How benificial is OCing Haswell to Dolphin?

[antwan]

Hi,

I'm picking out components for a new PC build that I would like to be Dolphin capable. I've been reading around and obviously the i5 Haswell CPUs are highly recommended for Dolphin.

For PC gaming I want to get a i5 4460 and a H97 MB. I don't really want to spend the extra for an overclock-able chip like the 4690K and a Z97 MB. I've never overclocked and I don't really want to - it seems to me that for modern PC games the gains are not huge.

My specific Dolphin question is how important is an overclocked i5? How big is the difference between a stock i5 4460 (3.2 GHz) and a OCed 4690K (4+ GHz)? Is it a game-changer? Is it crucial to playing some of the games I list below? Is the price upgrade and time expense for a good OC worth it?

A sample of the games I would want to play would be:

GC: Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 1+2, F-Zero GX, Mario Sunshine.
Wii: Skyward Sword, Mario Galaxy 1+2, Okami. (I realise Metroid Prime 3 might not run well on almost anything).

My desired settings would be 1920x1080 with maybe 2-4x AA (but that's not a deal-breaker). Having not used Dolphin before, I can't go much further with details of settings.

(Assume an overkill GPU like GTX 970, and 8GB system RAM.)

Thanks!

[cosmoruski]

Well the clock speed scales more or less linear with performance, so a 4GHz Chip will be 25% faster then the same CPU with 3,2Ghz

I've played Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime last year with a 4Ghz Haswell i5 - and both Games had 1-2 scenes where the performance wasn't 100% - but most of the Time it was Fullspeed.
The newer Dolphin Builds which were released in the past year had some really big performance enhancements - so those 3,2 Ghz may be enough - mayabe not - you'll be save with >= 4 Ghz

[NKF98]

Haswells run most games at 100% for most of the time. Overclocking will give benefits in Dolphin, but with a later generation i5 it should not be necessary. Some games may require OC with the haswell, but they are few and very demanding. Some of these games include:

Super Mario Galaxy 1&2
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Metroid Series
Zelda: Twilight Princess
Call of Duty series

If you aren't playing any of these then an OC is an unnecessary risk.

[ZL580]

Remember the i5 will turbo when only using 2 cores too

[tuanming]

If you want to be on the safe side then go ahead and get the 4690k and overclock it when you need it. OCing the CPU typically only require tweaking the CPU voltage and setting the ram speed to its specs. If you're an adventurous then you can play around with the more advanced settings.

[Callum027]

You get huge benefits overclocking Haswell CPUs with Dolphin. Highly overclocked G3258s, i5-4690Ks and i7-4790Ks (>= 4.4GHz) will run pretty much everything at full speed almost all of the time, while the lower clocked i5s can struggle with the more intensive games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 and The Last Story.

[antwan]

Thanks a lot for the replies!

Seems like there is a fairly strong case for overclocking in certain games. I'll seriously consider the unlocked chip.

Cheers!