Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

It's kinda sad that no x86 support anymore. Well, I guess this will not change, so Dolphin development is stopped for me at certain point.
Now I looking for the latest x86 build that mostly free of bugs like that: https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/is...il?id=7017
I don't know if developers meet something like that again and decided to drop x86 support or what, so it kind of interesting if latest 4.0-1609 has any problems or no. For now, I noticed random crashes at state saves, but don't know if previous versions were the same.

Also, I read the article about dropping x86 support, but some cases about emulation speed on x86 is not covered. Often, peoples use win32 on a cpu that actually support x64. They are fast enough. I am one of those peoples and I am happy with what I have. I just use win32 and Dolphin run very nice.
There are many reasons why peoples use win32 on x64 cpu.
Some peoples want more compatibility with drivers for old devices.
Some peoples use win32 for HDD and RAM saving, because x64 uses more
Some peoples forced to use win32, because it's their legally bough OS and they don't want to spend money on x64
Or all those 3 cases on one, while they can play games just fine.

32bit specific issues were not fixed before the removal. But just like the D3D9 bugs were "fixed" by D3D9 being removed, it's not a problem that users will encounter in Dolphin anymore, and that means it's fixed for us.

Kosmos Wrote:Also, I read the article about dropping x86 support, but some cases about emulation speed on x86 is not covered. Often, peoples use win32 on a cpu that actually support x64.

Emulation speed was covered. And so was users with x64 CPUs running 32bit windows (spoiler: it's everyone who is using 32bit windows). You did read the article, right?

Kosmos Wrote:There are many reasons why peoples use win32 on x64 cpu.
Some peoples want more compatibility with drivers for old devices.
Some peoples use win32 for HDD and RAM saving, because x64 uses more
Some peoples forced to use win32, because it's their legally bough OS and they don't want to spend money on x64
Or all those 3 cases on one, while they can play games just fine.

Let me answer those for you.

Kosmos Wrote:Some peoples want more compatibility with drivers for old devices.

Irrelevant to Dolphin. Anything too old for x64 drivers is too old to run Dolphin anyway. CPUs and GPUs have x64 drivers going back to way before vista was released. As for other devices, well, whether or not your zip drive or scsi drive runs doesn't matter to Dolphin. Besides, I would bet money there are vista drivers for those things anyway.

Kosmos Wrote:Some peoples use win32 for HDD and RAM saving, because x64 uses more

Only matters if you have a budget system, which wouldn't run Dolphin well anyway. I'll list that as "Not our problem".

Kosmos Wrote:Some peoples forced to use win32, because it's their legally bough OS and they don't want to spend money on x64

Considering you need a hundreds of dollars in PC parts to run the majority of games in Dolphin fluidly... I don't see why that matters. Windows 8 is the cheapest windows ever, and it's fast. Aethetics aside, it's the friendliest Windows has ever been for upgraders. And your refusal to update OSes would also be listed as "not our problem".


Basically, the devs had to make a decision for what was best for Dolphin and the majority of it's userbase. Yes, there were people using 32bit windows on supported hardware and they can't use new development builds anymore. But nearly double that number was the group who were mistakenly downloading 32bit even though they were already using 64bit windows! With 32bit's userbase shrinking rapidly, Windows XP already unsupported, and a lot of growing confusion problems, the decision was made.

"You did read the article, right?"
Yes, and reread it again. Didn't found my case.

"Anything too old for x64 drivers is too old to run Dolphin anyway"
Drivers? Some devices simply don't have x64 drivers, like old printers, scanners and etc. If those devices still work, why I need to garbage those and buy new just to use in x64 OS? I could use my good old win32 with those devices.

"Only matters if you have a budget system, which wouldn't run Dolphin well anyway."
I have budget PC and it's run dolphin very well.

"Considering you need a hundreds of dollars in PC parts to run the majority of games in Dolphin fluidly"
Not hundreds.

That's why I told about "some cases about emulation speed on x86 is not covered". All your statements not covers some situations.
I have budget PC that I assembled from new parts in total worth of 586 dollars 5 years ago. It run games awesome! Ark Rise Fantasia, The last story and other graphics rich games run at full speed in win32 with x86 dolphin builds. I have i5-660 3.3Ghz CPU and Radeon HD 5750.
So, instead of spending 100 - 150 dollars on x64 OS, I could buy two Wii games :O

Seriously, I don't think anything will be changed. Just I think that you could get rid of x86 code with #ifdef WIN32 and keep code for both versions. Maybe some developers will maintain x86 builds. By seeing dolphin even goes to android, it's kind of confusing. The developers does versions with a way different code for android, but don't want to keep x86.

But to the main question... err I guess I just use the latest then.

If you don't have the OEM version you can just reinstall Windows using an USB stick.

Quote:The developers does versions with a way different code for android, but don't want to keep x86.

Yes, because Android is a way forward and its Dolphin port has an active development team (of one person). x86 is not a way forward (the opposite) and its Dolphin port has had nobody active working on it for the last year or so. We don't even test our builds on x86 anymore.

The ARM version also shares less code with the x86 code, which makes it harder to break ARM when changing some x86_64 code paths.

If you want an x86 version, maintain it yourself. If that is not worth your time even though you are a user of Dolphin on x86, consider that it is even less worth our time.

You right about last phrase, but I don't have enough knowledge in GC/Wii architecture. Thanks for answers, through.

Nobody is forced to use a 32-bit version of Windows because they haven't bought the 64-bit version. You buy a specific Windows edition, not bitness. If it matters that much, install a 64- bit version of Windows.

Kosmos Wrote:"You did read the article, right?"
Yes, and reread it again. Didn't found my case.

*sigh* Let me spell it out for you.



So you are perfectly happy with using only 2/3rds of your hardware's capabilities?

The charts is not my case.
My case: x64 cpu + win32 + dolphin_x86
Chart case: x64 cpu + win64 + dolphin_x86 (in that case dolphin executed in WOW64 and this lowers the performance a bit, and since dolphin is very performance consumable program, the wow64 slowdowns maybe be even more noticeable)

I am happy as long as I have all games that I tried playable at comfortable speed and my 10 years old printer and scanner work in my 32 bit OS, because they don't have x64 drivers and my OS consumes less RAM and HDD space, while remaining 512MB from 4 GB ram are used as RAM disk.

"Nobody is forced to use a 32-bit version of Windows because they haven't bought the 64-bit version. You buy a specific Windows edition, not bitness. If it matters that much, install a 64- bit version of Windows."
Seriously? The moderators from answers.microsoft.com always telling that installing windows from not original CD / DVD is also violation of their EULA. So, if I have original dvd with win32, I still need to order original dvd with win64, but this will not solve old devices drivers problem.

I actually have Windows 7 x86 on a separate harddrive, so, that's not really a valid argument.