Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I am currently piecing together a small-ish htpc thin client for my kids (5 and 4 year old).

Dolphin-emu performance is not a specific requirement, but it would be a plus.

I am looking to do a miniITX build with a Core i3 4130 (haswell) @3.4Ghz.
I have 4 GB of 1333Mhz ram to go in it as well.
Sapphire Radeon 7750 low profile GFX as well.
More than likely running Ubuntu or possibly SteamOS.
(all at 1080p rendered resolution, not sure about IR)

This is just a hodge podge of components, just to get something functional for kiddos.

My prior experience with dolphin is in an overclocked 2600K@4.4Ghz and it is pretty playable (radeon 7750 low profile as well) for most of the titles my kids like.
I update by build area and recompile probably once every two weeks (ubuntu).

Any idea on what the experience of a Core i3 4130 vs my 2600K@4.4Ghz will be like?
Obviously the clocks are different and also the archs are different.

Games of most interest are MarioKartWii, Windwaker, and MarioParty 9.

I just want to set my expectations prior to doing this. Is it even worth checking out and compiling on the core i3?

Base on Dolphin Benchmark , i5 3570k @ 3.8GHz is faster than i7 2600k @ 4.0GHz and i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz is as fast as i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz . Therefore , i3 4130 should be faster than i7 2600k @ 4.4GHz

Quote:More than likely running Ubuntu or possibly SteamOS.
(all at 1080p rendered resolution, not sure about IR)

Don't know about current AMD driver but AMD driver + Linux = Hell

(04-08-2014, 03:14 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Base on Dolphin Benchmark , i5 3570k @ 3.8GHz is faster than i7 2600k @ 4.0GHz and i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz is as fast as i5 3570k @ 4.4GHz . Therefore , i3 4130 should be faster than i7 2600k @ 4.4GHz

Quote:More than likely running Ubuntu or possibly SteamOS.
(all at 1080p rendered resolution, not sure about IR)

Don't know about current AMD driver but AMD driver + Linux = Hell

Oh wow. that spreadsheet is pretty helpful. I will give it a try. How funny that an i3 is faster than an i7 from 2 gen ago.

Thank you. Looks like it is definitely worth a try.

Each generation improved single-core performance. Haswell had a really big jump (about 30%) up from Ivy Bridge

Also keep in mind that Dolphin is a dual core application

So it won't be able to use the extra cores and hyperthreads which the i7 has.

thanks for the good information.
now I am thinking the i3 4340 for 30 bucks more, may be worthwhile since clockspeed seems to be very important.

It will give you a little bit of a boost, yes

one more, potentially stupid, question: with haswell integrated gfx (4600 for the i3 4340), am I "buying" any extra performance by even using the radeon 7750?
i know intel's integrated gfx aren't super fast, but they have been improving, and from what i understand, the cpu is the main bottleneck anyway.

So with my lowend radeon should I expect better performance than the integrated 4600 by intel?

The Core i3-4130 has HD4400 graphics. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819116946

I'm looking at recommending one for my parent's computer build.