Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(10-31-2012, 02:25 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]It depends on why FSX is demanding. If it's doing a task that similar or equivalent to Dolphin, your point would have more standing. But FSX isn't constantly recompiling code. Let me illustrate this with an example:

It isn't very hard to make a small program that could max out all four of my cores. I just need to create 4 threads and tell each thread to do something (e.g. add 1 to some number) without stopping. I could even have it dynamically grab more memory (RAM). In this sense, since most of my resources would be used, it's technically more "demanding" than Dolphin. However, it'd be very short-sighted to claim that Dolphin or even FSX should run just fine since my computer can run this (rather asinine) little program. They're all doing completely different tasks. You need a program that's very similar in nature to Dolphin to start drawing these sorts of comparisons.

Give it a try yourself then
It still does not change the fact that saying an application requires a certain type of CPU to run properly is an ignorant and blinded comment. The CPU, doesn't, and will never work alone, it will always benefit from the rest of your hardware regardless of branding.

The real, and only downside is that people spend thousands of dollars to get the most mainstream and ''powerful' hardware for an application that does not require it at all. You can, and will get the same performance with a non intel chip IF -You know what you are doing-

Theres always an easy way, and a right way. Me? I'll just enjoy being able to run Dolphin smoothly with my crappy AMD chip.
Then again, that is just my opinion, and experience I've had with both brands, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but it's close to useless if you haven't tried to get the best out of both ends before you speak.

I built many PC for alot of people in this forum , most of them are i5 2500k @ 4.4GHz / i5 3570k 4.2GHz + AMD 6670 / Nvidia GTX 550Ti
Each of them cost around 700-800$
AMD Llano , Bulldozer , Sandy , Ivy , Core 2 duo ...have been benchmarked with Dolphin (Search the forum)
Unless you can post some screenshot that you can run The Last Story ( Lazulis city) or Sky of Arcadia + LLE or Zelda TW +EFB to Ram (Hyrule Field) fullspeed , this topic is getting nowhere

(10-31-2012, 04:14 PM)Erick Wrote: [ -> ]Give it a try yourself then

I have. The previous example was based on some of my earlier experiments with SDL's multithreading capabilities. It's trivial to create a program that can instantly hog all of a system's resources, thus being more demanding than Dolphin.

(10-31-2012, 04:14 PM)Erick Wrote: [ -> ]It still does not change the fact that saying an application requires a certain type of CPU to run properly is an ignorant and blinded comment. The CPU, doesn't, and will never work alone, it will always benefit from the rest of your hardware regardless of branding.

It still remains a fact that when running certain games under certain settings in Dolphin (again, refer to The Last Story on LLE audio, EFB Copies set to RAM), you're going to need an overclocked Sandy/Ivy Bridge to consistently reach fullspeed. Other systems with lower configurations can still play the game, no one has ever claimed that not to be the case, but you aren't going to get fullspeed with no drops in speed.

The CPU is one part of the system, but you don't seem to take into account that some programs will specifically rely on one component more so than the other. Many modern PC games rely greatly on GPUs for performance, so even systems with mid-range CPUs can play games decently as long as the GPU is up to snuff. Some PC games stress both the CPU and GPU. Other programs are I/O intensive and depend on the speed of storage.

Dolphin is most often a CPU intensive program. It relies on the GPU for settings like Internal Resolution, Anti-Aliasing, and Per-Pixel Lighting. If your GPU is strong enough to handle whatever you have those set to (e.g. your system isn't limited or "bottlenecked" by the GPU), a great majority of the rest of Dolphin's performance is determined by the CPU. It is a CPU-intensive program by design (the aforementioned JIT code recompilations). The CPU is an extremely important factor in determining how well it will run.

Erick Wrote:You can, and will get the same performance with a non intel chip IF -You know what you are doing-

By non-Intel chip, you may as well say AMD, since Dolphin doesn't yet run on ARM, and AMD is most likely the only other vendor ordinary consumers will be getting their hardware from. At the same clocks with either company's current offerings, Intel has a great performance advantage over AMD. It's been tested here by various users in the past, and it hasn't changed.

It's possible to overclock many of AMD's CPUs to raise their performance, but again if the Intel CPUs are raised to the same clock, the difference is very great for Dolphin. It's not a matter of being fanboys of one company or another; these are facts. The Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge microarchitecture simply has a higher IPC than any of AMD's chips.

Erick Wrote:Then again, that is just my opinion, and experience I've had with both brands, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but it's close to useless if you haven't tried to get the best out of both ends before you speak.

Indeed, it's just your opinion. If anyone, anywhere comes up with an idea or theory, they test it and put the data up. We've had people do this before, and the results have been in favor of Intel. As such it's going to continue to be recommended over AMD until something changes that. If you want to change that here, you need only post some of your results showing how well your CPU runs Dolphin's most demanding games on the most demanding settings. Otherwise, Intel's going to be the choice for maximizing Dolphin performance.

Quote: refer to The Last Story on LLE audio

Lol , please test it when your chara are at lazulis city
The Last Story (EFB to Ram) + HLE = i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz or i5 3570K @ 4.2GHz
The Last Story (EFB to Ram) + LLE = ???

You havent even confirmed if you tested ANY game with LLE properly.
You probably dont even know how to enable LLE.
Until you do this,any discussion is pointless.

If you guys want to argue about LLE, go for it. That is not my concern. I want to make sure people don't come here and believe the statement: "If I can run this demanding program well I must be able to run Dolphin well."

Here are the points that set Dolphin apart from FSX:
1. FSX is multithreaded to a much greater extent than Dolphin. It will run faster on quad-core processors vs. dual core processors. Dolphin does not experience this difference in games when you don't use LLE on Thread because Dolphin uses only two cores.
2. Dolphin has a very different code profile than FSX. Dolphin must recompile and run native Wii machine code. The IPC when used with Dolphin will be different than the IPC when used with FSX.
3. Dolphin's speed requirements differ depending on the game, while FSX virtually keeps the same performance requirements. The Last Story, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 have much higher processor requirements to run full speed than Animal Crossing.

These are facts. The IPC of AMD's Llano CPUs is pitiful compared to an Ivy Bridge when used in Dolphin.