Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I have i7 2600 (non-K) based computer with 8GB of RAM and only the built in GPU which is Intel HD 2000 since the CPU is not the K-version.
Overall performance is fine (I have only tried New Super Mario Bros) but I noticed some audio stuttering after beating the first koopaling and revealing more of the world map. When I proceed to level there were no problems. Generally my PC is quiet but I can notice CPU fan increasing rpms after a while so Dolphin is putting some load to the CPU.

The GPU I have is not officially supported so I was considering purchasing AMD or NVIDIA card since I suppose it doesn't take much to beat the HD 2000. How much Dolphin puts load on GPU, my CPU should be OK, right? HD 2000 does not support DX 11 in hardware, so I guess when upgrading to one which does it should offer some boost?

Your gpu is very bad so yes a new GPU would be much better

So having DX11 in HW and more raw 3D speed would show noticeably? I assume CPU power still matters more, in contrast to regular PC games where graphics are very well utilized?

I do have limitations since my PC case can only take low profile cards...

I wouldn't say just because of dx11, but more speed would definitely help.

You're probably also getting some GPU bottlenecking since yours is getting close to the unsupported line (first gen i-series Intel HD doesn't meet the requirements anymore I think)

If you're able to fit a GTX 750Ti or R9 265 in your case and you're willing to spend $100-150 then go ahead.

Tried OpenGL and performance was awful so DX is the way to go atleast for HD 2000.

HD 2000 does not have DX11 in hardware so I guess it has to do some of the stuff in software, if Dolphin does use some DX11 functions for performance. My computer is HP Elite 8200, not the smallest version of it but still the "pizza box type", (SFF?).

Dolphin version is 4.0.

Grab the latest dev build from here: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/ as it is way faster than 4.0

Got the new version and I can confirm that it brings performance boost with my system.