Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Core i5 3210M 2.5GHz (3.1 GHz Turbo Boost) 3MB L3 Cache
GeForce
GTX 660M 2GB GDDR5

8GB Ram DDR3 1600mhz
240GB SSD

I want to know If I can expect any improvement by going with this instead. The main difference is on SSD instead of HD and medium voltage i5. I was thinking of going for a i7 3610QM instead of i5, but after reading this thread I'm not really sure If It's worth It.

Old post:

Quote:4th gen Intel Core i5 4200U 2.6GHz 3Mb Cache
6GB DDR3L 1600 MHz RAM
1 TB 5400 RPM HD
AMD Radeon HD 8850M 2GB GDDR5

Not sure if It matters, but I plan on playing Zelda (Wind Waker, Twilight Princess GC, Skyward Sword), Metroid Prime (1 and 2), Super Smash Bros Brawl, Xenoblade Chronicles... there are probably more but those are the ones I'll probably play the most.

As long as It runs at higher resolution than Wii (hopefully 720p) and at a decent speed I'll be satisfied. Is this good enough?

Would upgrading to Intel Core i7 4500U (3.0 GHz 4Mb Cache) be a significant improvement?

Why with the U instead of the K? A model ending in U means ultra-low voltage. Low voltage CPUs and Dolphin aren´t good friends...

Xenoblade: simply unplayable.

WW: probably a chance.

SSBB: probably a chance.

(Any expert can fix/complete this).

(11-29-2013, 09:11 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]Why with the U instead of the K? A model ending in U means ultra-low voltage. Low voltage CPUs and Dolphin aren´t good friends...

Because he is looking at a laptop obviously, you can't get a k CPU on those

But I thought that laptops also had K CPUs installed.

not unless they want the power to last 5 minutes

Accordingly to Hardware Secrets, for core i5/i7 processors, K models only exist for desktop computers. The Core i5/i7 laptop equivalent of K is the XM series, but as far as I know only i7 Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge has some models and they're veeeeeeery expensive (the last laptop I saw with these beasts was at $2000 price range)...

Yeah, the latest is the i7-4930MX. By itself it's a bit over $1k

Look for a laptop with an i7-4700MQ in it. That's the best base Haswell laptop CPU to get.

I live in Brazil and things are really expensive here. This laptop will actually cost me almost $1000. I've seen one with GeForce 640 M 1GB, 8GB RAM and i5 sandy bridge 3230M for $1150, would this be better for Dolphin?

KHg8m3r. the cheapest laptop I've found with i7 4700MQ is $1700 so It's out of my price range. Sadly I can't find anything with an Haswell that's not U for less than $1500.

(11-29-2013, 09:11 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]Why with the U instead of the K? A model ending in U means ultra-low voltage. Low voltage CPUs and Dolphin aren´t good friends...

Xenoblade: simply unplayable.

WW: probably a chance.

SSBB: probably a chance.

(Any expert can fix/complete this).

Is this true? That's disappointing :/

WW and SSBB will probably run fullspeed. Xenoblade and skyward sword will run ok but probably not fullspeed. Metroid prime 1/2 will run poorly. They are correct that the M haswell cpus are MUCH faster than the U models. Laptops just aren't recommended for dolphin in general since you basically need a top of the line model to run a lot of games well. And those cost $1,000-2,000. Even more outside of the USA.

i5 4200M is faster than i7 4500U . You may get the i5 if it comes with a decent GPU plus cheaper price