Laptop Emulation Station

[FOODFOOD]

Hello,

I have a 2009 Asus Republic of Gamers laptop that I'm thinking of turning into an emulation station for my TV. I *think* it'll do OK with Dolphin, but I'm hoping I can get your advice. Here are the specs:

ASUS G60vx
Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 (2.13GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M 1GB DDR3 VRAM
4GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro

It's going to output to my 42" 720p Plasma. The games I'm most looking forward to playing are FZero GX and Tales of Symphonia, but I'd love to play a ton of my GC games and maybe even Super Mario Galaxy if it'll work.

What do you think? Will I be okay? I know the processor is a bit outdated, but the GFX card is pretty nice.

Thanks!
-FOODFOOD

[natnint4000]

That laptop wont be good enough for dolphin, you will need a significantly newer one with a much better processor.

[FOODFOOD]

(11-05-2014, 01:42 AM)natnint4000 Wrote: That laptop wont be good enough for dolphin, you will need a significantly newer one with a much better processor.

Are there any optimizations I could make to help it out? I know in 2009, "Core 2 Duo 2+GHz" was the system requirement for Dolphin, but there have been a lot of releases since then so maybe it's changed.
Source: http://ngemu.com/threads/dolphin-requirements.120515/

[hamid1455]

The real only way to see if it will play those games or any wii/gamecube games for that matter is by testing out a couple of them.

I think the CPU requirements used to be at least a Core 2 Duo E8400 since a lot videos on youtube where people are playing dolphin emulator have the e8400 overclocked to get good speeds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MurWPRzmzo

The CPU you have is slightly better than the e4500; which is near the bottom of the benchmarks page here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkEUvobPn_DcdEo2aEhhdUpnU01tYUtNM3ZVX2d6SkE&usp=sharing#gid=0

But it will have trouble playing anything since I don't think you can even overclock it.

[natnint4000]

Your best bet would be to try very old revisions of dolphin like r7589 and lower, i think those are pre dolphin 3.0 builds built at a similar time as your laptop. However with that hardware i still dont think it will run games like super mario galaxy very well. I dont think there is anything you can with that laptop to get good performance with dolphin

Here are the current recommendations for dolphin

https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/

[FOODFOOD]

That was great help, thanks guys. I'll give it a shot and post results but won't hold my breath. Maybe I'll just have to end the emulations a Mupen64 and not branch into this generation.

[KHg8m3r]

You can build a cheap emulation station with an overclocked G3258 that will play practically all GC/Wii games for around $400-500

[FOODFOOD]

(11-05-2014, 02:37 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: You can build a cheap emulation station with an overclocked G3258 that will play practically all GC/Wii games for around $400-500

I may look into that, because I have extra hard drives, fans, an older GFX card & an unopened Mobo I won just sitting around. How does the Geforce GT 240 do with Dolphin? I have one sitting around and it'd be nice to use it for something.

[KHg8m3r]

What mobo is it (needs to be a Z97 or one of the Z87 that supports Haswell refresh)

As for the GT 240, it's not great. I think the integrated GPU in the G3258 would do better

[FOODFOOD]

(11-05-2014, 03:06 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: What mobo is it (needs to be a Z97 or one of the Z87 that supports Haswell refresh)

As for the GT 240, it's not great. I think the integrated GPU in the G3258 would do better

Gotcha on the GT240. There was a reason I replaced it XD

Now that I think of it, I believe it has an AM2/AM3 chipset. Dolphin doesn't do well with AMD, does it?