Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Okay, This is my first post here, I am a noob and I am just starting in the Gamecube/Wii Emulation thing...

Laptop Specs:

Intel® Core™ i7 840QM Quad Core Processor, 1.86GHz (3.20GHz Turbo Mode, 6M Cache)

Windows® 7 Ultimate, 64bit, English

1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M

6GB Memory (1x 2GB, 1x 4GB DDR3)

15.6-inch WideFHD 1920x1080 (1080p) WLED

500GB SATAII 7,200RPM

My Question is, Are these laptop specs good enough to be able to run most dolphin games at full speed ?

if the turbo mode is working with 2 of the 4 available threads (you MUST turn HT OFF in bios) at more than 3Ghz, then yes.

Turn off HT like said by Flow, it will just create unnecessary heat or even slow down games & you don't need 8 threads for dolphin or any game..
But yes, that thing is a monster laptop and will obviously run all games full speed.

Remember clock frequency doesn't mean everything after phenom II and core i7 series.. Even at 2.4ghz turbo boost, the mobile i7 would run everything at maximum efficiency possible on dolphin.

I've tried running smg, zelda and demanding wii games underclocked at 2.0ghz and there was no speed bump at all, everything remained at full fps. Only crysis and benchmarks took performance hits.

Okay, Thank you for the information, I am getting this later this year, &nd I'm sure the price will go down by then. Just making sure i didn't need better specs.

(Alienware is a little overpriced but it looks sexy .)

Hi there,
In response to disabling hyper threading... how would I go about doing this? Is this a setting I would change in the Dolphin program or in my computer itself?

I don't want to end up damaging my brand new laptop just because of a slight misstep

thanks in advance!

I should add I am running a i7-720QM processor.

When you startup your Laptop/PC there's a BIOS startup screen, if you see that screen just spam the DEL or F2 button and you go to the BIOS (The hotkeys differs per motherboard).

(07-04-2010, 09:14 PM)slownsteadyz Wrote: [ -> ]Hi there,
In response to disabling hyper threading... how would I go about doing this? Is this a setting I would change in the Dolphin program or in my computer itself?

When your computer starts press delete, f2, esc etc.. (It will say during the boot screen what key to press to enter BIOS settings)

Then go to advanced bios settings and under logical processor settings turn off hyperthreading.


Just switch value to disabled.. Then press f10+save bios settings and exit.

This is going to make me sound like a jackass but...
what if I were to lazy to restart my computer everytime I want to play the emulator? would it overheat my system?
is it really that necessary?

Why not just turn it off and leave it off? HT isn't all that useful when you have four physical cores.

(07-05-2010, 05:23 AM)slownsteadyz Wrote: [ -> ]is it really that necessary?

8 threads is useless if you don't do heavy encoding, models or 3d rendering with applications that use every thread available (like adobe cs5, maxon, autodesk 3ds etc).

If you are a casual user it's ok to turn it off for good, there is no risk..
If you want it back just re-enable it, 4 cores/threads is more than enough for all games, emulators, multitasking