Running Dolphin on a Budget

[Tallix]

So, I have a budget of about $250. The only games I want to play using Dolphin are The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword (As you can tell, I'm a Zelda fan and I'm dying to play these games). Currently, this is the build I am looking at (I have just listed the important specs):

Processor: AMD A8-5600K
RAM: 4 GB 1333 MHz
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7560D (Integrated into the processor )

I would be running Ubuntu Linux (I can't afford a Windows key and prefer Ubuntu anyway).

Overclocking is out of the question as I cannot afford to use anything except the heat sink included with the processor, the power supply probably wouldn't handle it (360W), and I don't think the motherboard is able to do so anyway.

Would this build run these games at a playable speed? Can I gain performance by running a certain version/revision of Dolphin? Can anyone suggest a better build within this budget (I already have a hard drive, 64 GB SSD, it will do)? Thanks!

[admin89]

Overclocking is out of the question

-> Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are out of the question (btw Twilight Princess will not run full speed on Hyrule Field even if you overclock that CPU)

power supply probably wouldn't handle it (360W)

That PSU is fine , you don't have a graphic card so you will have a lot of room for overclocking

[omega_rugal]

That APU overclocks fine with the included heatsink, the gpu even more, just don`t go crazy with the overclock, which is the reason most people burn their cpus

but in the other hand...

don`t expect huge speed increase, the overclock vs performance gain ratio in these APUs is rather low

as admin89 says, twlight princess has some serious performance issues with the current dolphin, i haven`t tried skyward sword thought...

[admin89]

3.6->4.1GHz without increasing voltage (stock heatsink)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2054/13/
Though he may need Windows 7/8 to use AMD Overdrive

[omega_rugal]

Depends on the model, my llano A8 is not detected by the AMD overdrive, so i overclock it with the BIOS

in the other system (core 2 + radeon 6670), the AMD overdrive does appear in the Catalyst control panel, but only modifies the IGP values.

in all cases i use WINXP 32-bit so i doubt it`s OS dependent.

[admin89]

Well , you can use K10stat to overclock (K10stat only work with llano , don't work with trinity) .
Overclocking via Bios is the best method . Software overclocking is meh...

WINXP 32-bit so i doubt it`s OS dependent.

XP is fine too . However , that OS was too old so i did not list it

[Tallix]

AMD Overdrive for Linux has been out since 2008 according to this article. It came out with the Catalyst Driver v8.8. That driver is now version 13. That is a pretty old article though. This, on the other hand, is from 2 months ago, so I think it would be current information. Anyway, if Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are out of the question, what sort of experience can I expect from Wind Waker? What about the GameCube version of Twilight Princess?

[admin89]

If you OCed that CPU to 4.1GHz , Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are technically playable (you still have huge slowdown with TP - Hyrule Field , most other places should run full speed with EFB copies to Ram , SS still have slowdown on some places)
If you still not have decent speed with SS , you can try Dolphin r7719 + Speed Hack (Right-click the game - Properties - Tick "Vbeam Emulation") + Graphic Hack ( Right-click the game - Properties - Tick Znear + Zfar and then set value for zNEAR and zFAR : try either 0.1 & 1.0 or 0 & 1.0 )

GameCube version of Twilight Princess?

I heard it's less demanding than the wii version

what sort of experience can I expect from Wind Waker?

It's a light-weight game , it should run full speed with HLE

[Tallix]

Am I correct in my assumption that in this case "playable" does not mean "full speed" (of course while using the OpenGL backend, as that is what I would be limited to)?

If there is anybody with some knowledge about this, would running a lighter distro while using Dolphin (Lubuntu, Puppy Linux, etc.) improve my performance in Dolphin? What if I used a window manager only (no desktop environment)?

[admin89]

Mac OSX , Linus are slower than Windows (x64) because Mac OSX , Linus have to use OpenGL backend
Speed : Direct3D9(Windows) > Direct3D11(Windows) > OpenGL
OpenGL (Mac OSX , Linus ) is faster than OpenGL(Windows) but it's still not as fast as Direct3D9 . Direct3D11 does outperform Direct3D9 in some games though .

Since you use Linus , you're at disadvantage