Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey guys! I am new here, and I came to ask for some help, and also see if some other people are under the same conditions, still playing Dolphin. Sadly, I'm assuming that everybody is using an OP, or at least decent GPU, and I'm left as the odd on out. Well, to the point!

So I first got Dolphin when my urge to play New Super Mario Bros Wii. left me looking desperately for at least SOME software that would let me play it. My current emulators and other games would not satisfy me. As I searched, I found an emulator called Dolphin. I wondered, will my specs be good enough for this? And that's where this all started.

You see, my specs aren't exactly powerful. I have an Intel Mobile ® 945GM Express Chipset Family GPU. The CPU is a Genuine Intel ® CPU T2300 clocked at 166GHz, and I believe it is dual-core. In my registration for these forums I accidentally put MHz, lol. I have 1014 MB of RAM, at least close to 1GB. My OS is Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, which is 32-bit, or x86. For my GPU, I managed to find a driver from 2008, so it's kind of up to date, at least I think, because If I'm not mistaken that's the latest driver for my XP. My computer is a Dell Inspiron e1505 with a locked BIOS, so I can't overclock much, and I can't allocate memory to my GPU. However I can manage to overclock my GPU using GMABooster, so I usually have it overclocked to 400MHz. Sometimes I'll use GameBooster, but instead of launching with GameBooster, I simply set it to Gaming Mode and then run the game afterward. I'm thinking it isn't much help. Strangely, with these specs, I am able to run New Super Mario Bros. Wii at around 60-100% on the first levels, where there is usually less lag. In overworld levels, I can get at least 75%. Underground, it usually lowers to 40-50%. Underwater levels, I can get 30-50%. Castles with underground lighting, I can get from 50-80%, depending on how much sprites are present. Castles with lava lighting, my speed is usually 50-70%, because the lava slows me down. In castles with a sky lighting, I can get 60-90%. Towers usually welcome me with 50-70%. That one desert tower however, slows me down to 40-50%. In lava levels, I get 30-50%. In athletic and sky levels, I can achieve a nice 70-100%. In airships, I can also get 70-100%. Forest levels greet me with 30-50%. With all those speed percentages done, I can give you all an idea of how strangely playable New Super Mario Bros. Wii is. My settings for Dolphin are Dual Core, Idle Skipping, Direct3D9, EFB to Texture, Disable Fog, Disable Lighting, OpenCL, Skip Alpha, and Show FPS. I used DSP-HLE, with the Jit32 processor settings. I use r6737.

Now, after all that long talk, I've been wondering a few things. First off, is there possibly an modded drivers for my i945GM available for XP? I've heard of these before, but when I try to download theme, gasp, the links don't work, the drivers aren't for my XP, XP drivers are still under development, the files have been deleted, etc. So if anyone has these, it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Also, is there anyone else who plays Dolphin with i945GM, because I find it strange how it even SUPPORTS Dolphin. Because I'm using XP, I can only us D3D9. D3D11 is nor there, and my GPU only supports up to OpenGL 1.4

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

-MLGProGamer123

That thing won't play Dolphin no matter what. You will need a newer PC

That is the problem, on older versions, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is actually PLAYABLE for me. But don't take me wrong, I am taking a new PC in consideration, but I'm just mainly wondering about the possibility of modded drivers for this GPU.

Modded drivers won't magically improve performance or add new things the GPU doesn't support

As dolphin's got more accurate, it's had to drop support for hardware and software configurations which don't allow more accurate code to be used. FOr example DirectX9's D3D module didn't support integer maths, which is what the GC and Wii's GPUs use, so we had to drop support for DirectX 9, in favor of OpenGL and DirectX 11.

As for your GPU, it's missing features such as a compatible version of Pixel Shader, so you'll only be able to use revisions of Dolphin from before the change to whatever version we use now. This is missing at a hardware level, and it would be far more work than earning the money for a new computer to modify your graphics drivers to emulate it.

I see. I know it won't improve performance. However, will it give little boosts? I've been kind of successful increasing little by little.

Quote:No

However, both of you are correct. Getting a new PC would be far easier. I saw a laptop at my local Best Buy that was almost magical, well not really. It was like specs of a desktop. It had 8G of RAM, an Intel i7 for CPU and GPU I believe. It was also touch screen with Windows 8.1 I was just so amazed how my computer STILL can at least render the stuff in NSMB Wii.

Be careful when getting fancy laptops. You need to stay away from any CPU that end with a U, and instead look for an i7-4700MQ

And, from what I've heard, if it's at Best Buy, it's something you should avoid like the plague, as what they sell has a huge markup and/or is crap. If you want to use Dolphin, and you have to have a laptop, you're going to want to be looking at gaming-grade ones with a Haswell CPU at at least 3.0GHz and a dedicated GPU on a separate cooling system.