Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I limited the questioning to this:

1. OpenGL will be slower, but is the load on the GPU only?
2. All glitches affecting OpenGL in Windows and Mac OS X are also present in Linux, correct?

Original post:

Quote:I'm currently running Dolphin in a 30-day trial of Windows 7 x64 and it works beautifully on my new PC. The problem is... it's a trial. It's gonna end eventually, and Windows is not cheap. I'm trying to decide whether I should extend my trial (there is a legal way to do this that Windows provides for free) so that I can buy Windows 8 later or switch to Linux (Xubuntu 64 bit). Linux only has one backend though (OpenGL), which is slower than Direct3D9/11 and sometimes has bugs that aren't found in D3D9/11. I want to know if I can possibly get full speed in all of the following games (pc specs in sig) with at least 2x IR on Linux:

Compatibility is a concern -- Speed is a concern

1. Animal Crossing & Animal Crossing: City Folk
2. DKCR
3. DK Jungle Beat
4. DKonga 1/2
5. GH World Tour && GH III
6. All of the GC & Wii Zelda Games
7. Luigi's Mansion
8. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games
9. Mario Kart (DD && Wii)
10. Mario Party 5/6/7/8
11. Mario Power Tennis { This one will always suck graphically }
12. Mario Strikers (GC && Wii)
13. Mario Superstar Baseball && Mario Super Sluggers
14. Marvel Ultimate Alliance
15. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
16. Paper Mario (TTYD && Super)
17. Pikmin 1/2 (GC)
18. Pokemon Colosseum && XD
19. SSBB
20. Sonic Heroes && SA2B && Secret Rings
21. Soul Calibur 2
22. Starfox Adventures
23. SMG 1/2 && Super Mario Sunshine
24. Wii Sports

And yeah, sorry the list is ridiculously long. I tried to shorten it (both by excluding games that I don't care that much about and by combining certain series).

The other issue is compatibility, so in italics above are the games where I believe that to be a concern (I would like it to be as good as DirectX). Bold games are ones where speed is my main concern.

My main Dolphin revision is usually 3.0, but for some games (like Skyward Sword) the most recent one can be better.

EDIT: I don't expect you to check out all of these games, mostly just the italic/bold ones. The other ones are only up there for good measure in case someone skims through and sees something.

I'll quote the new FAQ for you: "Dolphin will run on Windows (>= XP), Linux and OS X (>= Snow Leopard). Generally speaking, you will run games faster and with less issues on Windows over all others. Windows 7 x64 is recommended."

Without getting too detailed, if at all possible, stay with Windows 7. Anything else would be a downgrade one way or the other.

Quote:The problem is... it's a trial

You can use windows 8 x64 for free , it will expire on January 15, 2013.

$100 bucks is just... expensive. Maybe, MAYBE I could find an old XP copy somewhere and upgrade to Windows 8 from that for $40.

I'm just gonna shorten this up as much as possible:

1. OpenGL will be slower, but is the load on the GPU only?
2. All glitches affecting OpenGL in Windows and Mac OS X are also present in Linux, correct?

EDIT: Windows 8 x64 the Developer Preview or Consumer Preview? I have an old developer preview, but I think the consumer preview requires a paid account?

Awesome, that'll last me until after Christmas (which means I will probably get at least $100 by then). That pretty much solved the issue then. Thanks admin89!

You can also disable Windows 7 trial legally
Just "stop" the software protection service

...so that does what exactly? Except kill a service to check activation?

Generally I'm not good at explaining things , i'll leave it be
This trick only works for windows 7 .

I was using windows 7 RC a year past the deadline without any issues. All I had to do was change my system clock in the bios setup to a year earlier. I wonder if that trick still works.

Quote:1. OpenGL will be slower, but is the load on the GPU only?

No. It's complicated, I'll just leave it at that.

I should point out there that the openGL backend generally runs a lot better on linux than it does on windows. You should in fact be able to attain similar performance to using the d3d9 backend on windows.

Quote:2. All glitches affecting OpenGL in Windows and Mac OS X are also present in Linux, correct?

No. Most of the major openGL bugs on MAC OSX shouldn't occur on a windows build using the openGL backend because they are caused by driver issues that are only present in the MACOSX drivers. Most linux video drivers these days are pretty good so you shouldn't have many issues with "glitches".