($120?)
ZOTAC ZT-60208-10L GeForce GT 640 1GB GDDR5 ($79.99)
G-Skill 2X2 DDR3 1866MHZ RAM (49.99)
Total: ~$355

My questions are:
I understand Zelda TP is difficult to play - could an OC Pentium be enough? Also, is a GT 640 (Revision 2) capable of playing 3XIR? Does 1866 vs 1600 ram matter (Anandtech says it does matter but many poster here say no)? Finally, do you think I could blow through my PSU (I used a PSU calculator and they said I only needed 230W)?

[tuanming]

The i3 is a budget CPU and the Pentium brand are worse than that if I'm not mistaken. If you really want to play those games without compromises then at least go with the 4670k and beef up your graphics card.

[admin89]

Pentium Haswell is basically a downclocked i3 Haswell without Hyperthreading . 2 cores 2 threads vs 2 cores 4 threads
Since Dolphin is a dual core application , Hyperthreading is useless
i3 can't be overclocked but the new Pentium Anniversary CPU can . So Pentium Anniversary CPU is much better for Dolphin in this case

[cosmoruski]

Your thought is pretty good - a pentium anniversary should be the perfect dolphin CPU.
If you can overclock it to around 4Ghz you should be able to play SMG1/2 in Fullspeed 99% of the time (I had performance issues with the "Fire Gobblegut" boss with a i5 Haswell @ 4Ghz, but the rest of the Game was okay)
Zelda will slowdown in the "Hyrule Field" Part - just search the forums on this topic

Maybe someone who has a GT 640 can tell you if this chip is fast enough for 3xIR ... I'm not sure
Slighty more costly would be a "Radeon R7 265" or a "Geforce GTX 750 Ti", but those are definatly fast enough for 3x IR (and you can play new PC Games too).

Ram Speed matters - but in general it maybe produces 1-2% more performce overall - so it's hard to measure.
It's only interesting for people who use CPU build-in GPUs (Intel iGPU, AMD APU etc.) - there it can have a big effect on performance
So save the money and get 1600

The PSU should be enough: (though the buldtin PSUs of cheap cases are sometimes shit)
- The Pentium should have a TDP of around 50W (But will need additioonal power if you increase voltage due to overclocking)
- a GT640 cosumes max. 25W
- the rest of the PC will take maybe additional 30W on full load

[admin89]

@OP EVGA GTX 750 is the best bang for buck GPU atm . It's based on the new architecture Maxwell from Nvidia (low power consumption , run cool but it's very fast) .
GTX 650 can handle 4xIR in most games , 3xIR in GPU demanding games . GTX 750 is way better than GTX 650 ....
You should bump up your budget a little bit more and get GTX 750 since it's dirt cheap (GTX 750 is even cheaper than GTX 650 at launch )

[KHg8m3r]

I use that exact same card in my old Dell Dimension with a Q6600. I hit about 2.5x to 3x depending on if my CPU can handle the game.
If you can get the gtx750 for cheaper, get it. It will serve you better overall.

[RepWolf]

Thank you for all the great replies!

I would also like to thank all the developers for their hard work. It is very much appreciated!

OK, I will skip the 1866MHZ Ram and go for the 1600MHZ instead.

I'm excited that the Pentium Anniversary sounds like a good pick.

I wish I could upgrade the GPU but I'm limited to low profiles GPU's. The best one out there is the HIS R7 250 for $20 more. It has the same number of CUDA/Streamers, it's clocked about the same but it has a 128 bit bus (vs GT 640 with 64 bit bus) and 8 more ROP's. Does that help performance in Dolphin?

It's great to hear from someone with the same GPU. 2.5X - 3X resolution is what I am looking for and hopefully the CPU can keep it up to the 3X range.

Edit: I searched for GTX 750 Low Profile and found several models not available at newegg but directly from the manufacturer's website. I will choose this model instead.

[kinkinkijkin]

Both of those things will have an impact, yes. ROPs not as much as the bus, though, since the bus will increase VRAM performance. But, at 720p, not much of a difference between the IRs. Unless you're playing Wind Waker, or some such other game.