Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello,

We're looking to play Gamecube titles such as Paper Mario TTYD, The Zelda series and so forth.

Here. what we have:

Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1 (build 7601)

Hewlett-Packard HP Compaq dc7700 Small Form Factor

2.40 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo
64 kilobyte primary memory cache

Board: Hewlett-Packard 0A54h

3576 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Intel® Q965/Q963 Express Chipset Family [Display adapter]

No version of Dolphin will run on this rig and I quite certain the integrated GPU is the source of my problem. I keep getting the standard "failed to complie pixel shader" and "integrated GPU like the Intel GMA series" messages.

So my question is 2 parts:

1. Will the 2.40 gigahertz Intel Core2 Duo support Dolphin and if so

2. What GPU would anyone recommend

My constraints are the small form factor casing and a budget of no more than 100 US dollars.

Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated

Cheers,
Kyle

Yes your GPU is the main problem. That series of Intel iGPU are junk. However, even if you get a better GPU, you will have a CPU bottleneck. You'll probably only be able to play wind waker at just under full speed.

My recommendation is, if you only have $100, get a Pentium G3258 and a Z97 board to replace your current board and CPU. You'll probably need new RAM, but your hard drive can be reused. This will be the best option, because when over clocked to 4.6-4.7 Ghz on the stock intel cooler, can be just as fast as the i5-4690K/i7-4790K. And the iGPU will allow you to increase the IR to about 2-3xIR depending on the game.

KHg8m3r - Thanks for the feedback and it was just as I suspected. I was hoping to get by on the cheap what with the holidays rapidly approaching, etc. But deep down, I knew it was time for a more modern rig.

So, based on what I've read here in the forums, Dolphin pretty much requires at least an i5 4xxx cpu (processor speed: 3.40 GHz) and a 7 series Nvidia gpu to run most Gamecube /Wii games right?

Any additional feedback would be much appreciated.

Unfortunately no Think of it as your holiday gift to yourself

The Pentium G3258 can overclock to the same levels as the i5-4690K and give the same performance since Dolphin is only a dual-core program.
But if you want an overall good rig that can even handle the latest PC games, then get the i5-4690K.

If you don't have much to spend, then get the Nvidia GTX 750 Ti. If you can splurge, get the GTX 970

Thanks KHg8m3r!!!

Just checked out the GTX 970 - very, very nice and the price reflects the pride they take in the product. Seriously, I really like the idea of connecting the pc to the flat screen via HDMI. We currently have the above-mention HP rig connected to the flat screen via the 15 pin vga which works well but still lots of room for improvement.

Guess I'll table a new rig until tax time. I may have wanted to go cheap on a video card, but it's foolish to do the same on a new pc. Reading this forum has shown me what I need to get for both gaming and video since the pc is the centerpoint of our entertainment (we download all our media and watch it via VLC player).

Once again, thank you very much for the help.

KHg8m3r Wrote:and give the same performance since Dolphin is only a dual-core program.

Didn't we just talk about why this isn't true the other day?

Yes we did.
I meant to put similar, but was too tired/lazy to write out the below part, so I just recommended getting an i5-4690K, instead of explaining and then recommending.

The difference between the i5-4690K/i7-4790K and G3258 is about 10-20%. So a G3258 running at the max overclock of 4.7 Ghz will perform similar to an i5-4690K/i7-4790K at around 4.4 Ghz

4.7->4.4 is not within the range of 10-20%. Get some sleep man!

If you want to get technical, fine......... I was being generous with rounding

10% speed of 4.7 Ghz is 4.23 Ghz.
20% speed of 4.7 Ghz is 3.76 Ghz
(apparently a little too generous. I will have to amend future posts)

Would the G3258 actually fall within that range?

Your numbers are based on a dual core cpu being 10-20% slower than a quad core. But my findings were that a quad core cpu is 10-20% faster than a dual core. Which is not mathematically equivalent.


And based on my (and now Garteals) observations it's generally closer to 20%. I would say 15-20% is probably more accurate for the typical range with an average of 17.5%. That actually gives you exactly 4GHz as an equivalent clock rate for a 4690K. 3.9-4.1Ghz if you want it in range form with 15-20% as the range. So I would say i5 4690K @ 4GHz = G3258 @ 4.7GHz is a reasonable estimation. While not quite as fast as the numbers that everyone else is tossing around it is still much faster than anything AMD has to offer and offers excellent performance for under $100. It's faster than the previous generation (ivy bridge) of quad core cpus.