I want to build a PC for emulation

[Kiloku]

While I intend to use it to emulate other consoles too, Dolphin is the most resource-intesive. I've done a bit of research, but I still don't know all I want to know. I want to be able to run most Gamecube games, or all of them, if at all possible. Wii doesn't interest me as much.

1. Will a dedicated sound card (as opposed to the motherboard's onboard audio) diminish problems with DSP and "Frame Limit @Audio"? Do these even still exist?
2. Video: The consensus seems to be the best AMD I can get, is that right? (Also, SLI doesn't work with Dolphin)
3. Processor: I've found this spreadsheet floating around the forum: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ0UzJyTFAxbzZhYWtGcGwySlRFa1E#gid=0 Is it up to date, can I trust it? Are there better processors?
4. RAM: Is there a point where one can have "too much" RAM for Dolphin (As in, there's no use for all that RAM, and I'm just wasting money)
5. Hard Drive: Do you think I can use a 7200 RPM "normal" HD, or do you believe the loading times would be annoying and I should instead get an SSD?
7. While that question is not quite hardware, what is the state of Dolphin on Linux? Is it as good as the Windows builds? Any caveats?
8. Any hints? Something I didn't cover?

[cosmoruski]

1. probably not, as long as the onboard card has clean working drivers (which 98% of onbaord chips have), there should be no difference to dedicated cards
2. Every current midrange GPU can handle Dolphin, I don't think there is a big difference between AMD/nVidia/Intel - or atleast I didn't seen benchmarks on this topic
3. The spreadsheet is up to date and represents teh situation very good
4. No, you got the Idea - there can't be too much RAM, but much money can be wasted
5. This shold not effect Dolphin Ingame performace - maybe you save 1-2 seconds in starting dolphin/loading games within dolphin. But a SSD ist very cool thing for general stuff, like boot time of OS or startup of other programs
6. where is 6 ;-) ?
7. sorry, I'm a windows user (and should be ashamed of that)

[NaturalViolence]

1. No. And yes audio limiting still exists.
2. Depends on the backend. AMD GPUs perform significantly better in openGL at the moment. For d3d they're about the same. How fast the GPU needs to be will depend on what graphics settings you plan to use.
3. Yes. The i5 4670K is our most recommended cpu and for good reason.
4. Bingo.
5. Same as above. Though I should point out that dolphin emulates the GC/Wii disk speed so game loading probably won't be sped up at all by an SSD.
7. No d3d support. Other than that it's pretty much the same. You have to compile it yourself on linux though.
8. How would we know what questions you want to ask but haven't asked?

[Kiloku]

(04-03-2014, 05:30 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: 8. How would we know what questions you want to ask but haven't asked?

What I meant is: Is there something that everyone who wants to build a PC for emulation should know?

[DJBarry004]

It sould keep in mind that higher bandwidth brings a good chance to get high IR without drops (GPU), and the suffix that are next to most CPU model numbers (Intel, AMD), and also which archiecture is used on them (Intel: Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Haswell; AMD: Jaguar, Bobcat... just to mention examples).

[rokclimb15]

For access to the most games, I recommend making cuts elsewhere if necessary to get a 4670K. It offers the best performance all around and enough overhead to improve with overclocking if you need to.