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]

Quote: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)

Quote: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...

Quote: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 )

Quote:GameCube version of Twilight Princess?

I heard it's less demanding than the wii version

Quote: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