Is my laptop good enough for Dolphin?

[wesshamu]

Hey guys, just discovered Dolphin and all its glorious HD, 1080p quality, and really have the itch to play Skyward Sword and Xenoblade Chronicles. I was wondering if my laptop could handle them, and if so, what kind of settings could I push for?

Specs:

Samsung Series 7 Gamer
CPU: Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.40 GHz (Quad-core, turbo boost up to 3.2 GHz)
RAM: 16.0 GB DDR3
HDD: 1.5 TB
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 675M

[KHg8m3r]

Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the most demanding games for dolphin. You may run into issues.
Also, you need a real Wiimote Plus for Skyward Sword.

[GranteedEV]

(12-09-2013, 06:24 PM)wesshamu Wrote: Hey guys, just discovered Dolphin and all its glorious HD, 1080p quality, and really have the itch to play Skyward Sword and Xenoblade Chronicles. I was wondering if my laptop could handle them, and if so, what kind of settings could I push for?

Specs:

Samsung Series 7 Gamer
CPU: Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.40 GHz (Quad-core, turbo boost up to 3.2 GHz)
RAM: 16.0 GB DDR3
HDD: 1.5 TB
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 675M

My experience tells me Xenoblade will run pretty poorly on that system.

[Shonumi]

(12-10-2013, 07:03 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the most demanding games for dolphin.

Not really. It's actually one of the most exaggerated games. It used to be that you needed a 4.4GHz Sandy Bridge or better (but even that number is overblown) for LLE audio. HLE audio is perfect in this game now when running at fullspeed. It's above average in my opinion, but nowhere as monstrous as The Last Story, SMG games on LLE, or the Metroid Prime games. It stresses the GPU more than other games, but not more than MK Wii or SMG. At the very least, it doesn't require anywhere near the crazy clocks as some of the other truly demanding games.

@OP - At any rate, XBC won't run fullspeed, even with the Turbo Boost. I'd say the threshold for Ivy Bridge is around 3.3-3.4 GHz to enjoy this game fullspeed most of the time. You should get decent speeds, but the audio will be an issue at that point, since it will stutter.

[wesshamu]

I actually bought the Skyward Sword limited edition when it first came out, so I have the Zelda wiimote plus. I progressed really far, but then I dropped it and couldn't find the desire to finish it again. Now, however, after finding Dolphin and seeing what it can do with SS, I figured this would be the best time to start it up again.

Here are my settings so far, I was wondering whether they're optimized enough for my laptop, or if I can optimize even further, or scale it back?

[Shonumi]

I would switch to OpenGL for 2 reasons. The first is that it avoids crashing in the Silent Realm sections of the game. The second is that OpenGL can use the Vertex Streaming Hack for a sizable boost in speed. Depending on the game and your hardware, VSync may be possible to use without incurring any performance penalties; if you can run this game well without having to turn it off, leave it on to avoid screen tearing. Also, have a look at the Dolphin laptop performance guide: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-laptop-performance-guide