Dolphin vs an actual Wii.

[Loomapidaja]

Since I can't figure out how to effectively play games with Dolphin with m&k / controller I figured I'm going to buy the bluetooth adapter with an actual wiimote.

But before I fork over the cash I would like an objective opinion on how well Dolphin actually works? I have read how many games have different problems, they crash etc. And how different games need different settings. And I tried playing SMG2 before and there were times where the speed dropped to 40%. My rig:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Asus P5Q PRO
ATI ASUTEK 4870 1GB
x4: A-DATA 1GB DDRII 800

Is it worth it?

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

It isn't. It may be an averagely adequate Gamecube substitute, but not Wii, not for now at least. You'll always get worse graphics and worse speed. Also there's no guarantee you'll be successful at configuring Wiimote via Bluetooth (not everyone is). But if we're looking for a cheap solution here (as Wii is rather costly, as any powerful gaming hardware of course), then, well, this may work. But for some games you may need additional accessories (say, Nunchuk), which I'm not sure can be connected to PC at all.

[jumb]

The speed of your cpu is a major dependence on how fast Dolphin will run.

As for comparing to a Wii, it depends on the game; but generally the actual hardware IS better than an emulator. There are a few games which I might recommend with Dolphin over a real Wii, but even with better framerates and higher FPS you still miss many features such as internet connectivity and Wiimote sounds.

[naoan]

You'll always get worse graphics and worse speed.

If that is your experience, I pity you. Some people with adequate machine get MUCH better graphic and nice speed in some games.

Of course the real machine will always get the 100% compatibility rate.

[Nirth]

The nunchuck works if you connect to the Wiimote but as Jekyll said you need a bluetooth which is, in my opinion, very unstable and if not Real wiimote plugin works you have go around with emulated and it's really a pain in the ass but might be worth it if you're experienced with technical devices.

I have to say, I recently played through Metroid Other M and for the few slowdowns and occasional graphical artifact it probably ran better than on a real Wii but I am not sure, I'm under the impression that all games run badly on consoles so.

[nintendokid]

My opneon is this, my rig
(Giga-Byte GA-890FXA-UD7,
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition,
4GB crucial/ballistix DDR3 - 1866(OC) RAM,
two BFG 295 OC running in SLI, (800 cores)
1KW PSU cost something like £900+ (including software)

Many games run ok with a few hiccups and glitch etc some would crash at some point or another, what one needs to understand is that this emulator is still in the making, I for one don’t think this emulator makes use of CPU cores in my case 6 cores running at 3.2Ghz (19.2Ghz) 6 MB cash, also I didn’t think this emulator is making use of the 800 GPU CODA cores, overall when running this emulator, haven’t checked but my rig is probably taking something like 700+Watts this would hit the electricity bill somewhat compared to a wii that only takes something like 30~40Watts to run the games perfectly.

So you need to weigh out the following,

The emulator
This emulator lets you run your Wii/GC games at higher resolution (1080P) (its all good but sadly the games where not made in 1080P so the extra details are missing)

This emulator lets you add other graphical enhancement (anti-aliasing, bloom and other graphical effects) however this emulator is work in progress and does not run all games and not all run perfectly.

This emulator does not support online Nintendo WFC (so you can not take advantage of the free online future of games like SSBB or MKWii)

This emulator required you to have a decent rig to experience decent framerate/speed, any decent rig require high consumption of watts this can cost.

It is difficult to get wiimote, balance board and other wii accessories working perfectly on this emulator, (I haven’t tried but I don’t think you can assign 4 wii remotes)


The wii
It runs on much less watts compared to the emulator, sadly it can only do 480P component, it plays all GC and WII games perfectly, it has online support for Wii WFC games, with the right knowledge you can improve the loading speed of wii games by loading them from USB 2.0 HDD, you can also cheat on games and online games like MKwii (this makes it suck but almost 50% of the players use cheats on MKwii) all accessories works perfectly.

The wii can cost much less compared to a decent rig (New Wii £170) if you look you can get a used wii on ebay for less then £90 (decent rig £300+ )

Its up to you what you decide, If you know how to repair wii you can get one for less the £40 much as a newly release game, I have a few wiis that I get from ebay (4 faulty wii for something like £150 easy fix) and I have my ultimate rig specs above, one needs to have both a wii and a decent rig to experience both worlds


Hope this helped

Somewhat off topic
Don’t know why but I read a post about Zelda Windweaker, a lot of people want to experience this games and last I’ve heard was that the sound for this games had issues so it was not emulated at all, if you look you can get a MC, 1 pad and a GC console with this game for less then £15 or you can get yourself a wii £150, a 50p GC memory card, £3 GC pad and a used copy of this game (£10) total of £13.50 Not including wii console?????

[SantaC]

You'll always get worse graphics and worse speed.

worse graphics, what?!

[KHRZ]

Meaning bugs... but many games have very little bugs. Like SSBB

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

Well, I just got a newer version of the emulator (not much newer than the one I had though, but still), and maybe I was a bit harsh before. What I meant by 'worse graphics' was that of often (or sometimes) have to sacrifice graphics for the sake of better performance (and it's not the problem of my hardware, I'd say it's rather decent, but an emulator is an emulator).

Yeah, this thing good, but still I wouldn't call it a satisfying substitute. A real console is better in plenty of ways. Also, again, connecting wiimotes to PC is a pain in the ass. And I'm not sure if conneting Nunchuk is possible. Is it?

But who knows. It's less expensive this way, and also you can work with virtual disks which is much better than real disks.

[Ocean]

You'll always get worse graphics and speed

no. One of the biggest reasons to use dolphin over the real console is the ability to use high resolutions (1080p and up), antialiasing, opencl acceleration, in recent commits even 3-d etc...

Depending on your specs you can get full speed in almost all games now

(as Wii is rather costly, as any powerful gaming hardware of course)

Wii isn't really powerful, it's just an improved gamecube with very much of the same hardware.
In fact it's the weakest current generation system, also the only one of the 3 to be emulated

Dolphin's only "real" problem left is stability.
Games can crash at random, or audio will disappear/stop playing, a cutscene wont play, game wont go past intro etc...



p.s. yes you can connect nunchuck, if you plug it into wiimote