Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(01-23-2013, 11:32 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Don't bother with any mobile AMD CPU . They're no good for Dolphin whatsoever

Quote:Super Mario Galaxy + LLE

i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz
The rest will run fine with i7 3687U , i7 3667U , i7 3617U , i5-3427U

Quote:I read somewhere that Dolphin only supports dual-core anyways; am I incorrect in this? Does it support more than two cores?

http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-green-notice-development-thread-important-query-about-lock-threads-to-cores-performance

Stay away from AMD E's? I don't see that as being too much of a problem since the majority of the laptops I'm looking at are Intel-based anyways.

Thanks for the link; I did not know Dolphin could use more than dual core. Though does that mean that it can also make use of hyperthreading?

Also, all the processors you listed as being "OK" are either not being put into laptops that are in production anymore, or are far out my price range.

As a last-hope, will the i7-3517u produce good results? It is "faster" on paper than your 480M. How about the i5-3317U? On paper it is slower, but it's in many more laptops with that are in my price range.

If I may ask; what kind of results are you yielding from your 480M? It seems that Dolphin relies much more heavily on the CPU than the GPU, and that's good news for Intel-based laptops. I would really like to be able to play Dolphin games, but my choice of processors is very limited

Also, just out of curiousity; for Dolphin, does having a fast SSD, good RAM (8 GB, 1600 MHz, Cas Latency 7), and Windows 8 make any difference in performance to a laptop with only Windows 7, slower and less RAM, and a slow HDD?

Thanks for all your help!

HDD ? Surely it will make difference... if you'll dump all your games and try to refresh a game list in Dolphin.
Most modern HDDs will make no difference at all since Dolphin isn't really putting much stress on HDD. I can't see any noticeable difference between 5900 rpm cool and "slow" 3Tb HDD, 7200 rpm fast server HDD, and ultra fast SAS 15k rpm drive.
Well there's a difference - fastest makes a lot more noise Even old ATA-133 300Gb Samsung HD300LD is ok for Dolphin.

And yeah, Dolphin relies more on CPU than GPU. But... Don't expect a stellar performance with integrated video chips, which will be way slower than budget discrete cards like GT440 with GDDR3 memory which can at least handle -2.5x IR in most games

(01-23-2013, 01:20 PM)ShadowFlash Wrote: [ -> ]HDD ? Surely it will make difference... if you'll dump all your games and try to refresh a game list in Dolphin.
Most modern HDDs will make no difference at all since Dolphin isn't really putting much stress on HDD. I can't see any noticeable difference between 5900 rpm cool and "slow" 3Tb HDD, 7200 rpm fast server HDD, and ultra fast SAS 15k rpm drive.
Well there's a difference - fastest makes a lot more noise Even old ATA-133 300Gb Samsung HD300LD is ok for Dolphin.

And yeah, Dolphin relies more on CPU than GPU. But... Don't expect a stellar performance with integrated video chips, which will be way slower than budget discrete cards like GT440 with GDDR3 memory which can at least handle -2.5x IR in most games

So Dolphin loads the entirety of the game into RAM if possible anyway?

Also, I cant really get a GT440 or anything like that since uhh... Well... Like I said; ultraportable laptop... Not really upradeable in that sense.

Let me just point out some general patterns here that are true 99% of the time:

Cheaper hardware = lower performance
Lower power hardware = lower performance
Smaller form factor = lower performance per dollar

Based on these well known patterns you should have been able to figure out fairly easily how a cheap ultrathin laptop would handle a demanding application like dolphin. The thread link that I posted was meant to press this point further.

Small, cheap, and low power is a perfect recipe for low performance.

elemein Wrote:Also, I did look at that link, yet also failed to see the direction inclusion of ULV CPUs (and putting them under i3,i5, and i7 would make them "fast" or "extremely fast"),

Yes unfortunately I can't include every variation of every cpu. They rank somewhere in between netbook and low end laptop cpus.

elemein Wrote:and the E2 series is under "moderate".

The desktop versions are, yes.

elemein Wrote:The E-series that is E1 or E-xx0 is completely excluded, as well as the entirety of any mention of mobile processors specifically....

Uh.....no they aren't. I made an entire section for laptop chips and another for netbook/nettop chips. They're all listed in the appropriate place.

elemein Wrote:I know this was to keep the thread much more simple; but wouldnt the new HD4000 IGP help out?

It's too weak to get fullspeed in some games, even on minimum settings. Like other people have been saying in this thread, you really need a discrete gpu.

elemein Wrote:Also, is Dolphin more heavily reliant on the CPU, or the GPU?

It depends on how good each chip is. Usually cpu.

elemein Wrote:Though does that mean that it can also make use of hyperthreading?

Technically yes. You're unlikely to gain any benefit from it though. And if it's a quad core cpu you definitely won't gain any benefit.

elemein Wrote:Also, all the processors you listed as being "OK" are either not being put into laptops that are in production anymore, or are far out my price range.

Yeah well you can't expect low budget hardware to perform as well as high budget hardware now can you?

elemein Wrote:Also, just out of curiousity; for Dolphin, does having a fast SSD, good RAM (8 GB, 1600 MHz, Cas Latency 7), and Windows 8 make any difference in performance to a laptop with only Windows 7, slower and less RAM, and a slow HDD?

No. Dolphin doesn't need much HDD throughput or ram. Any extra is simply not used.

Windows 8 is barely faster than windows 7 in terms of cpu cycles used. The difference between them will likely only be 1-3% at the most.

elemein Wrote:So Dolphin loads the entirety of the game into RAM if possible anyway?

No. Dolphin treats the .iso file on your HDD as if it were the game disk in the GC/Wii DVD drive. The game then accesses the data that it needs the same way it would on the real hardware and dolphin handles the requests. Since a PC HDD can be over a dozen times faster than those DVD drives dolphin doesn't require very much HDD throughput and any additional throughput won't help since dolphin won't use it.

elemein Wrote:Also, I cant really get a GT440 or anything like that since uhh... Well... Like I said; ultraportable laptop... Not really upradeable in that sense.

Yeah. Trying to make an ultrathin laptop that can run dolphin well is like trying to make a smartphone that can software transcode mpeg4/avc in real time.

Quote:i7-3517u

Ok .

Quote:i5-3317U

To hell with it . It's even slower than i3 380M
i5 3317U + Dedicated AMD / Nvidia GPU = Slow
i5 3317U + Integrated Intel 4000 = Extremely slow !

Okay thanks everyone for your replies. It looks like my only option is the i7-3517u, which is an unpopular processor these days. I may also have to raise my size preference (from 11.6-12.1 to 13.3) to get full-size mobile hardware, or I may have to wait for Q2'13 altogether to see if Haswell can help me out at all >.<

Anyways, thanks again!

Now... To get my dang A8-3520M to run anything above 60% speed >.<

Quote:I may have to wait for Q2'13 altogether to see if Haswell can help me out at all

Haswell - Intel HD 4600 can be on par with Nvidia GT 425M which is the requirement for 2x Internal Resolution (720p)
Nehalem - Arrandale -> Sandy Bridge ( Intel Tock )
Sandy -> Ivy (Intel Tick )
Ivy -> Haswell (Tock)

Tock (New microarchitecture) > Tick (Die shrink . For Example : 32nm -> 22nm)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock