Hello there. I'm a newbie here. First of all, I am a hardcore gamer and I must admit that I do not like the Wii much at the first place because its games look very childish. I'm no offensive to Wii user. Just a personal opinion, perhaps because Wii games -- there's no bloody game like God of War. Worst of all, Wii's hardware is inferor to PS3 and 360, so there can't be any realistic graphics game like Crysis 2... But I think I need to try some games and change my opinion. As a noob, I have some questions 'bout Dolphin before buying a game.
I think the main bottleneck is the CPU. The quad-core Phenom II N930 can beat a dual-core i5 450M (2.4 Ghz) when all 4 cores are full load, but when running by two cores, it is weaker than an i3 330M (2.13 Ghz). I can only run Final Fantasy X on PCSX2 at 40 fps on my laptop, but my brother's with an i3 350 (2.26 Ghz) and an integrated Intel HD can run it at 60 fps. Laptop CPU is never as powerful as desktop counterpart in same brand name. Further more, my CPU doesn't has shared L3 cache, making it even weaker when running less than 4 cores. I wonder if I should buy a Wii game.
- How many major threads does Dolphin use to emulate the Wii (major mean CPU intensive thread)? In other word how many processor cores does Dolphin support?
- I want to try Twilight Princess (I like this game graphics), but I have no Wiimote for aiming the bow other than a DualShock 2 from my PS2, so I'm considering the Gamecube version. Is Gamecube emulation speed better than Wii's? Btw is there much graphics differences between Wii and Gamecube version of Twilight Princess?
- Can my laptop run Dolphin? I'm sorry if asking such question is forbidden (PCSX2 forum does). I have read the system requirement thread but its info is too generic (a "fast" dual-core CPU and a DX9 GPU). Here's my laptop spec:
Quote:Compaq Presario CQ42-223AX (I got it for US$500, so I do not expect much if it can run Dolphin)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 N930 (2 Ghz, 512 kB L2 cache for each core, no L3 cache, no TurboCore)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 545v (clock speed 680 Mhz, 512 MB DDR3 RAM, DX10.1, shader 4.1. Basically it is a HD 4570 renamed, an entry-level graphics card for laptop. It can run Resident Evil 5 in 1280x720, all medium settings at 30 fps)
RAM: 2 GB DDR3 (does not matter)
OS: Windows 7 x64 (may be a bit speed up compared to x86)
I think the main bottleneck is the CPU. The quad-core Phenom II N930 can beat a dual-core i5 450M (2.4 Ghz) when all 4 cores are full load, but when running by two cores, it is weaker than an i3 330M (2.13 Ghz). I can only run Final Fantasy X on PCSX2 at 40 fps on my laptop, but my brother's with an i3 350 (2.26 Ghz) and an integrated Intel HD can run it at 60 fps. Laptop CPU is never as powerful as desktop counterpart in same brand name. Further more, my CPU doesn't has shared L3 cache, making it even weaker when running less than 4 cores. I wonder if I should buy a Wii game.