HTPC with dolphin capability

[grottkjell]

Hi!

I'm building a HTPC that I want to also be able to run Gamecube and Wii emulation, preferably scaled up to 720p and/or 1080p. The HTPC is intended to be placed by my TV and TV bench is fairly small and only allows a fairly small computer case. In turn, this restricts the GPU that i can choose from (I need a low profile, single slot card). So currently I'm looking at small Radeon r7 250 low profile cards. I'm planning to use the graphics card together with either a G3258 Pentium overclocked or an i3 4370 3,8 GHz.

Would this be sufficient for my needs, which is to emulate Wii and Gamecube using Dolphin while scaling up to at least 720p but preferably 1080p?


Cheers! // Grottkjell

[yl-smash]

Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

[grottkjell]

(10-18-2014, 03:49 AM)yl-smash Wrote: Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

Ok, sounds nice. Especially since it saves me quite a chunk of money Any idea about the graphics card? I know it's not as good as the HD5770 which is recommended in the FAQ, but maybe it's still enough (especially with a decent CPU) to scale up to 720p, maybe even 1080p?

Is there a cheaper alternative to the motherboard though (looking for an ITX for that matter)?

Cheers!

[Aleron Ives]

The 750 Ti seems pretty popular for HTPC use and will give you good performance / $ in Dolphin, too.

[NaturalViolence]

yl-smash Wrote:Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

It doesn't run as fast as those cpus but it gets fairly close.

[grottkjell]

(10-18-2014, 06:21 AM)Aleron Ives Wrote: The 750 Ti seems pretty popular for HTPC use and will give you good performance / $ in Dolphin, too.

Yeah I've been looking into the GTX 750 Ti quite a bit and I wouldn't have doubted for very long if it wasn't for the fact that it doesn't fit in the case without having to carve in the case a bit

[ThePokeman92]

(10-18-2014, 06:45 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote:

yl-smash Wrote:Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

It doesn't run as fast as those cpus but it gets fairly close.

Is everyone sure about that? It would seem to me that the G3258, which is a dual core chip, would be noticeably slower than the i5/i7 because all of the other windows processes need to run on the same threads as Dolphin. This could lead to major slowdowns, especially if this is a true HTPC which would make it internet-connected with antivirus and media streaming such as Plex. I'd almost rather try an i5/i7 with no graphics card in a smaller case and pay a little more for a good cooling solution than to use the pentium...ESPECIALLY if there's the potential this PC might be used by more than one person at the same time (i.e. streaming a video to one TV and Dolphin on the main).

I'm not sure what your budget would be like, but provided you have enough money you can get something with the 4770R processor and Iris graphics, eliminating the need for a GPU if all you're doing is Dolphin in terms of games.

TL;DR the G3258 might be similar in benchmarks, but not in real-world use.

[KHg8m3r]

In another recent thread, NV said that the measured performance hit is about 10-20% difference between the g3258 and the i5/i7, which translated to the G3258 at 4.6 Ghz performing the same as the i5/i7 at 4.4 Ghz.

[grottkjell]

(10-18-2014, 08:27 AM)ThePokeman92 Wrote:

(10-18-2014, 06:45 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote:

yl-smash Wrote:Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

It doesn't run as fast as those cpus but it gets fairly close.

Is everyone sure about that? It would seem to me that the G3258, which is a dual core chip, would be noticeably slower than the i5/i7 because all of the other windows processes need to run on the same threads as Dolphin. This could lead to major slowdowns, especially if this is a true HTPC which would make it internet-connected with antivirus and media streaming such as Plex. I'd almost rather try an i5/i7 with no graphics card in a smaller case and pay a little more for a good cooling solution than to use the pentium...ESPECIALLY if there's the potential this PC might be used by more than one person at the same time (i.e. streaming a video to one TV and Dolphin on the main).

I'm not sure what your budget would be like, but provided you have enough money you can get something with the 4770R processor and Iris graphics, eliminating the need for a GPU if all you're doing is Dolphin in terms of games.

TL;DR the G3258 might be similar in benchmarks, but not in real-world use.

Haven't taken a look at processors with Iris graphics, is Iris graphics succifient for scaling up to 720p and 1080p? Do they require alot of power from the PSU (the cases I'm looking at will most likely not have potential for a PSU over 300W)? Sounds like something to look up, since it would fit very nicely into the case to not have a discrete graphics card.

The computer will not be used by several people at the same time as you describe but ofc it will run some background stuff, especially since i will use Windows (but maybe Linux also).

Keep the info coming!

Thanks!

[ThePokeman92]

(10-18-2014, 06:14 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: In another recent thread, NV said that the measured performance hit is about 10-20% difference between the g3258 and the i5/i7, which translated to the G3258 at 4.6 Ghz performing the same as the i5/i7 at 4.4 Ghz.

This is true, but it is a benchmark situation vs real use, for which my original question was won't it be worse if other stuff is running in the background since there are no extra cores to take on more work?

(10-19-2014, 12:02 AM)grottkjell Wrote:

(10-18-2014, 08:27 AM)ThePokeman92 Wrote:

(10-18-2014, 06:45 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote:

yl-smash Wrote:Definitely go for the pentium g3258 on a z97 board, should be able to oc that to around 4.5 and it runs as fast as the i7 4790k/i5 4690k in Dolphin.

It doesn't run as fast as those cpus but it gets fairly close.

Is everyone sure about that? It would seem to me that the G3258, which is a dual core chip, would be noticeably slower than the i5/i7 because all of the other windows processes need to run on the same threads as Dolphin. This could lead to major slowdowns, especially if this is a true HTPC which would make it internet-connected with antivirus and media streaming such as Plex. I'd almost rather try an i5/i7 with no graphics card in a smaller case and pay a little more for a good cooling solution than to use the pentium...ESPECIALLY if there's the potential this PC might be used by more than one person at the same time (i.e. streaming a video to one TV and Dolphin on the main).

I'm not sure what your budget would be like, but provided you have enough money you can get something with the 4770R processor and Iris graphics, eliminating the need for a GPU if all you're doing is Dolphin in terms of games.

TL;DR the G3258 might be similar in benchmarks, but not in real-world use.

Haven't taken a look at processors with Iris graphics, is Iris graphics succifient for scaling up to 720p and 1080p? Do they require alot of power from the PSU (the cases I'm looking at will most likely not have potential for a PSU over 300W)? Sounds like something to look up, since it would fit very nicely into the case to not have a discrete graphics card.

The computer will not be used by several people at the same time as you describe but ofc it will run some background stuff, especially since i will use Windows (but maybe Linux also).

Keep the info coming!

Thanks!

Well I have no personal experience with the Iris Pro graphics, but I was able to use 2-3x IR on a GT 540M which according to notebookcheck.net is much worse in performance than the Iris Pro. Not only that but I have had several people tell me you can achieve 2-3x IR on intel HD graphics, so I would imagine the Iris Pro can do even better. What would really take performance hits would be improved AA, AF, shading, etc., and probably directX over OpenGL. Someone with more experience there might want to verify that though?