(10-08-2010, 08:56 PM)hungry man Wrote: FYI dolphin uses TWO cores, so your turbo boost will actually be 2.55ghz on each core as opposed to 2.8ghz on one core.
If you want to emulate dolphin you absolutely need to upgrade that cpu.
I entirely agree. I have a 1 year old i5 520M at 2.4Ghz and it is just too slow for even Wii Sports Bowling to work properly on Dolphin 3.0. The timing of throwing the ball just doesn't match the real console.
I just spent 2 weeks testing an i7-2630QM 2.0Ghz Quad (Sandy Bridge) with Turbo that goes to 2.8Ghz on dual-core... and with Intel integrated graphics (Sandy Bridge) Wii Sports Bowling ALMOST reaches a consistent 60FPS. Same system but using the ATI 6770M GDDR5 1GB and it goes to 80/90 FPS in the same places in bowling [throwing the ball and replays of the ball hitting pins] {I tested this on a HP DV6T-6100 laptop that had switchable graphics, so I could compare different GPU options). This is with Dolphin 3.0 release x64 Windows 7.
This i7-2630QM system was overall a disappointment to me in Dolphin. I really wanted it to work faster. I started another thread about the muxless switching graphics problems of the latest generation (March 2011 and later) systems that are coming out. Lucky HP allows 3 weeks to return the system, as it took me a lot of time to realize just how frustrating these switchable graphics changes are. ESPECIALLY for Linux.
I'm now going to an older generation Sandy Bridge system with a more primitive discrete Nvidia 512MB DDR3 GPU for less money, as I can affordable get it with a 2.2Ghz i7-2720QM (3.2Ghz dual core turbo) - as I find the CPU is truly the main issue with Dolphin. There isn't a need for a 2GB GPU with Dolphin... its the dual-core CPU performance that is key, ESPECIALLY on laptops.
One of the games I want to play, Punch Out!, is really bad in places on the i7-2630QM. When it comes to Laptops, the price of things gets expensive real quickly - and overclocking is often not possible (locked in BIOS and difficult to construct BIOS hacks to override).