Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Because of recent sales I'm able to get the i5 2550k for $185 (including shipping) here in Canada. I've been planning an emulator rig for awhile and have been waiting for ivy bridge, but have read various reports about there only being a 10% or so increase in performance. The i5 3570k can be had for about $250 (including shipping) here in Canada so we're talking about a $65 difference.

I plan to play mostly Gamecube and PS2 games, with some Wii. I'll be using a Radeon 6670 HD as my GFX card and plan on purchasing a z77 board (or will a z68 do fine?). I'm also planning to clock the chip to around 4.5 on air.

I know there haven't been any tests yet (to my knowledge) of dolphin's performance with ivy bridge, but does anybody think that paying the extra $65 for the ivy will give me any noticeable performance boost on heavy games? (SMG2 for example). Thanks.

I'd go for the 2550 simply for the lower price

Nah personally if I was craving for an i5 I'd take the 3570K just for the heck of it, 65$ ain't much difference but that's just me and I don't care what anyone has to say about it since it's my money.
You brought it up for a reason and obviously you have the money for it, don't be cheap to yourself.

Quote:a z77 board (or will a z68 do fine?)

A z68 board and some p67 boards will be able to use the Ivy Bridge after a BIOS update.

Quote:I'm also planning to clock the chip to around 4.5 on air.

If you only plan to get up to 4.5GHz, then you should get the Ivy Bridge.
If you do plan to overclock higher than that, then the Sandy Bridge would be the better choice.

Quote: but does anybody think that paying the extra $65 for the ivy will give me any noticeable performance boost on heavy games?

I doubt it. But it does provide some nice new features such as the PCI-E 3.0.

p67 is not compatible in the majority case.

Quote:If you only plan to get up to 4.5GHz, then you should get the Ivy Bridge.
If you do plan to overclock higher than that, then the Sandy Bridge would be the better choice.

Bear in mind that because of the performance increase in ivy bridge you'll get better results with an ivy@4.5 than a sandy@4.8 (or higher if the performance increase is as high as some sources say).