Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello, just got into emulation scene. I'm going off to college soon and
my dad is giving me about $1100 to get a new laptop. I looked around and
I found this MSI for 900 bucks

http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productp...d=6&id=421

The most relevant information:

CPU:Intel® Core™ i5-4200M (3.1 GHZ)
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 740M 2G GDDR3

The GPU shouldn't be a problem but that CPU might be a little too weak...is it? I plan on emulating F-Zero GX and SSBM, maybe other games but those are my main wants.

And yes, I know, building a desktop would be the most cost-effective solution, and I REALLY want to do that one day, but I need the portability and when a professor is boring me I might as well play some Master Diamond when I should be taking notes XP

(I kid, I kid. But seriously, is this a good enough comp? FPS always takes precedence over graphics for me so I don't care if I have to run it on low settings.)

Yes , it is
You should choose i7 4700MQ or a low power consumption i7 4702MQ (less heat )

(11-06-2013, 08:47 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes , it is
You should choose i7 4700MQ or a low power consumption i7 4702MQ (less heat )

God fucking damn, it's still not enough? Jesus. Maybe I can bug my dad for more money. The CPU hierarchy guide in this forums says that the i5 Mobile is one of the best laptop CPUs but you're giving me rather different information.

(11-06-2013, 08:47 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes , it is
You should choose i7 4700MQ or a low power consumption i7 4702MQ (less heat )

Alright, so I found another computer by the same company that has the i7-4700MQ. However, the clock speed is listed at only 2.4GHZ, though it can be boosted to 3.4GHZ. Will this really be faster than the one I listed above?

(11-06-2013, 09:27 AM)Razzi Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-06-2013, 08:47 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes , it is
You should choose i7 4700MQ or a low power consumption i7 4702MQ (less heat )

Alright, so I found another computer by the same company that has the i7-4700MQ. However, the clock speed is listed at only 2.4GHZ, though it can be boosted to 3.4GHZ. Will this really be faster than the one I listed above?

http://ark.intel.com/products/76348/
Yes, not by much though.

I have the i7 4700MQ with a GTX 770M. It cuts through most games I throw at it with no problem, especially with turbo boosting (higher turbo than the i5)
Melee has no speed drops (lightweight)
Windwaker only slight hits in the overworld when theres a lot of things showing.
Xenoblade ran with mild slowness.

Go with the i7. It will make actually using the computer a nicer experience.

The i5-4200M is a good cpu. But F-Zero GX is REALLY demanding. Most games are still going to run pretty well though so I'm not sure I would bother upgrading to something better. You really can't squeeze that much more performance out of a laptop. The more demanding games pretty much require a desktop or a top of the line multi-thousand dollar gaming laptop. Which I would strongly recommend against since the lack of portability of those things defeats the whole point of a laptop.

A quad core is 20％ faster than a dual core in dolphin . Obviously, it's much faster than i5

10-20%*

Which I don't view to be a substantial enough improvement to be worth it financially.

It has higher turbo clock as well