Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I have an arcade project that is nearing completion (see it here ) and pretty much anything nowadays will run all the arcade games, SNES games, and n64 games I want.  Now, this arcade was built with smash bros melee and brawl in mind.  Those joysticks are analog (walk as well as run) and the color layout was deliberately close to some console button colors and matched for every player.

The issue I'm having right now is I have the computer parts on order which are a G3258, an asrock h81m-HDS, a Radeon 5750, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and an 80GB SSD (2TB pre-done hyperspin one will be ordered within the month).  Those parts in theory should play nice and the G3258 shouldn't have trouble getting to 4.4GHz on that board.

The cost was roughly $227 bucks for everything, but right now on craigslist someone has an Dell XPS 8700 for $400.  I know that the PC enthusiasts are yelling "custom only!" and I've done many, many custom builds.  But dat i7 doe.  It has an i7 4790 (non-k), 16GB DDR3, a GTX 745, and a 2TB HDD.

At this point I'm half tempted to sell the g3258 build for $250-300 and up to the XPS with the i7, but I'm not sure if it'll even be worth it.  I'm mostly going to be running only at near-native res on that arcade-style monitor (800x600 I believe, possibly 1280x1024 tops).  The computer won't be used for anything but this arcade likely.  MAYBE I'll hook it up to the TV that's next to it for some gaming on that, which is 1080, but I doubt it (we have a gaming PC in the other room that steam in-home streams to it.

So what's everyone's opinion?  Should I ditch the G3258 for the extra horsepower even though it's technically less on those two cores?  Will dolphin even care about an i7's extra cores and/or threads?

Thanks for all the input, it's very much appreciated!


EDIT: Also, it's VERY important to me to have NO drops below 60fps in smash. It even irks me when it has a slight stutter during Ready.... GO! with 4 players.

Holy shit, those specs for only $400? That's a great deal
At the same speeds, the i7 will be faster than the G3258 due to it being able to offload the OS and other background tasks to the extra cores (around 20% faster at the same clock speeds). However, since the max turbo for the i7-4790 is only 4.0 Ghz on a single core, the G3258 is a little bit stronger when clocked at 4.4 Ghz.

I would stick with the G3258 because it has a little bit more power when play Dolphin and using HLE audio. It won't be able to use LLE audio on Separate Thread since it only has two cores, but HLE doesn't crash games anymore and sounds the same in every game except for a very select few.

(05-12-2015, 05:45 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]Holy shit, those specs for only $400? That's a great deal
At the same speeds, the i7 will be faster than the G3258 due to it being able to offload the OS and other background tasks to the extra cores (around 20% faster at the same clock speeds). However, since the max turbo for the i7-4790 is only 4.0 Ghz on a single core, the G3258 is a little bit stronger when clocked at 4.4 Ghz.

I would stick with the G3258 because it has a little bit more power when play Dolphin and using HLE audio. It won't be able to use LLE audio on Separate Thread since it only has two cores, but HLE doesn't crash games anymore and sounds the same in every game except for a very select few.

Thanks for the quick reply.

My co-worker was leaning the same way.  His summary was pretty much that if it's literally going to ONLY sit in the arcade cabinet (which it will) then the 4.4GHz on the G3258 should outpace the i7 for what I need.  I still might pick up that XPS just to flip it though

Yeah, if it's only for emulators, the G3258 will be much better - we're not likely to see them making good use of more cores until PS3 and XBox 360 emulators are ready, and they're not going to run well on any current hardware.

Not sure about that , keep in mind that Quad Core is 20% faster than Dual Core in Dolphin . So 4.4GHz Dual Core may be on par with 4.0GHz Quad Core

The 4.0 Quad is only a single core in turbo boost. Dual core turbo is 3.9 Ghz.

0.1GHz doesn't matter . You won't see any difference with just 100MHz+- (at least 300MHz+- )
A Quad Core will be better for pretty much everything besides Dolphin
Also , HD 5750 is too old already ( I do not mean it's weak ) . Although the new guy (GTX 745) doesn't have much experience in gaming like the old guy (HD 5750) , one thing I know for sure : the new guy will live longer than the old guy

(05-12-2015, 07:47 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]0.1GHz doesn't matter . You won't see any difference with just 100MHz+- (at least 300MHz+- )
A Quad Core will be better for pretty much everything besides Dolphin
Also , HD 5750 is too old already ( I do not mean it's weak ) . Although the new guy (GTX 745) doesn't have much experience in gaming like the old guy (HD 5750) , one thing I know for sure : the new guy will live longer than the old guy

Not too concerned about the GPU. Honestly if it does die I'll likely just use integrated graphics since it'll likely perform fine. Just happened to see one on the cheap and I know what they're capable of even today. If it were my choice between those two without any cost associated I'd definitely pick the new guy