Future PC Build - Is it good enough?

[snesiscool]

I am planning to build a gaming PC to take to college. I will be mostly playing Zelda: The Wind Waker, Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Super Mario Galaxy at 1920x1080 fullscreen. I will be playing other games, but these three seem to be the most hardware-intensive. I wish to use at least 2x anti-aliasing, Scaled EFB Copy, Per-Pixel Lighting, and Widescreen Hack with the DirectX 11 graphics plugin. I know that my CPU is in the "Very Fast" category of the forum's CPU rankings. However, I am unsure as how this translates to performance in the three games above, and I am unsure about how the GPU will perform as well. Will my build be able to handle these games and run them at their native framerates? I might get weaker parts if my build turns out to be too good for the three games.

This is my build (parts unrelated to performance removed):

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($109.99 @ TigerDirect)
CPU Cooler: Logisys MC4002IW 66.3 CFM CPU Cooler ($27.99 @ Mwave)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($66.99 @ Microcenter)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 660 2GB Video Card ($189.99 @ NCIX US)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-12 04:40 EST-0500)

EDIT: I read on the Dolphin Wiki Page for Skyward Sword that Dolphin crashes in important parts of the game if the OpenGl backend is not used. How will using OpenGL impact performance as opposed to DX11? In my personal experiences, OpenGL has always been slower than DirectX.

[artantaaa]

Dolphin needs CPU power more than GPU power. The best processor to use for Dolphin now is the 4670K. If you buy a $100 GPU instead of a $200 one, your budget would remain the same and you will get the best Dolphin performance possible. You could probably even use your old graphics card if its fairly recent, unless you want to run a useless amount of antialiasing.

[DJBarry004]

Also, OpenGL is getting -hell- faster than D3D in recent dev builds...

[kinkinkijkin]

You're obviously biting hard on a budget. Why would you buy an EVGA card on such a restriction? In my opinion, you should jump up your CPU power, and go with the AMD equivalent to the 660 instead, possibly even sapphire's release of it. (that's r7 260x-ish, by the way)

[DJBarry004]

i5 4670K or i7 4770K Haswell. Those are the gods of Dolphin ATM.

[admin89]

Quote:I know that my CPU is in the "Very Fast" category of the forum's CPU rankings

It's actually pretty weak for Dolphin . I'm not joking
Dolphin is a dual core application , a multi-core CPU with super low single-threaded performance only bring you unsatisfactory result
Judging the CPU price alone , 100$ CPU won't get you anywhere with demanding games
Emulator is CPU intensive application , you won't need an extremely good GPU for it unless you want run at 4xInternal Resolution (2560x2112) or 3xIR with high level anti-aliasing . For 3x IR (higher than 1080p) and zero AA or some low level AA (about 2xMSAA or so) , a EVGA GTX 650 will do the job just fine (GTX 650 Ti Boost also is a nice GPU) or Sapphire 7750 . I recommend EVGA or Gigabyte GPU , their durability is quite impressive .

A video card that has higher memory bandwidth will perform significantly better in Dolphin (you can bump up internal resolution without losing FPS) . An old video card can outperform latest video card if that card has higher memory bandwidth

Base on official Dolphin Benchmark , FX-6300 stock is on par with 2nd gen core i3 2120 and FX-6300 @ 4.5GHz (near maximum OC) is slower than 2nd gen core i5 2400 stock . Since Dolphin is a dual core application and 4th gen Core i series is 20% -> 30% faster than 3rd gen Core i series in Dolphin , 4th gen i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz ~ 129$ (or 99$ if you pick it at microcenter store) is much faster than i5 2400 in Dolphin . Therefore , i3 4130 totally destroy FX-6300 and it should be abit faster than FX-8350 @ 4.6GHz (OCed) in Dolphin
An i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz + H81 mobo are ok for most games . However...

If you want a true "future PC Build" for Dolphin , you will have to buy an i5 4670k @ 4.2GHz (OCed) + Z87 mobo (MSI Z87 G41 or MSI Z87 G45) . As for the CPU cooler and PSU , CM 212 Evo and EVGA 500B 500W are recomemmended for low budget . You can buy them at newegg.com

[Suprvgeta]

(01-13-2014, 02:59 AM)admin89 Wrote:

Quote:I know that my CPU is in the "Very Fast" category of the forum's CPU rankings

If you want a true "future PC Build" for Dolphin , you will have to buy an i5 4670k @ 4.2GHz (OCed) + Z87 mobo (MSI Z87 G41 or MSI Z87 G45) . As for the CPU cooler and PSU , CM 212 Evo and EVGA 500B 500W are recomemmended for low budget . You can buy them at newegg.com

I agree w/ this. I recently upgraded to the MSI G45 and I5-4670K (OC'd to 4.3 ghz) on a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo and have been getting excellent performance in Dolphin. Of the games you've mentioned, I've really only played Mario Galaxy extensively, and I can run @ 4x IR, w/ 2x AA (sometimes I don't even enable, I can't really tell the diff even on a 65'' Panasonic Plasma), and 16x AF w/ no FPS drops.