Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey Everyone,

Almost ready to start getting the parts for my rig. I've decided to go with one that is (hopefully) strong enough to handle gamecube, but not wii. Here are the two builds I'm looking at:

Option A:
Processor - i5 2500k - $230
PSU - Antec BP550 Plus 550W modular power supply - $70
RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws X 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1333 Memory - $40
Video Card - ASUS Radeon HD 6670 810MHZ 1GB 4GHZ DDR5 Video Card - $73 (after rebate)
Motherboard - ASUS P8Z68-M Pro Z68 LGA1155 mATX Motherboard - $118

Total = $531

Option B:
Processor - i3 2100 - $125
PSU - OCZ ModXStream 500W modular power supply - $50 (after rebate)
RAM - GSkill Ripjaws X 4GB 2X2GB DDR3-1333 Memory - $25
Video Card - Powercolor Radeon HD 6570 650MHZ 1GB 1.2GHZ GDDR3PCI-E - $55 (after rebate)
Motherboard - ASUS P8H61-M H61 LGA1155 mATX Motherboard - $85

Total = $340

The case is the same for both options:
Nmedia HTPC-7000B Desktop Media Centre Case
$80

I didn't list HDD, DVD-Drive, or Cooling for either setup since I haven't decided on those yet. I will be running the games at 720p (or 1080p if possible, but it's not a deal breaker if it can't do 1080p at full speed). I know some Gamecube games are more resource intensive than others, so I've compiled a list of all the games I own so you guys can get an idea of what I'll need:

1080 Avalanche, Battalion Wars, Crazy Taxi, Eternal Darkness, Gauntlet Dark Legacy
LOZ: Twilight Princess, LOZ: Wind Waker, Lego Star Wars I+II, Mario Golf, Mario Kart
Mario Party 4+5+6+7, Mario Tennis, Paper Mario, Pikmin 1+2
Resident Evil 1+2+3+4+Code Veronica, Rocky, Super Mario Sunshine
Super Monkey Ball 1+2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Wave Race Blue Storm

I'd like to be able to run the games at full speed with as little issues as possible. I'm looking for some opinions on what I've detailed above and I am open to any and all suggestions on which rig is the most appropriate for my needs. Thanks.

Mike

Unsurprisingly, you should go for option A. The slowest you'll encounter is Hyrule Field late in Twilight Princess, which requires an overclocked 2500K. I recommend getting option B's RAM however since 8GB is unnecessary for Dolphin. You'll need some extra cooling as you should overclock that 2500K to about 4GHz. This setup will be more than enough for Wii games too if you ever decide to try those.
As for GPUs, find someone else

Option A :
_Powerful CPU + Overclocking feature
_Easy to upgrade to Ivy Bridge later (Why not wait for Ivy Bridge instead , just 2 month ahead)
_550W PSU is not enough . Get 600 or 700W PSU
Option B :
_A Fine CPU + No OC
_Hard to upgrade later unless you replace a new motherboard

Quote:_550W PSU is not enough . Get 600 or 700W PSU

Are you insane? 550W is more than enough, even with a heavy overclock. If he had a high end graphics card and wanted to also do a heavy cpu overclock then he might need a bit more.

In case you don't believe me: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

[rant]
Modern system builders grossly overestimate power requirements since power supplies are cheap and they worry about not having enough. The fact of the matter is most high end gaming systems consume less than 500w at peak load. Yet if you look around the internet all you see is everyone running around telling everyone they need at least 750w for a high end gaming system without providing any data or any reason at all to believe that other than "I heard it from some other guy".
[/rant]

Quote:Unsurprisingly, you should go for option A. The slowest you'll encounter is Hyrule Field late in Twilight Princess, which requires an overclocked 2500K. I recommend getting option B's RAM however since 8GB is unnecessary for Dolphin. You'll need some extra cooling as you should overclock that 2500K to about 4GHz. This setup will be more than enough for Wii games too if you ever decide to try those.
As for GPUs, find someone else

Seconded. Also for OP: http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread.php?tid=18414

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I know that Option A is better, but wanted to see if Option B would be sufficient enough for my needs so I wouldn't have to spend as much.

NaturalViolence, in another thread of mine you mentioned that an i3 would be fine for just GC games. Has something changed with Dolphin in the last couple of months to make this no longer the case?

admin89, I have to agree with Natural Violence that a 550W PSU is more than enough. I had previously used the wattage calculator that he linked to with the Option A build and the recommended PSU was only 373 Watts. I think anything over 550W for a build like this would just be overkill. I've also considered waiting for ivy bridge, but as far as I know they don't have an i3 version (if I choose that build), but correct me if I'm wrong.

HawaiianPunch, I thought the 8GB of RAM might be a bit too much for the Option A build too. Thanks for the input.

Quote:NaturalViolence, in another thread of mine you mentioned that an i3 would be fine for just GC games. Has something changed with Dolphin in the last couple of months to make this no longer the case?

Well you didn't say " I know that Option A is better, but wanted to see if Option B would be sufficient enough for my needs so I wouldn't have to spend as much." in your OP. What you said was:

Quote:I'm looking for some opinions on what I've detailed above and I am open to any and all suggestions on which rig is the most appropriate for my needs. Thanks.

So obviously we're going to tell you option A is better. B is good enough for most games but there are going to be some games that A is going to run significantly faster, especially when overclocked. It all comes down to how much you want to spend, not how much you need to spend.

(02-11-2012, 02:51 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]B is good enough for most games but there are going to be some games that A is going to run significantly faster, especially when overclocked. It all comes down to how much you want to spend, not how much you need to spend.

You're right, I guess I'm just trying to find the best combination of cost vs. performance.

The increased price of hard drives as of late has already added extra cost to the rig so I'd like to cut costs wherever possible. In hindsight I should have asked if the i3 would be able to handle the games I listed just as well as the i5 with no noticeable drop in speed.

The i5 will be faster. Whether that extra speed is worth the additional cost is up to you.

(02-11-2012, 04:54 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]The i5 will be faster. Whether that extra speed is worth the additional cost is up to you.

What about using an AMD setup? I was looking at the wiki for Twilight Princess since it was mentioned before that it would be the slowest of the games, and noticed that several people stated the game as fully playable at 30FPS with AMD chips. For example on revision r7669, Shyvo says "Fully playable @ 30 FPS on OpenGL without any errors".

Quote:What about using an AMD setup?

No. Current intel chips (sandy bridge microarchitecture) perform much better than current amd chips (deneb, thuban, bulldozer) in dolphin for similar cost.

Also I should mention that you should take admin89s advice and upgrade your PSU to a more powerful unit if you plan on upgrading your graphic card down the road because overclocking your cpu could bring your peak power consumption up to 500-520w.