Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

So I'm wanting to get into Dolphin as I'm very excited about the prospect of playing Wii and GC games in Windows 7. I own pretty much every other emulator out there (and having a blast!), so I'm hoping my experiences can help me in getting this thing running well. Obviously, things are never as simple as they'd seem, and I know it may be a challenge to get it running properly as everybody's experiences are different.

For starters, here are what I plan to get:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/S...&CatId=909

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Wii-Remote-And-Nunchu...35add87536

http://cgi.ebay.ca/sensor-bar-HD-Wii-lon...483b5de924


I've heard that the Nextronics sensor bar is the best one, as it plugs directly into the PC usb port (obviously without the need for either a Wii system or batteries). Just wondering if others here use that as well....


And here are my system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.41ghz
Asus Motherboard (can't remember exact model number)
6gb DDR2
GeForce 8800GTS 640mb
Windows 7 64-bit Pro


So my ultimate question is whether or not I can currently run Wii and GC games well using this setup (obviously I don't want to waste money if things are not going to work).

I run all my games, PC or emulated, at 1360x768 (my desktop res), with no AA and no V-Sync (but with Anistropic Filtering 8x or 16x if available). I find I like that setup best.

Which games are you planning to play? A 2.41ghz CPU is borderline minimum requirements to play Dolphin at a half decent speed. For heavy games like Super Mario Galaxy, your CPU will not cope. If you already own the games, try dumping them and testing the speed using an emulated wiimote.

(02-09-2011, 10:28 AM)skid Wrote: [ -> ]Which games are you planning to play? A 2.41ghz CPU is borderline minimum requirements to play Dolphin at a half decent speed. For heavy games like Super Mario Galaxy, your CPU will not cope. If you already own the games, try dumping them and testing the speed using an emulated wiimote.

Even a dual core?


So what about if I got something like this:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/S...CatId=4297

Quote:AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.41ghz

Seriously though you won't be able to run more than a few 3rd party games on that at decent speed. Not only is 2.4GHz low for dolphin, but it's an athlon X2, which has terrible performance per clock by modern standards in general and with dolphin. The cpu you linked is good enough for most games but will still struggle with some of the heavier games like SMG/SMG2.

Quote:I've heard that the Nextronics sensor bar is the best one, as it plugs directly into the PC usb port (obviously without the need for either a Wii system or batteries). Just wondering if others here use that as well....

I use it. And love it.

(02-09-2011, 11:25 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]The cpu you linked is good enough for most games but will still struggle with some of the heavier games like SMG/SMG2.

Wow, so a quad core @ 3.50 ghz will still struggle? Then what hope is there?

The Athlon 64 X4 970 BE should work fine. Dolphin is the most CPU intensive program I use.

Quote:Wow, so a quad core @ 3.50 ghz will still struggle? Then what hope is there?

Their are a few games out there that can only run at fullspeed >90% of the time on an i3/i5/i7 cpu. Unfortunately amd is still significantly behind intel in some areas.

And dolphin doesn't care that you have a quad core. It's a dual threaded application.