Probably a dumb question but

[SwagTastic]

Hey all. before i say anymore i would ask you all forgive my all around pc ignorance please. Now my question is, will it be possible to play any version of the dolphin emu with my pc specs i realize my pc is old and prolly wont be able to play everything but as of right now im gettin like 40-60 fps on most games during the intro vids all the way to actual gameplay then 15-20 and very rarely 25-30fps during actual gameplay. although i did have pikmin2 running 45-55 when i first installed dolphin for about 30 mins or so unsure why. i have messed around with the all the settings although its possible by messing with them( trying to get paper mario ttyd to work) i have messed something up.

i believe my specs are
intel celeron cpu 450 @ 2.20gh
6gb ddr3
Nvidia geforce 9800gt 512mg

sorry for the wall of text, also id be willing to play an older version or something if possible. Thanks in advance for any and all assistance

[admin89]

You need to upgrade your CPU first .
You can't expect Dolphin to run well on a CPU that is even worse than a Pentium 4
You must have at least Pentium G4400 @ 3.3GHz if you want to run game at playable speed, G4400 is probably 500% faster than your current CPU
I would recommend the i3 6100 instead though
Oh btw , if you don't have money to spend on a new CPU and a new mobo , you can buy a used CPU like a Dual Core E8600 @ 3.3GHz which is less than 25 bucks on ebay/amazon. It uses the same socket as your single core Celeron 450 so you won't need to buy a new mobo
E8600 is no where near as fast as G4400 but for a few games (like the one you listed above), it should be ok. Most games still run slow on it though

[leolam]

Paper Mario games need bounding box though, so they may be more intensive.

[SwagTastic]

great thanks for the advice yall! one last question would it be wise to just save up for a new PC altogether then? I feel like that would be wiser than upgrading this old gal . thanks again

[leolam]

Totally. I would just suggest starting with a completely new, modern build. The CPU is old and slow, the GPU too. You may be able to reuse your RAM though if you pick Haswell instead of Skylake, but there's not much reason to not choose Skylake otherwise

[admin89]

Agree. Though you may want to keep your 9800GT, it's not a bad GPU, at least it can handle 1080p in Dolphin. The only thing bad about it is heat, that thing could cook an egg
A new PC is a much better choice (lower power consumption , faster speed, smaller size...etc) although it will cost around $300-$500
Alienware Alpha (i3 4130T @ 2.9GHz or i3 4170T @ 3.2GHz + Nvidia GTX 860M) is a good choice for people that have an extremely tight budget or can't build their own PC or want to free more space in their room

[degasus]

Paper Mario games need bounding box though, so they may be more intensive.

And it requires OGL4 or D3D11, which the GPU doesn't support.