Ask yourself:
I can continue this list for a while. The point is, if you are really looking for a HD experience. Stick to Dolphin, Dolphin does what Nintendo doesn't. However, if you demand the purest of accuracy you need a real GameCube. Althrough most common games are actually close to perfection on Dolphin. Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, these are all examples of games that play flawless on Dolphin, provided you use Dolphin 5.0 or newer.
The big issue is that you need a bit of powerful hardware. It is not that hard these days to obtain the proper hardware. Any NVidia card from the GTX 600 series and newer will work fine. An GTX 960 isn't that expensive these days, but there is also the newer GTX 1060. As for the CPU, in my case an i5-4430 at 3 GHz works perfectly. My model is already a few years old, you should check the Intel i5-6000 series such as the Intel i5-6600k. If you want an even stronger CPU you would need to look at the Intel i7 series If you want to make use of HD textures make sure you have at least 8 GB RAM, but you probably would need 16 GB for the larger texture packs.
With Dolphin you would not need to worry any longer about Region Locking either. But Dolphin is more than a simple GameCube. It supports both the GameCube and Wii (even better, it also supports the Virtual Console of the Wii), and that within one application!
- Does your GameCube run games at 1080? Or even 4k? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube upscale textures to HD? Dolphin does with texture packs!
- Does your GameCube support save states? Dolphin does! Bind it to your controller.
- Does your GameCube support every controller? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support SSAA or Anistropic Filtering? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support widescreen? Dolphin does with Gecko and AR! Althrough a modded GameCube does too...
- Does your GameCube support Super Mario Sunshine at 60 FPS? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support improve distance drawing (check Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time). Dolphin does!
I can continue this list for a while. The point is, if you are really looking for a HD experience. Stick to Dolphin, Dolphin does what Nintendo doesn't. However, if you demand the purest of accuracy you need a real GameCube. Althrough most common games are actually close to perfection on Dolphin. Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, these are all examples of games that play flawless on Dolphin, provided you use Dolphin 5.0 or newer.
The big issue is that you need a bit of powerful hardware. It is not that hard these days to obtain the proper hardware. Any NVidia card from the GTX 600 series and newer will work fine. An GTX 960 isn't that expensive these days, but there is also the newer GTX 1060. As for the CPU, in my case an i5-4430 at 3 GHz works perfectly. My model is already a few years old, you should check the Intel i5-6000 series such as the Intel i5-6600k. If you want an even stronger CPU you would need to look at the Intel i7 series If you want to make use of HD textures make sure you have at least 8 GB RAM, but you probably would need 16 GB for the larger texture packs.
With Dolphin you would not need to worry any longer about Region Locking either. But Dolphin is more than a simple GameCube. It supports both the GameCube and Wii (even better, it also supports the Virtual Console of the Wii), and that within one application!