From what I've seen, there's a misconception about how demanding Dolphin is. I'm running Dolphin on a fairly low-end laptop, a Dell Latitude E6430. Now while I plan to move to a proper gaming machine with a Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell Core i7 quad core and dedicated graphics, this is what I have right now, as described in my profile.
It uses the Intel HD 4000, and a 2 core, 4 thread, laptop CPU. However, it runs Dolphin just fine at the default settings, like HLE and Direct3D 11 (I'm running Windows 7 but even if I had 10 my GPU is not D3D12 capable). I'm running the Master branch of Dolphin, and a lot of Wii and GameCube titles run great. I'm running at native res (640 x 528) which looks fine, though not earth shattering.
Super Mario Galaxy even runs fine, as does NSMB, SSBB, SSBM, Star Fox Assault, and Mario Kart Wii. All at around 60fps. Many of these games were playable on my old laptop (Celeron N2840) but were more like 20 FPS. There are occasional stutters, especially in fullscreen, and in fullscreen, there is screen tearing.
But this is just to show that Dolphin runs fine on low end stuff. I even watched a video of someone running NSMB Wii on their Sandy Bridge laptop at or almost at full speed.
Maybe Windows 10 will boost performance, I haven't done extensive testing, but Windows 10 is shit so I wouldn't use it.
Even though they're not supported, I'd just like to say that under Windows 7, performance was mostly the same under Dolphin 3.5, 4, and 5, even between Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11, though OpenGL was a fair bit slower. Additionally, unofficial builds were the same speed. The only speed issues I had were with Dolphin 4 under Windows XP on this laptop. Stuff was playable, but below Windows 7 performance, which is surprising as the Windows 7 Aero interface would create load on the GPU not generated by Windows XP's software rendered interface. Again, I know it's not supported, but I just wanted to put what I found out there.
One thing I'd like to put out there is just like while running Garry's Mod, while running Dolphin, the laptop heats up a lot. The cooling vent almost burned me when I touched it and the desk warms me. I use my laptop on a desk, so it doesn't burn my lap though.
It uses the Intel HD 4000, and a 2 core, 4 thread, laptop CPU. However, it runs Dolphin just fine at the default settings, like HLE and Direct3D 11 (I'm running Windows 7 but even if I had 10 my GPU is not D3D12 capable). I'm running the Master branch of Dolphin, and a lot of Wii and GameCube titles run great. I'm running at native res (640 x 528) which looks fine, though not earth shattering.
Super Mario Galaxy even runs fine, as does NSMB, SSBB, SSBM, Star Fox Assault, and Mario Kart Wii. All at around 60fps. Many of these games were playable on my old laptop (Celeron N2840) but were more like 20 FPS. There are occasional stutters, especially in fullscreen, and in fullscreen, there is screen tearing.
But this is just to show that Dolphin runs fine on low end stuff. I even watched a video of someone running NSMB Wii on their Sandy Bridge laptop at or almost at full speed.
Maybe Windows 10 will boost performance, I haven't done extensive testing, but Windows 10 is shit so I wouldn't use it.
Even though they're not supported, I'd just like to say that under Windows 7, performance was mostly the same under Dolphin 3.5, 4, and 5, even between Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11, though OpenGL was a fair bit slower. Additionally, unofficial builds were the same speed. The only speed issues I had were with Dolphin 4 under Windows XP on this laptop. Stuff was playable, but below Windows 7 performance, which is surprising as the Windows 7 Aero interface would create load on the GPU not generated by Windows XP's software rendered interface. Again, I know it's not supported, but I just wanted to put what I found out there.
One thing I'd like to put out there is just like while running Garry's Mod, while running Dolphin, the laptop heats up a lot. The cooling vent almost burned me when I touched it and the desk warms me. I use my laptop on a desk, so it doesn't burn my lap though.
