My apologies in advance if this doesn't belong or fit well in the hardware section, but I believe it's heavily related to hardware.
As the title shows, I have a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. I'm not precisely sure on the specs of it at the moment, when I'm done I'll run over to my laptop, get them, and edit my post here. But anyway, my main question is not really whether the hardware is "good enough" but what would give me the best performance out of the hardware.
As of right now it currently runs Windows 7 Pro and has ATI mobility graphics with 512 MB of VRAM. My goal is to be able to run some of the Mario Party games on it at least decently, specifically 4 and 5. I was running Mario Party 4 and it didn't seem that bad at all, but I'm striving to get the best out of it. I was wondering if I were to switch to a more lightweight Linux distribution such as Lubuntu, if that would help performance any.
However, being that it runs ATI graphics, I'd be weary of doing this due to crummy driver support I've heard so much about on Linux unless somebody could tell me otherwise.
That's my major consideration at the moment, however if there's anything else such as lowering the resolution of the screen or whatever else, I'd greatly appreciate any input that would help in running the games better. I clearly don't expect to run Twilight Princess or something, God no. My computer would commit suicide by baking itself to death trying that. Any information is greatly appreciated!
As the title shows, I have a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. I'm not precisely sure on the specs of it at the moment, when I'm done I'll run over to my laptop, get them, and edit my post here. But anyway, my main question is not really whether the hardware is "good enough" but what would give me the best performance out of the hardware.
As of right now it currently runs Windows 7 Pro and has ATI mobility graphics with 512 MB of VRAM. My goal is to be able to run some of the Mario Party games on it at least decently, specifically 4 and 5. I was running Mario Party 4 and it didn't seem that bad at all, but I'm striving to get the best out of it. I was wondering if I were to switch to a more lightweight Linux distribution such as Lubuntu, if that would help performance any.
However, being that it runs ATI graphics, I'd be weary of doing this due to crummy driver support I've heard so much about on Linux unless somebody could tell me otherwise.
That's my major consideration at the moment, however if there's anything else such as lowering the resolution of the screen or whatever else, I'd greatly appreciate any input that would help in running the games better. I clearly don't expect to run Twilight Princess or something, God no. My computer would commit suicide by baking itself to death trying that. Any information is greatly appreciated!
[color=#FF4500][color=#ff00ff]Dolphin: 4.0-1767[/color]
MOBO: MSI Z87M Gaming[/color]
[color=#1E90FF]CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K OC'd @ 4.2 GHz[/color]
[color=#32CD32]GPU: EVGA GTX 660 Ti[/color]
[color=#FF0000]RAM: Ripjaws X 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133[/color] [color=#ff0000]MHz[/color]
[color=#000080]OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit; SteamOS
[/color]
MOBO: MSI Z87M Gaming[/color]
[color=#1E90FF]CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K OC'd @ 4.2 GHz[/color]
[color=#32CD32]GPU: EVGA GTX 660 Ti[/color]
[color=#FF0000]RAM: Ripjaws X 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 2133[/color] [color=#ff0000]MHz[/color]
[color=#000080]OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit; SteamOS
[/color]