Thaaaat's complicated.
Aaaanyway, having things pixel match a display isn't as important these days, and will be less and less important going forward. Back in the old days, running 480p content on a 720p display was super blurry! 720p content on a 1080p display as well. But 1080p to a 1440p display or a 4K display is much harder to notice. By the time we reach 8k or so, you'll be able to run *any* resolution and it will seem pixel matched to the display, simply because the pixels are just that small and dense!
In Dolphin's case specifically, a modern gaming GPU with hybrid ubershaders can handle a LOT. My 1080 can handle 8x native like it's nothing! I usually play on 4x native (to match my display) with 4xSSAA, and that doesn't stress my 1080 at all. SSAA smooths over any rounding issues and give a sharp, clear picture no matter what.
Aaaanyway, having things pixel match a display isn't as important these days, and will be less and less important going forward. Back in the old days, running 480p content on a 720p display was super blurry! 720p content on a 1080p display as well. But 1080p to a 1440p display or a 4K display is much harder to notice. By the time we reach 8k or so, you'll be able to run *any* resolution and it will seem pixel matched to the display, simply because the pixels are just that small and dense!
In Dolphin's case specifically, a modern gaming GPU with hybrid ubershaders can handle a LOT. My 1080 can handle 8x native like it's nothing! I usually play on 4x native (to match my display) with 4xSSAA, and that doesn't stress my 1080 at all. SSAA smooths over any rounding issues and give a sharp, clear picture no matter what.
AMD Threadripper Pro 5975WX PBO+200 | Asrock WRX80 Creator | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | 64GB DDR4-3600 Octo-Channel | Windows 11 23H1 | (details)
MacBook Pro 14in | M1 Max (32 GPU Cores) | 64GB LPDDR5 6400 | macOS 12