What can my current laptop run? What would be a good alternative?

[Zeta_ζ]

I currently have the Mid 2010 MacBook Pro and I was able to play Super paper Mario with decent frame rates and few slow downs and freezes. Although I would like to know what exactly could I run with my current laptop before buying another laptop or building my own desktop. Graphics cards are too expensive currently for me to afford, so I'll be using integrated graphics. (I might be able to get the GTX 470)
What I would like to play is games like the metroid prime series and My current Super Paper Mario save, or Super smash Bros or any Mario game (like Super Mario Sunshine).

[KHg8m3r]

Metroid Prime series probably not. Smash Bros maybe, maybe not. New Super Mario Bros Wii will most likely play fine, as for SMS, maybe not.

You can put together a great Dolphin rig for only about $500 or so. What sort of budget to you have in mind?

[Zeta_ζ]

(08-01-2017, 08:55 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: Metroid Prime series probably not. Smash Bros maybe, maybe not. New Super Mario Bros Wii will most likely play fine, as for SMS, maybe not.

You can put together a great Dolphin rig for only about $500 or so. What sort of budget to you have in mind?

I'm currently looking at $450-$480? I would build the desktop but I need a laptop for school purposes as well.

[Helios]

you cannot buy a laptop that cheap that does Dolphin well.

At minimum you're looking at $700ish

You could build a desktop for $450 that could do dolphin just fine though

[Zeta_ζ]

(08-01-2017, 11:55 AM)Helios Wrote: you cannot buy a laptop that cheap that does Dolphin well.

At minimum you're looking at $700ish

You could build a desktop for $450 that could do dolphin just fine though

Okay so what would you recommend? Intel core i3? Pentium?
Resolution to me doesn't matter much I don't mind playing in the small window.

[JonnyH]

(08-01-2017, 12:46 PM)Zeta_ζ Wrote: Okay so what would you recommend? Intel core i3? Pentium?
Resolution to me doesn't matter much I don't mind playing in the small window.

It's unfortunately extremely difficult to recommend a laptop based purely on the headline specs, as near all processors will be low power variants that are thermally throttled. This means that an i3 on laptop A may be faster than an i7 on laptop B if it has better cooling.

To guarantee performance, you'll probably need to avoid any of the low-power variants (Ones with a 'u' suffix), and a recent generation (haswell+ - no ryzen in laptops yet means there's effectively no AMD choice) but you will likely pay a premium in terms of extra power usage (meaning larger & heavier, worse battery, more expensive - pick 2). Certainly before ubershaders, GPUs were less important than CPU, with nearly any (non-intel integrated) GPU being fine.

Unfortunately, there's no single magic bullet, but I can say my lenovo y700 works fine (CPU: 6700hq, GPU: Radeon M375) but the battery life is abysmal - less than an hour actually playing games.

EDIT: A quick test with the above laptop (lenovo y700 14") shows I can get ~2x IR using ubershaders 'exclusive' and per-pixel-lighting, or ~3xIR using ubershaders 'exclusive' /without/ per-pixel lighting.

[Zeta_ζ]

(08-01-2017, 01:21 PM)JonnyH Wrote: It's unfortunately extremely difficult to recommend a laptop based purely on the headline specs, as near all processors will be low power variants that are thermally throttled. This means that an i3 on laptop A may be faster than an i7 on laptop B if it has better cooling.

To guarantee performance, you'll probably need to avoid any of the low-power variants (Ones with a 'u' suffix), but you will likely pay a premium in terms of extra power usage (meaning larger & heavier, worse battery, more expensive - pick 2).

Unfortunately, there's no single magic bullet, but I can say my lenovo y700 works fine (CPU: 6700hq, GPU: Radeon M375) but the battery life is abysmal - less than an hour actually playing games.

I see, I knew I would probably get the same answers as I thought earlier (laptops aren't suitable for dolphin, build a desktop) but I wanted to get a general opinion before buying anything. Seems like I'll be building a desktop over the months as I do not have enough for my wants.

[TKSilver]

Honestly for a desktop and Dolphin you can get away with a Pentium (G4620/G4560) and if you want to go above native or do some high rez packs or other enhancements just pair it up with a GTX 1050 or even a 1030 (if you don't want to enhance too much). Obviously if you want to do media creation a better CPU would be recommended and if you want to do native AAA PC gaming then maybe the 1030 is out of the question and you might want more GPU.... But as long as you are able to do all your Laptop required things on your current macbook then you can make a really decent new Dolphin emulation PC pretty cheap (if you are willing to go used you can do even cheaper)

[Zeta_ζ]

(08-01-2017, 01:52 PM)TKSilver Wrote: Honestly for a desktop and Dolphin you can get away with a Pentium (G4620/G4560) and if you want to go above native or do some high rez packs or other enhancements just pair it up with a GTX 1050 or even a 1030 (if you don't want to enhance too much). Obviously if you want to do media creation a better CPU would be recommended and if you want to do native AAA PC gaming then maybe the 1030 is out of the question and you might want more GPU.... But as long as you are able to do all your Laptop required things on your current macbook then you can make a really decent new Dolphin emulation PC pretty cheap (if you are willing to go used you can do even cheaper)

My current laptop is very suitable for school purposes and even light gaming, but being that it weighs probably a couple pounds and is chunky (being a 2010 model) I'll be having to buy basically two computers. Although, I have a pretty good idea on what I'm going to place my necessities in.

[Helios]

(08-01-2017, 12:46 PM)Zeta_ζ Wrote: Okay so what would you recommend? Intel core i3? Pentium?
Resolution to me doesn't matter much I don't mind playing in the small window.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/tPGqZ8

Everything you can throw at Dolphin this will play at full speed in 1080p. It will also play a bunch of current AAA PC games at medium or so settings at 1080p.

If you have your own monitor, you can save $100