New Laptop Recommendations?

05-03-2021, 04:49 AM #1

I'm a relatively new user to Dolphin and have loved it so far. However, my laptop is ~7 years old and has trouble playing some games. It works fine for games like New Super Mario Bros Wii and Mario Kart Wii, but there is significant stuttering for others like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy (even at native resolution with all emulation option set to result in the best performance).

I'm planning on buying a new gaming laptop within the next few days and wanted to see if anyone had any recommendations. I'm not overly sensitive to price, thinking something in the neighborhood of ~$1,500 but open to going higher if it'll guarantee I can run most games in HD with no stuttering or lagging. I'd like to continue using Ubuntu as my OS but would be willing to do Windows if it'd help improve performance. I'm going to go with a 1TB hard drive, 16GB of RAM and 4K resolution, but I'm not familiar with the best processor or graphics card for use with Dolphin.

Any recommendations? Happy to provide any additional information if helpful. Thanks!

themaster123 · 05-03-2021, 05:39 AM #2

Are you wanting a laptop with a 4k display or are you pluging it in to one. Do you have a size in mind like 13, 15,17 inch. Are you planing to play modern games on it.

05-03-2021, 05:50 AM #3

(05-03-2021, 05:39 AM)themaster123 Wrote: Are you wanting a laptop with a 4k display or are you pluging it in to one. Do you have a size in mind like 13, 15,17 inch. Are you planing to play modern games on it.

Ideally with a 4K display but the more important thing is plugging into one.

I'm pretty agnostic on size but gun to my head would want one on the smaller side (13 or 15 inches).

I'm not going to be playing modern games, primarily going to use for emulation - Dolphin, Cemu, PSCX2, Citra, etc.

Let me know if any other info would be helpful. Did some searching and was thinking something along the lines of this laptop: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-15-...Id=6412913

Thanks for the help!

themaster123 · 05-03-2021, 11:02 AM #4

That should be fine even if the gpu is overkill for 4k for dolphin, citra, and pscx2 emulation. I use cemu but don't have a 4k monitor to know how well the rtx 2070 in the laptop will work with cemu upscaled to 4k but at 1080p it fairly easy even on a gtx 970 so the rtx 2070 should be fine also at 4k for it.

05-03-2021, 01:08 PM #5

(05-03-2021, 11:02 AM)themaster123 Wrote: That should be fine even if the gpu is overkill for 4k for dolphin, citra, and pscx2 emulation. I use cemu but don't have a 4k monitor to know how well the rtx 2070 in the laptop will work with cemu upscaled to 4k but at 1080p it fairly easy even on a gtx 970 so the rtx 2070 should be fine also at 4k for it.

Got it, thank you! I'll pull the trigger on that laptop then.