Half Life 2 is quite old as far as PC games are concerned, so even if you could compare PC games to emulators, that wouldn't be the best example.
You'll still have to get new hardware to adequately run Dolphin. You could try the latest development versions of Dolphin and using the 64-bit version if you have a 64-bit OS, but that's probably as far as you can go without dropping some cash.
You'll still have to get new hardware to adequately run Dolphin. You could try the latest development versions of Dolphin and using the 64-bit version if you have a 64-bit OS, but that's probably as far as you can go without dropping some cash.