My old (bought it in release week) wii bit the dust just after xmas. I had been planning to put together a machine to run dolphin for a while, but this event forced my hand a bit!
I didn't have a ton of money to spend, but a few youtube videos and a bit of forum hunting led me to believe that a 6th gen i3-6100 with 8gb of ram should allow dolphin to run pretty smoothly at native resolution, without too many graphical enhancements. I wanted something that would fit in our tv cabinet, so i bought a barebones used Dell optiplex 3050, put 8gb of ram, an ssd and a 1tb hdd in, and its up and running great. I managed to rip my wii game collection while waiting for it to arrive, and i can so far at least get the games to boot and run.
Dolphin performance isn't amazing though, despite following threads on here to optimise performance. It seems to work ok with some of the less graphically demanding games, though i'm struggling to test things too thoroughly as i cant get a wiimote to connect with the cheap generic bluetooth dongle i bought (but that's another story for another time...). A reasonably demanding game like super mario galaxy however, rarely gets above 85% speed, and is sluggish enough that its not enjoyable to play.
My ideal end point would be to be able to play all the games in my library at at least 720p at full speed, maybe with some antialiasing switched on. Ive come in under budget so far, so with a little bit more money to spend, I'm canvassing opinions as to what the next hardware upgrade should be...
The logical options (tell me if i'm mistaken please) seem to be:
1) fit a graphics card. The desktop unit is small form factor, and the size of the case and weak, non replaceable psu are an issue in this regard. Googling around seems to indicate the best i could hope to use without too much hassle is a geforce gt 1030 half height, low power card.
2) replace the cpu with another LGA1151 processor like the i5-6500 3.2ghz. Because more cores is better, huh?
Either item would be bought used. (There's also another RAM slot..?)
The dell motherboard does not allow the CPU to be overclocked, as far as i can tell.
The second of the two options is cheaper, but i've never replaced a processor before. I'd back myself to do it, but its slightly more nerve wracking. I'm also unsure whether a graphics card would be bottlenecked by the performance of the weaker, dual core i3 cpu that i currently have.
Does anyone have any thoughts? I've never assembled a PC before, and to be honest i'm already riding at the very limits of my understanding and ability. Ive come this far though, so i wont give up. Id like to know what people think the best way to proceed for maximum peformance GAINZ would be
Thanks in advance for your opinions, I've been lurking these forums for a while without registering, you seem to have a great community here
cheers,
DaftOldDude
I didn't have a ton of money to spend, but a few youtube videos and a bit of forum hunting led me to believe that a 6th gen i3-6100 with 8gb of ram should allow dolphin to run pretty smoothly at native resolution, without too many graphical enhancements. I wanted something that would fit in our tv cabinet, so i bought a barebones used Dell optiplex 3050, put 8gb of ram, an ssd and a 1tb hdd in, and its up and running great. I managed to rip my wii game collection while waiting for it to arrive, and i can so far at least get the games to boot and run.
Dolphin performance isn't amazing though, despite following threads on here to optimise performance. It seems to work ok with some of the less graphically demanding games, though i'm struggling to test things too thoroughly as i cant get a wiimote to connect with the cheap generic bluetooth dongle i bought (but that's another story for another time...). A reasonably demanding game like super mario galaxy however, rarely gets above 85% speed, and is sluggish enough that its not enjoyable to play.
My ideal end point would be to be able to play all the games in my library at at least 720p at full speed, maybe with some antialiasing switched on. Ive come in under budget so far, so with a little bit more money to spend, I'm canvassing opinions as to what the next hardware upgrade should be...
The logical options (tell me if i'm mistaken please) seem to be:
1) fit a graphics card. The desktop unit is small form factor, and the size of the case and weak, non replaceable psu are an issue in this regard. Googling around seems to indicate the best i could hope to use without too much hassle is a geforce gt 1030 half height, low power card.
2) replace the cpu with another LGA1151 processor like the i5-6500 3.2ghz. Because more cores is better, huh?
Either item would be bought used. (There's also another RAM slot..?)
The dell motherboard does not allow the CPU to be overclocked, as far as i can tell.
The second of the two options is cheaper, but i've never replaced a processor before. I'd back myself to do it, but its slightly more nerve wracking. I'm also unsure whether a graphics card would be bottlenecked by the performance of the weaker, dual core i3 cpu that i currently have.
Does anyone have any thoughts? I've never assembled a PC before, and to be honest i'm already riding at the very limits of my understanding and ability. Ive come this far though, so i wont give up. Id like to know what people think the best way to proceed for maximum peformance GAINZ would be
Thanks in advance for your opinions, I've been lurking these forums for a while without registering, you seem to have a great community here
cheers,
DaftOldDude