Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello! Currently I'm running Dolphin on an 11-inch MacBook Air from 2012 (I re-partitioned the drive and installed Windows 7 on it). It runs fairly well, but as you can imagine many games experience slowdown. Everything I've read tells me that the integrated graphics are the bottleneck and that I should be using a machine with a dedicated GPU. With that in mind, here are my requirements:

1. Portable. Please don't tell me I can build my own tower with face-melting specs for chump change. I live in central Taipei. My apartment is the size of a shoebox. If I just wanted to play Wii and Gamecube games at home, I'd turn on my Wii (or Gamecube) and sit in front of the television. I need a laptop that's easy to carry around, and I'm willing to pay more and/or make sacrifices to do this. 15" is the absolute max size I'd want, with 14" or smaller being preferable.

2. This is only for games. I have a 2013 MacBook Air that I use as my general-purpose computer. This machine would simply be a toy for gaming so I don't really care how well it runs other apps. So if the keyboard or even the trackpad is a bit iffy it's OK.

3. 640x480 for Gamecube or 480p for Wii is a fine resolution for me. I'm sure Mario's mustache looks extra cool in 1080p, but if I can get full speed at native res (or even reasonably close to full speed) that's fine with me.

4. Battery life is nice but not absolutely necessary. I know plenty of local places around me with ample power outlets for their customers.

5. I also hope to run PCSX2 on this machine. I also have some PC games (Burnout Paradise, Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing) but considering they already run decent on this MacBook Air, I'm assuming they should run even better on a machine with a dedicated GPU. Of course I'll also run Project64, MAME and other emulators.

I thought I had settled on the MSI GE40. It has an i7 Haswell CPU (2.9-3.2 Ghz) and a GTX 760M GPU, with 8GB RAM. It's also small enough to carry around. I played around with one briefly at the Guanghua Digital Plaza and aside from crapass Windows 8 it seems decent enough. (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21307260524103) It sells for NT$38000 there.

But I also stumbled across this machine from Acer (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308253867252) It seems a lot sexier than the MSI machine and it's about USD $100 cheaper, but it's only an i5-4200U processor ant a 750M GPU. Would this still be OK for Dolphin?

Then there's the super budget option, the Toshiba L50T-A (http://goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21308072992564) only NT$26,000 (about $870). This model seems exclusive to Taiwan as far as I can tell. It has a GT740 GPU and an I5-3230M CPU, and 4G of RAM (but I think you can upgrade the RAM pretty easily). Obviously it's not going to play Crysis 3 as well as the MSI machine, but would Dolphin run OK on it?

Are there any other laptop models I should be considering? As a long time Mac user, I suddenly find myself overwhelmed with choices. When I bought my MacBook Air I had two choices (11" or 13") and I agonized over the choice for weeks. With PCs there are simply too many options to consider, so I humbly ask for the advice of you, the Dolphin community. Thanks!

First thing: ALL the laptops will bring an integrated GPU.
Second thing: Join the 760 GPU with the i5 and you´re almost done (at least for now, those Core i5 are starting to get weak and old for Dolphin). In other words, you´ll have more chances of full speed with the Haswell tan with the i5 (if the Haswell comes high-clocked, of course).

ADD: Which games are you planning to play in Dolphin? Speed will also depend on that.

(08-31-2013, 11:21 PM)oliverfrancisco Wrote: [ -> ]First thing: ALL the laptops will bring an integrated GPU.
Second thing: Join the 760 GPU with the i5 and you´re almost done (at least for now, those Core i5 are starting to get weak and old for Dolphin). In other words, you´ll have more chances of full speed with the Haswell tan with the i5 (if the Haswell comes high-clocked, of course).

ADD: Which games are you planning to play in Dolphin? Speed will also depend on that.

Thanks for the reply. So the GE40 is looking like the best of the three then. Here are some examples of games I want to play:

Mario Kart Double Dash
Nintendo Puzzle Collection
Mario Party 4
SSX Tricky
Tetris Worlds
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Castle of Shikigami 3
Mario Sports Mix
NBA Jam
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Sin & Punishment

I should note that I hope to have the option of playing 4 players when possible. At my work we have a projector with a really big screen We've been playing Goldeneye with a real N64 on it and it's lots of fun, so I'd love to play some other 4-player games on there.

Right now I can play Mario Kart Double Dash 1-player on my MacBook Air with low settings, but when I try to play 4 players the machine slows to a crawl.

4-player-mode-slowdowns are normal. And a 14-inch screen will be fine.
Three games:
Mario Kart should work fine with almost no slowdowns (apart from the one in 4-player mode), even if you are using LLE audio.
Mario Party 4 souldn´t give you a problem.
NSMBW, although it probably will not hit fullspeed, it should work smoothly in that system.
About the others, you should check their respective wiki pages.

Either of the first two laptops will be fine for 90% of games, and the GPUs are fine for 3x/4x IR. (Keep in mind that turning down the GPU options will not give you any speedup if you're CPU-bottlenecked. If games aren't running at full speed at 1x IR, blame your CPU.)

Thanks for your replies! OK I was all decided on the Acer V7. But a new wrinkle has developed. There are actually TWO versions of the A7 14" laptop available in Taiwan. As far as I can tell, they are identical except one has a i5-4200 CPU (1.6/2.6 Ghz) with a 720p screen for NT$32000, and the other has an i7-4200 CPU (1.8Ghz/3.0Ghz) with a 1080p screen for NT$38000.

Given that a 720p screen is fine for me, do you think that the i7 processor is worth an extra NT$6000? That's about $200 USD.

Quote:Either of the first two laptops will be fine for 90% of games

I'm not sure about that . Keep in mind that all i5 mobile CPUs are dual core and Ultra low voltage CPU performance < Normal mobile CPU performance
i5 4200U is ultra low voltage CPU with poor clock speed (1.6GHz stock and 2.3GHz with 2 cores active , 2.6GHz with 1 core active) . Not even Mario Kart Wii could run full speed on that CPU

Quote:i7-4200

It doesn't exist . Perhaps , you mean i7 4500U (2.7GHz turbo Boost with 2 cores active , 3.0GHz is single core turbo . Single core turbo is useless) . i7 4500U is also an ultra low voltage Dual Core CPU

The MSI GE40 has i7 4702MQ which is a Quad Core CPU . It's obviously much better than the rest
Dolphin is a dual core application , A quad core CPU will take advantage of background processing and will grand you 10->20% speed up over dual core CPU . Not mention latest Dolphin is very demanding , you definitely need the fastest notebook as possible

Multi-player via DOlphin is demanding but I'm sure i7 4702MQ will do 4 players just fine as long as you follow this guide

Quote:https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-la...ance-guide

and make sure i7 4702MQ run at maximum turbo speed : 2.9GHz or higher (when Dolphin is running)

The Acer is not a gaming notebook but a multimedia notebook , it will run hot and maybe overheat with Dolphin -> Not a good idea

Quote:The MSI GE40 has i7 4702MQ which is a Quad Core CPU . It's obviously much better than the rest
Dolphin is a dual core application , A quad core CPU will take advantage of background processing and will grand you 10->20% speed up over dual core CPU . Not mention latest Dolphin is very demanding , you definitely need the fastest notebook as possible

Multi-player via DOlphin is demanding but I'm sure i7 4702MQ will do 4 players just fine as long as you follow this guide

Quote:https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-la...ance-guide

and make sure i7 4702MQ run at maximum turbo speed : 2.9GHz or higher (when Dolphin is running)

The Acer is not a gaming notebook but a multimedia notebook , it will run hot and maybe overheat with Dolphin -> Not a good idea

Niiiice catch! I didn't realize that the MSI was a true quad-core processor. I just assumed any notebook i7 would a gimped version of the processor. I would say that Intel needs to make this more clear in their chip descriptions. But I guess in the past when they've done this (think Celeron, Atom) nobody wants the low-end version.

So the MSI has a more robust CPU, and the newer GPU as well which might not be so important for Dolphin but I'm sure other games could use it. Plus it has a 7200RPM hard drive which is nice as well, plus I'm pretty sure I could have the optical drive swapped out for an SSD in the future if I want. It may not have the best screen or track pad, but it's a necessary sacrifice to get the performance I need.

Thanks everyone for their replies. This kind of discussion is exactly what I was hoping for, good information all around. And I won't be buying the laptop until sometime after the 10th (payday) so if anyone else wants to chime in, by all means go ahead!

Quote:I'm pretty sure I could have the optical drive swapped out for an SSD in the future if I want

IF it has enough space for MSATA SSD , you won't need to do that

Oh, one more option has spring up. A guy here in Taipei is leaving for Australia and he's desperate to sell his Samsung RC512-S02 laptop. It's got a i7 2630QM processor (Sandy Bridge, 2.0-2.8 Ghz) with an Nvidia GeForce GT 525M card inside it. Here are the specs. He's selling it for NT$15,000, about USD $450. What do you guys think? Would this give decent Dolphin performance or should I pass?

SPEC DATA:Samsung RC512-S02
Type: Gaming, General Purpose, Media, Desktop Replacement
Processor Name: Intel Core i7-2630QM
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
RAM: 6 GB
Weight: 5.4 lb
Screen Size: 15.6 inches
Screen Type: Widescreen
Native Resolution: 1366 x 768
Graphics Memory: 1024
2nd Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics 3000
2nd Graphics Memory: 64
Storage Capacity (as Tested): 750 GB
Rotation Speed: 5400 rpm
Networking Options: 802.11n
Primary Optical Drive: Blu-Ray Disc