Dolphin PC buying guide

[muakaka]

(01-12-2010, 06:20 AM)CacoFFF Wrote: It would be stupid, in my opinion, to replace a Core 2 Quad with MOBO and memories for a i7, spending around 400$.

Your best choice is to increase your CPU frequencies.
If you're willing to spend some money, do in on a high end cooling system, from 60$ to 100$ you may keep your cpu at freqs >3.4ghz even cooler than at 2.66 on stock cooling.
As long as you don't touch voltage settings your cpu life will not be affected.

---

Overclocking?
Never really been too keen to do so(I like to play it safe), is there anything else you could suggest?

(After some reading up, overclocking apparently can cause all sorts of problems. But the sources I read were outdated slightly...)

[chrissooo]

Hi!

I just want to build a new HTPC and will use Dolphin on it to play some Wii Games. The Problem is, that a HTPC is using in most of time to watching TV, BluRay or DVD. This is why it is important to build a low Power use System and a low Temperature System. Sometimes i play some PC Games with my two controllers (ex.FIFA) on it and in the future i will also play some Wii Games.

Here is my Hardware that i can (will) maximal build in it (Powerproblem, temperature and Low Profile Case).

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240e 2x 2.80GHz 45W
RAM: 4GB DDR3-1333
GPU option 1: ATI HD 4350 Passiv 512MB DDR2
GPU option 2: ATI HD 4650 Active 1GB DDR3

What do you thing about this components? Is it possible to play Games like Wii Sports / Mario Kard / Wii Fit (for my wife ) on minimum 30 FPS ?

This Low Profile Case is a 80% must, but maybe i can change it to a lttle bigger Case that can also use normal high Cards.

In this case its for example possible to use a GPU like ATI HD 4670. Bigger Cards is again a power problem for a System that ist mostly use for watching TV....

Will happy when someone can say me something about my chose of hardware.

THX!

[abfab126]

Dolphin likes CPUs and NOT GPUs so any option will be fine !

Just OC your CPU to 3.4 or 3.6 and you re all set ^^


Cheers !

[RupeeClock]

(01-13-2010, 08:47 AM)abfab126 Wrote: Dolphin likes CPUs and NOT GPUs so any option will be fine !

Just OC your CPU to 3.4 or 3.6 and you re all set ^^


Cheers !

Although if you have a crappy GPU that can't handle OpenGL 2.1, then lol.
In other words mobile/laptop graphics

[abfab126]

Option 1 says radeon 4350 and option 2 , radeon 4650 , so OpenGl 2.1 shouldn't be a problem ^^

[chrissooo]

(01-13-2010, 08:47 AM)abfab126 Wrote: Just OC your CPU to 3.4 or 3.6 and you re all set ^^

Not sure i can do it. The CPU will be cooling by a big passive cooler, because the noice. In the case are two very noiceless fans that put air in it and two that put it out again. Saw users that say to cool this CPU fanless is no problem, but when i overclock ... i don't know ... maybe someone have do it already?

Edit:
Another option is to use the Athlon II X2 250. This CPU have 2x3.00Ghz. Have read something about this CPU that i can overclock it to nearly 3.40Ghz without putting the voltage up. But then i need maybe a active cooling method and the system is louder ... hmmm hard to decide.

Question:
When i don't overclock the 2x2.80Ghz CPU, is it really too slow for Wii emulation? What happen then? 30 FPS is for me enough!

[sonicpacker]

All right. My family's desktop has officially crashed for good. It was a good computer for it's time (LOL 2000 - 2001ish xD). So now we are going to buy a new computer and I have a say in part of what we are going to get. My point of this post is to ask what are the perfect specs for running Dolphin to it's full potential?

Graphics Card, Processor, RAM, etc.
Most likely going to get Windows 7 64-Bit for our OS (which I already have on my laptop).

Thanks for all input, and sorry if this was posted in the wrong thread (I think it's the correct one...).

[turingpest]

(01-13-2010, 04:57 PM)chrissooo Wrote:

(01-13-2010, 08:47 AM)abfab126 Wrote: Just OC your CPU to 3.4 or 3.6 and you re all set ^^

Not sure i can do it. The CPU will be cooling by a big passive cooler, because the noice. In the case are two very noiceless fans that put air in it and two that put it out again. Saw users that say to cool this CPU fanless is no problem, but when i overclock ... i don't know ... maybe someone have do it already?

Edit:
Another option is to use the Athlon II X2 250. This CPU have 2x3.00Ghz. Have read something about this CPU that i can overclock it to nearly 3.40Ghz without putting the voltage up. But then i need maybe a active cooling method and the system is louder ... hmmm hard to decide.

Question:
When i don't overclock the 2x2.80Ghz CPU, is it really too slow for Wii emulation? What happen then? 30 FPS is for me enough!

well, 2.8ghz might be fast enough, although some games - mariokart for example - need to run at 50-60fps for fullspeed otherwise it isn't much fun! i have a htpc that i built just before xmas with an athlon II x3 @ 3.4ghz and it's alot better than at stock speed of 2.7ghz. although i don't have any of the games you're looking at so i couldn't tell you how they run.

here are my recommendations:

1) don't buy an athlon 240e unless it's a fair bit cheaper than the 250. you can buy a 250 and undervolt it to in effect be a 'low voltage' chip. trust me, if you undervolt an athlon 250 it'll probably consume the same or less as a 240e. take a look at this article - http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=42 - this guys methods are very good. interesting reading huh?

2) get that hd4650 or better. you'll be able to run games at a higher res than with the hd4350. also, do thorough research on the noise your potential video card will make. a good htpc can be ruined by a loud and whiny video card fan.

3) whatever cpu you buy overclock it as far as you can on stock volts. you won't increase power consumption and heat much as it's only by raising voltage that the power curve starts to climb rapidly. although judging by your post i think you realise this.

4) you won't necessarily need active cooling even with an overclock. you say you are gonna have 'big passive cooling' but the case you're looking at is low profile? if you can fit a scythe ninja mini in it (you probably need 120mm clearence) then you could probably run passively. if not then look at the scythe shuriken or big shuriken. both fantastic and both nearly silent. as long as you can keep your temps at 64c or under under extreme stress then you'll be fine (dual core athlon II's can run up to 74c but you'd want to keep them at least 10c under that when stress testing and ideally even more).

[chrissooo]

U are right i thing!

Because GPU:
My first plan was to use a low profile case that brings some problems when i want to put a more powerful GPU in it. But at the moment i am slowly more and more to thing about to use a bigger Case for my new HTPC, like the Antec Fusion Remote for example. In this case i will put a ATI HD 5750 GPU in it, my favourite model is from Powercolor and have a very low noise Fan, i thing the best one from this ATI HD 5750 GPUs when we speak about loudness. The other very good thing in this card is, that he have a very good powermanagment. Its need about 16W in Idle and something about 25W to play a BluRay for example ... this is very good i thing.

Because CPU:
Now i hear something about the new 32nm CPUs from Intel (i3, i5). That what i read is also fantastic. This CPUs have a unbeatable poweruse/performance at the moment. There are use lower power like a AMD 240e CPU (Mainboard + CPU) and bring a lot more performance. My Favourite is the "Intel Core i5 660". This CPU have 3.33Ghz + a PowerBust function that overclock automatic to about 3,6Ghz when is a need! After a little googeling i have also find out, that this CPU is also fantastic to overclock and a overclock to 4Ghz is absolutely no problem says many users.

This CPU and GPU i thing will give my a good sure to play many Games on Delphi without speed problem i thing. The only bad thing is the price from this new CPUs ...

Here my new idea to use following components:

GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 PCS 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0
CPU: Intel Core i5 660 2x3.33GHz So1156 BOX
RAM: Geil 4GB KIT PC3-10667U DDR3-1333 CL7-7-7 Low Voltage

The other components are irrelevant i thing

[turingpest]

(01-15-2010, 02:03 AM)chrissooo Wrote: U are right i thing!

Because GPU:
My first plan was to use a low profile case that brings some problems when i want to put a more powerful GPU in it. But at the moment i am slowly more and more to thing about to use a bigger Case for my new HTPC, like the Antec Fusion Remote for example. In this case i will put a ATI HD 5750 GPU in it, my favourite model is from Powercolor and have a very low noise Fan, i thing the best one from this ATI HD 5750 GPUs when we speak about loudness. The other very good thing in this card is, that he have a very good powermanagment. Its need about 16W in Idle and something about 25W to play a BluRay for example ... this is very good i thing.

Because CPU:
Now i hear something about the new 32nm CPUs from Intel (i3, i5). That what i read is also fantastic. This CPUs have a unbeatable poweruse/performance at the moment. There are use lower power like a AMD 240e CPU (Mainboard + CPU) and bring a lot more performance. My Favourite is the "Intel Core i5 660". This CPU have 3.33Ghz + a PowerBust function that overclock automatic to about 3,6Ghz when is a need! After a little googeling i have also find out, that this CPU is also fantastic to overclock and a overclock to 4Ghz is absolutely no problem says many users.

This CPU and GPU i thing will give my a good sure to play many Games on Delphi without speed problem i thing. The only bad thing is the price from this new CPUs ...

Here my new idea to use following components:

GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 PCS 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0
CPU: Intel Core i5 660 2x3.33GHz So1156 BOX
RAM: Geil 4GB KIT PC3-10667U DDR3-1333 CL7-7-7 Low Voltage

The other components are irrelevant i thing

well, it's up to you how much you want to spend, but yes, those 32nm intels are fantastic (if a little expensive). i would say get the cheapest one you can, probably the i5 650. getting the 660 is pointless if it costs more. you probably won't even need to overclock the i5 650 that much, if at all, to run alot of dolphin games fullspeed (at 3.2ghz it'll beat my 3.4ghz athlon x3 in dolphin). a word of caution though - never forget that dolphin is a work in progress and as such even the fastest system in the world may well suffer slowdowns, graphical and sound glitches and other anomalies. the constant revision of code means that a game working well in one revision may not work well in the next. we will have to wait for an official release for a fully functioning emulator.
anyway, that ram looks nice. and that graphics card looks lovely
just get a quiet cpu cooler and a decent motherboard and you're set!