Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I'm sorry if you get a lot of these types of threads, but here is my situation. I need to get a laptop, and I want it to run emulators like PCSX2 and Dolphin (I specifically want to play Mario Galaxy and Mario Galaxy 2). From what I understand, these emulating programs are very CPU intensive. I'm trying to keep my laptop sub $900. What are some good options?
Here's two I'm not sure about...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6834215004

or

But it appears the HP has OpenGl and Switchable Graphics problems by looking at the reviews.

Will I need to be careful of any overheating problems that might damage the laptop by running Dolphin?


Another question I have is about turning my Wii and Gamecube games into .iso files (or whatever they need to be.) I believe I need a certain specific DVD drive to do this correct? Are there any cheap, external drives that would do the trick or would my new laptop be able to do it?


Thanks!

That cheap and run some of the toughest games on the emulator well? You don't really have options honestly.

it was certain LG drives that can read wii or gamecube games but no idea of the model number, but it's easier to use the wii (search the forum)

don't expect full speed with a laptop like that, especially with those games
and yes a laptop does get kinda warm when the CPU is running 2 cores at 100%

What games could I expect to run well? Super Mario Sunshine? Wind Waker? Twilight Princess?

Are there any laptops capable of running SMG and SMG2 and are what are the most system heavy games out?


How could I cool the laptop to ensure it doesn't get damaged?

There are special plastic laptop cooling pads you can buy to keep the laptop cool. Keep in mind the cooler your laptop is the faster the games will run. If your laptop is very hot Turbo-boost will not kick in and at 2.0 Ghz games will really slow down. Anyway my XPS (in my sig) can run SMG2 fullspeed with LLE, but that is one of the best CPUs you can get in a laptop. I haven't dumped SMG yet because my dumper keeps stopping, but I think it's around the same as SMG2. Wind Waker will probably be OK, TP could run but Hyrule Field will likely be unbearable. Don't know about Sunshine, I don't have the game (yet).

(07-24-2011, 12:02 PM)HawaiianPunch Wrote: [ -> ]There are special plastic laptop cooling pads you can buy to keep the laptop cool. Keep in mind the cooler your laptop is the faster the games will run. If your laptop is very hot Turbo-boost will not kick in and at 2.0 Ghz games will really slow down. Anyway my XPS (in my sig) can run SMG2 fullspeed with LLE, but that is one of the best CPUs you can get in a laptop. I haven't dumped SMG yet because my dumper keeps stopping, but I think it's around the same as SMG2. Wind Waker will probably be OK, TP could run but Hyrule Field will likely be unbearable. Don't know about Sunshine, I don't have the game (yet).

I could update that HP so it could have a i7 2720QM for a hundred or so dollars, but what will it be worth the extra money? How big of a performance difference is between the i7 2720QM and the i7 2730QM? Does the graphics card matter as much in Dolphin too? Will the 540m be sufficient?

There should be a huge difference with the 2720qm over the 2630qm because of the extra clock speed. When my laptop is cool I run dolphin at 3.0Ghz and fullspeed with any game I have tried (with HLE). I doubt you can do that with the 2630qm simply because it's not that fast of a CPU. The graphics card depends on what your preferences are. Do you want a high internal resolution, just native or your window size? Do you want anti-aliasing? Both those things require a decent graphics card, and with Auto (window size) resolution and no AA I think the 540M should be fine.

(07-24-2011, 01:16 PM)HawaiianPunch Wrote: [ -> ]There should be a huge difference with the 2720qm over the 2630qm because of the extra clock speed. When my laptop is cool I run dolphin at 3.0Ghz and fullspeed with any game I have tried (with HLE). I doubt you can do that with the 2630qm simply because it's not that fast of a CPU. The graphics card depends on what your preferences are. Do you want a high internal resolution, just native or your window size? Do you want anti-aliasing? Both those things require a decent graphics card, and with Auto (window size) resolution and no AA I think the 540M should be fine.

So would you say the to run the most high demanding Wii games would be about 3.0 GHz? Would normal Gamecube games run well at 2 GHz?

Overclocking the 2630 would get about 2.9 GHz. I misspoke earlier... I could upgrade it to the 2620 not the 2720 but the overclocking speed of that is 3.4 GHz. What would be the FPS difference with the speed upgrade?

You really can't overclock a laptop. Dell disables it and it can do it on another brand, don't. Let turbo-boost do its thing, because it knows the temperature of the CPU and adjusts accordingly. The 2620m and 2720qm will likely give you fine perfect performance with almost all Gamecube and good, maybe fullspeed performance with most Wii games. The 2620m does have a higher turbo-boost speed (3.2 Ghz with 2 cores active) than the 2720qm (3.1Ghz with 2 cores active) but the extra cores and L3 cache should help out a lot in Dolphin and other things on the laptop. Are you still looking at a dv6t?

2630qm is running with 2cores only @2.8ghz...
using DSP-LLE (3-cores)
the cpu throotles to 2.4ghz or 2.6ghz (4core mode)