Hello! Currently I'm running Dolphin on an 11-inch MacBook Air from 2012 (I re-partitioned the drive and installed Windows 7 on it). It runs fairly well, but as you can imagine many games experience slowdown. Everything I've read tells me that the integrated graphics are the bottleneck and that I should be using a machine with a dedicated GPU. With that in mind, here are my requirements:
1. Portable. Please don't tell me I can build my own tower with face-melting specs for chump change. I live in central Taipei. My apartment is the size of a shoebox. If I just wanted to play Wii and Gamecube games at home, I'd turn on my Wii (or Gamecube) and sit in front of the television. I need a laptop that's easy to carry around, and I'm willing to pay more and/or make sacrifices to do this. 15" is the absolute max size I'd want, with 14" or smaller being preferable.
2. This is only for games. I have a 2013 MacBook Air that I use as my general-purpose computer. This machine would simply be a toy for gaming so I don't really care how well it runs other apps. So if the keyboard or even the trackpad is a bit iffy it's OK.
3. 640x480 for Gamecube or 480p for Wii is a fine resolution for me. I'm sure Mario's mustache looks extra cool in 1080p, but if I can get full speed at native res (or even reasonably close to full speed) that's fine with me.
4. Battery life is nice but not absolutely necessary. I know plenty of local places around me with ample power outlets for their customers.
5. I also hope to run PCSX2 on this machine. I also have some PC games (Burnout Paradise, Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing) but considering they already run decent on this MacBook Air, I'm assuming they should run even better on a machine with a dedicated GPU. Of course I'll also run Project64, MAME and other emulators.
I thought I had settled on the MSI GE40. It has an i7 Haswell CPU (2.9-3.2 Ghz) and a GTX 760M GPU, with 8GB RAM. It's also small enough to carry around. I played around with one briefly at the Guanghua Digital Plaza and aside from crapass Windows 8 it seems decent enough. (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21307260524103) It sells for NT$38000 there.
But I also stumbled across this machine from Acer (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308253867252) It seems a lot sexier than the MSI machine and it's about USD $100 cheaper, but it's only an i5-4200U processor ant a 750M GPU. Would this still be OK for Dolphin?
Then there's the super budget option, the Toshiba L50T-A (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308072992564) only NT$26,000 (about $870). This model seems exclusive to Taiwan as far as I can tell. It has a GT740 GPU and an I5-3230M CPU, and 4G of RAM (but I think you can upgrade the RAM pretty easily). Obviously it's not going to play Crysis 3 as well as the MSI machine, but would Dolphin run OK on it?
Are there any other laptop models I should be considering? As a long time Mac user, I suddenly find myself overwhelmed with choices. When I bought my MacBook Air I had two choices (11" or 13") and I agonized over the choice for weeks. With PCs there are simply too many options to consider, so I humbly ask for the advice of you, the Dolphin community. Thanks!
1. Portable. Please don't tell me I can build my own tower with face-melting specs for chump change. I live in central Taipei. My apartment is the size of a shoebox. If I just wanted to play Wii and Gamecube games at home, I'd turn on my Wii (or Gamecube) and sit in front of the television. I need a laptop that's easy to carry around, and I'm willing to pay more and/or make sacrifices to do this. 15" is the absolute max size I'd want, with 14" or smaller being preferable.
2. This is only for games. I have a 2013 MacBook Air that I use as my general-purpose computer. This machine would simply be a toy for gaming so I don't really care how well it runs other apps. So if the keyboard or even the trackpad is a bit iffy it's OK.
3. 640x480 for Gamecube or 480p for Wii is a fine resolution for me. I'm sure Mario's mustache looks extra cool in 1080p, but if I can get full speed at native res (or even reasonably close to full speed) that's fine with me.
4. Battery life is nice but not absolutely necessary. I know plenty of local places around me with ample power outlets for their customers.
5. I also hope to run PCSX2 on this machine. I also have some PC games (Burnout Paradise, Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing) but considering they already run decent on this MacBook Air, I'm assuming they should run even better on a machine with a dedicated GPU. Of course I'll also run Project64, MAME and other emulators.
I thought I had settled on the MSI GE40. It has an i7 Haswell CPU (2.9-3.2 Ghz) and a GTX 760M GPU, with 8GB RAM. It's also small enough to carry around. I played around with one briefly at the Guanghua Digital Plaza and aside from crapass Windows 8 it seems decent enough. (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21307260524103) It sells for NT$38000 there.
But I also stumbled across this machine from Acer (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308253867252) It seems a lot sexier than the MSI machine and it's about USD $100 cheaper, but it's only an i5-4200U processor ant a 750M GPU. Would this still be OK for Dolphin?
Then there's the super budget option, the Toshiba L50T-A (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308072992564) only NT$26,000 (about $870). This model seems exclusive to Taiwan as far as I can tell. It has a GT740 GPU and an I5-3230M CPU, and 4G of RAM (but I think you can upgrade the RAM pretty easily). Obviously it's not going to play Crysis 3 as well as the MSI machine, but would Dolphin run OK on it?
Are there any other laptop models I should be considering? As a long time Mac user, I suddenly find myself overwhelmed with choices. When I bought my MacBook Air I had two choices (11" or 13") and I agonized over the choice for weeks. With PCs there are simply too many options to consider, so I humbly ask for the advice of you, the Dolphin community. Thanks!