Dolphin PC buying guide

[Iulius]

the 9800 card does not really matter, its the cpu that is weak.

even with turbo its 2,7ghz max if i remember right.


Well, i got a 3ghz c2d and im still thinking about upgrading it.

luigis mansion will be fine with such a cpu, SSBB probably too.

but seriously, most games just want more.


its one thing to test a few games and another to actually play them.

for example : to mess around with SSBM, you can do that with a usual 2ghz cpu. But if you want to actually play it and get all the stuff etc, you will have a hard time as some levels or scenes are just annoyinly slow.

[jasong]

Yeah but Pikmin, SSBM, Luigi's Mansion etc are not that intensive. I can play TP at just south of 3ghz c2d with no real complaints.

[Iulius]

at this point it depends on the player.

Tp will break down with your cpu to below 10fps in intensive areas.

you can use frameskip of course to achieve higher speed but then fps drop even more to about 5fps in woods or hyrule.

if you dont complain about that, its fine, but you cant say for others that 5-10fps plays just fine and therefore the cpu is strong enough.


some players maybe dont like to play with less then 10fps in huge parts of a game.

[jasong]

Sure I mean TP is difficult to play in certain areas - but from what I can gather i'd need a big outlay of money to upgrade my system sufficiently to make it more playable because of the limitations of the emulator. Especially considering that it doesn't use more than 2 cores and pushing an e8500 (for instance) to 4ghz and beyond where I'll see the difference will require some skill and a high level motherboard.

[cmccmc]

4ghz is not even enough to play tp fullspeed

[jasong]

xactly.

[cmccmc]

8ghz wouldn't even be enough

[THELUKESTIR]

wow, ok clockspeed is not the big kicker, it depends how good that cpu on that laptop is clock for clock. if its sometihng like an athlon x2 mobile then you can run brawl, melee, luigis mansion, pikmin, and probably windwaker full speed. I have an athlon x2 mobile clocked at 2.0ghz and i see full speed in brawl and melee, and almost full speed in windwaker

[jasong]

All things being equal though clock speed does make a difference.

[Iulius]

well thats the problem about everyone talking about fullspeed.

sure you can play those games with a weak cpu, but you could also note that they break down to unplayable speeds in certain areas.

please dont give those people who really care about how fast they computer should be, a wrong picture of the reality.


what will happen ?

he maybe buys a better laptop because you told him it will be enough and then he suffers from slow speeds.


I would feel guilty if i wouldn't tell the truth about the real speed.

The truth is for me that actually PLAYING (means trough the whole game) is a pain with most games even with a 3ghz c2d and laptops are even slower.

I just dont want to see he him in the forums the next weeks asking like all the others where the secret setting are that give more speed.


thats why i rather do a bit of "overstreching" like jasong said, instead of telling that all is wonderful.