Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I am looking to buy a Zotac box, and am interested in this one: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/zotac-zotac-zbox-iq01-mini-pc-intel-core-i7-4770t-500gb-hdd-4gb-ram-zbox-iq01-plus-u/10297484.aspx?path=7042b23f12d571c02714475bc2a66546en02

I have some used wii games bought from microplay and such and want to play them on dolphin. So the games I am looking to play are new super mario bros, mario kart double dash, mario kart wii.

Here are the specs:

Intel Core i7-4770T @ 2.5 GHz

4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM

Intel HD Graphics 4600

Any chance to play those games on this computer? I am hooking up the pc to a 40 inch tv through hdmi and am playing the games from almost 10 feet away, so graphic quality isn't a very big concern. Thanks.

You´ll do fine as long as you use around 2X IR.

what's 2x ir?

IR: internal resolution. Dolphin can scale the rendering resolution up to 4X (depending on how strong the GPU is).

IR stands for Internal Resolution, and is a measure of how much you can upscale from the original GC/Wii graphics of 640x528.

2xIR put the resolution at 1280x1056 (in 4:3 aspect ratio), which is just slightly under 1080p when used with the 16:9 aspect ratio.

On less GPU demanding games, you can increase to 3xIR (1920x1584)

Just so you know, Dolphin relies more on the CPU than the GPU, and that CPU is ok. It has a max Turbo of 3.7 Ghz (for single core), so when playing Dolphin when Turbo is activated it will be at 3.6 Ghz.

edit: ninja'd

My main concern would be how well that mini pc can dissipate heat, because if the cpu gets too hot it will start throttling

Well, even with the worst case scenario (which is likely to happen, ZBOXs are notorious in the heat department) 2.5GHz is plenty to run a lot of games in Dolphin comfortably. For what the OP wants to play, it should be fine on the latest Dolphin development revisions.

So do you think the box will heat up and not be able to dissipate the heat properly for games like new super mario bros? Assuming I don't run the cpu at turbo, just running normal speed.

New Super Mario Bros is pretty lightweight, so it should be fine. Most games except for the most demanding will be fine

If you can consider getting a normal desktop instead. They give you much better bang for your buck.