CPU and GPU for 4K Dolphin

[metalmaniac253]

Quick question, I want to build a new PC for Dolphin specifically. I want to do so with minimal costs. What is the cheapest GPU/CPU combo I can do to run most games at 4k 60 FPS. I'm looking to replay my old library. A few example games are Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters Future Perfect, and a few of the Gamecube Tony Hawk games.

Could anybody speak from experience here for suggestions? Thanks!

[hyperspeed]

get a modern i3 8350k or an i5 8400 and one GTX 1070, that way you can run all games even the most demand ones and the ones who got 60fps patch at 4k60, no need to overclock CPU or GPU.

if you experience some kind of fps drop use Vulkan.

[KHg8m3r]

You can get away with a Nvidia GTX 950 or GTX 1050, a GTX 1070 is overkill.

[metalmaniac253]

Overkill is fine by me. I was leaning towards an i5. I want to max everything out graphics-wise, so that could be it. I may go with a 1080 if the price goes down.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

6 cores won't give you any advantage over 4 cores in Dolphin - from there it's all about IPC and clockrate.

[metalmaniac253]

I'm going to go for 6 cores for newer PC games too. I've heard an i5 will do for PC games as well. I guess I'll need a GTX 1070 or up. Anyone know if an RX 580 will do?

[AnyOldName3]

An RX 580 will do pretty well in modern PC games but it might be the case that its price is particularly high right now due to it being great for cryptocurrency mining. It trades blows with a GTX 1060, so I wouldn't get it if it's particularly more expensive than that unless you want a Freesync/G-sync monitor, as G-sync monitors tend to cost significantly more. If you do want Freesync or G-sync, it might be worth taking into account the additional cost of the monitor when deciding which GPU to get.

[metalmaniac253]

Thanks for that info. I'm just trying to do 4k dolphin with max graphical enhancements and maybe 1440p PC gaming. I don't care about gsync or anything like that, as I'll be using my TV as a gaming monitor.

[hyperspeed]

don't get amd it will kill your performance on most backend due to how bad OpenGL and DX11 is on AMD, NVIDIA is much faster on both, however AMD maybe performs slightly fast on Vulkan and DX12 atm, but for emulators like dolphin you will want to stick with intel and nvidia.

also, GTX 1050 won't run dolphin at 4k in all areas with games that need accurate/safe texture set to safe and/or efb to ram, even one gtx1070 may gets some drops in this scenario, unless you are running at Vulkan backend.

for 1440p PC gaming you will need at least one gtx 1070ti or one gtx1080 to run most modern games at max with AA off.

[AnyOldName3]

It's maybe a little silly to recommend hardware based on what it takes to run games at max - in lots of cases for a lot of settings there's not a perceptible quality difference between max and max-but-one until you get above 4K but the performance impact can be huge. While it may be a reasonable indicator of the demands of future games, it might also be a bad idea to consider the demands of games too far in the future if the bump in GPU cost could be used to buy a better replacement GPU two or three years down the line.

The main point I'm making, though, is that there are a lot of people who are happy with their gaming experience who don't have a GTX 1080, even at 1440p. Remember, a single GTX 1080 Ti is actually viable for 4K gaming (although obviously the most demanding games can't have their settings all the way maxed out) and 1440p is less than half as many pixels.