Dolphin PC buying guide

[tiko257]

(07-18-2011, 09:27 AM)setya5785 Wrote: ^
that's a bad rig option

better get 2500K + P67 board (cost the same with 2600 +H67)
you'll get more for your money

also, get better ram, certified for 1600MHz for sandy bridge system.

it's the gpu and the processor what will make the difference, not the ram or the mobo... note that this build is not for overclock , a mobo and a processor that let you overclock are more expensive.
edit:----------------- remember also that i5 doesn't suport hyper threading so the i5 its only 4 cores while i7 has 8 threads/cores.

[setya5785]

*facepalm*

faster ram give you overall faster system, not just about emulation. considering the price, might as well get quality ram that have certification for XMP 1600MHz

GPU, not so much for emulation-centric PC. even mediocre $100 discrete GPU is more than enough for dolphin (or pcsx2 for that matter)

with P67 board, you can overclock :p
beside, if you're setting on discrete GPU, why bother with H67 at all, the main difference H67 and p67 are intel IGP and overclock feature (even if you're not using it, the option is there)

even with non K series sandy bridge you'll still be able to add 4 cpu bin to turbo boost ration, with H67 board, not a chance
i7 2600 stock clock is 3.4GHz, with default turbo ratio for 1 core active is 3.9GHz. with p67 board you can add +4bin to make turbo boost ratio into 4.3GHz when single core is active.

hyperthreading won't add benefit for emulation in dolphin. that's why better to get 2500K (seriously, almost $100 difference), OC that into 4.4GHz with ease on ALL 4 core.
(even for OC newb, just choose auto from bios/EFI, for advance OC'er can get better result from manual setting).

rather than getting 17 2600 (non K series) + H67 mobo, getting i5 2500K + premium P67 is even cheaper.
your post add those i7 2600 + H67 @ $398
my i5 2500K + P67 board cost me LESS than that, but when OC'ed gonna leave that 2600 in the dust if we're talking about performance
i5 2500K = $219
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
my asrock p67 extreme 4 = $159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157229
total = $378
you can use that extra $20 to get better ram, or cpu cooler.
*asus p8p67 is even cheaper on newegg, $155 or $139 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131705

even if you don't plan on OC, getting p67 board still a better option just in case you're interresting on OC in the future or for getting better CPU later on. it easier to resell cpu that mobo
if you're really on tight budget you really need to sort your component priority to get the most out of your system and balance the overall component you choose.

even when not planning on OC, i'd still reccommend 2500K/2500, and use the money for better overall component.
it's no use getting best componen only on 1 or 2 area and left the other with minimum care

[tiko257]

(07-18-2011, 12:05 PM)setya5785 Wrote: *facepalm*

faster ram give you overall faster system, not just about emulation. considering the price, might as well get quality ram that have certification for XMP 1600MHz

GPU, not so much for emulation-centric PC. even mediocre $100 discrete GPU is more than enough for dolphin (or pcsx2 for that matter)

with P67 board, you can overclock :p
beside, if you're setting on discrete GPU, why bother with H67 at all, the main difference H67 and p67 are intel IGP and overclock feature (even if you're not using it, the option is there)

even with non K series sandy bridge you'll still be able to add 4 cpu bin to turbo boost ration, with H67 board, not a chance
i7 2600 stock clock is 3.4GHz, with default turbo ratio for 1 core active is 3.9GHz. with p67 board you can add +4bin to make turbo boost ratio into 4.3GHz when single core is active.

hyperthreading won't add benefit for emulation in dolphin. that's why better to get 2500K (seriously, almost $100 difference), OC that into 4.4GHz with ease on ALL 4 core.
(even for OC newb, just choose auto from bios/EFI, for advance OC'er can get better result from manual setting).

rather than getting 17 2600 (non K series) + H67 mobo, getting i5 2500K + premium P67 is even cheaper.
your post add those i7 2600 + H67 @ $398
my i5 2500K + P67 board cost me LESS than that, but when OC'ed gonna leave that 2600 in the dust if we're talking about performance
i5 2500K = $219
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
my asrock p67 extreme 4 = $159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157229
total = $378
you can use that extra $20 to get better ram, or cpu cooler.
*asus p8p67 is even cheaper on newegg, $155 or $139 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131705

even if you don't plan on OC, getting p67 board still a better option just in case you're interresting on OC in the future or for getting better CPU later on. it easier to resell cpu that mobo
if you're really on tight budget you really need to sort your component priority to get the most out of your system and balance the overall component you choose.

yeah i totally understand you but i do a lot of rendering/video encoding more than gaming so the i7 makes more sense to me ...... but both the i7 and i5 are great processors.

[vortextk]

Yeah after starting to get into more frapsing I can definitely see going for an i7 rather than the i5. I can't, no money, but I would if I had the option right now; later perhaps. The program can kind of kick my ass while in some games and turning like 10minutes of 1080p30fps into something good for youtube takes me usually 1-2 hours in virtualdub, if I don't screw anything up, not counting tons of prep time nailing the right settings for fraps + game since it's different than when running a game by itself. Just for gaming and gaming alone I think it has been proven quite well you should go for the i5, though I don't know how well that holds true for something like dolphin. Most regular pc games care much more about the graphics card than processor, which is switched up here, but I don't know.

[setya5785]

@tiko
considering topic title, i assume you use it for gaming., lol.

but yes, for rendering, i7 with extra thread does slightly excell above i5 (at stock clock that is)
see http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287 for comparison between 2500K and 2600K at stock. only slightly faster on cinebench (around 10% on multithreaded render, not that much considering at stock 2600 already 100MHz higher when not on turbo), though for x264 encode, when using 2pass, 2600K give significant boost.

i also use my i5 for rendering in 3ds max with vray. @4.2 i say, i'm quite satisfied.
i'll download cinebench r10, and post later how my i5 compared against that 2600K at stock

EDIT : test result
CINEBENCH R10
Intel® Core™ i5-2500K CPU @ 4.20GHz
Rendering (Single CPU): 6985 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 24738 CB-CPU
Multiprocessor Speedup: 3.54

certainly faster than i7 2600K at stock (or i7 2600) that only get 5991 on single and 22875 on multithread.
this is OC'ed @4.2GHz (that can easily goes up to 5GHz on air cooling).
but with both OC'ed or stock, yes, i7 is faster

@vortex wow that was long
for youtube quality video, i always use CUDA based encoder (media espresso) to encode those video (quality doesn't really matter). only took seconds
though i5 not that long either to get better quality vid

[vortextk]

I'm trying to keep them looking as good as possible. Using virtualdub with a 264 encoder, I keep it at 1080p with 30fps since youtube won't take higher than that anyway. Though no doubt I could be doing something better, I'm really new at this. Like I said though, a crazy(er) processor would also help with the recording. Fraps kind of kicks my ass in some games and I've tested multiple alternatives, most aren't as good even if they don't hit your resources as badly.

[setya5785]

strange, i've seen youtube video with 4K res
fraps still the best imho.
have you tried masi afterburner, or dxtory ?

lol, we're a bit off topic

[vortextk]

I mean it works fine, you can look at my videos, but it can slowdown and on some games really drop frames. I tried dxtory. All the settings were nice but I couldn't find a codec that wouldn't kill me ingame and would produce a good video. Most of the codecs made really crappy videos, like 10-20fps even though my game was rock solid at 30fps. Even the good codecs only seemed to work as good as fraps.

It's not a problem, but fraps is fairly resource intensive and sometimes I have to make concessions in game settings to keep it pretty solid. A crazy high end processor would help a lot especially considering how dolphin already feeds off mostly your cpu anyway.

[setya5785]

nice channel +subscribe

with dolphin using 2 core at most, you should have 2 idle core to deal with fraps. probably HDD problem ? did you tried recording on diff hdd ?
well sandy bridge should definitely help, just tried recording with fraps, no speed penalti at all.

[vortextk]

Definitely could be a combination of cpu + hard drive. The HD is only average, 7200rpm and whatever regular cache is these days, and I only have the one. No secondary to record onto. My external I'm sure is worthless for this. When I copy stuff over it only goes at like 60mb/s and each avi that fraps makes is 4gigs at around a minute long.

And thanks. It's been fun messing with recording and now encoding and I have something to finally work on those skills a bit with this. Doing pretty well getting these gamecubes up but the couple wii games I've tried so far are difficult to run and record.