# Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
# • Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor (2.66GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache with QPI Technology)
# • 8GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
# • 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 [2 DVI, HDMI and VGA adapters]
# • Blu-ray player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner
# • Wireless-N LAN card
I don't know much about this kind of stuf, but imagine upgrading the graphics card would be key. Some gamecube games run full speed. Mario galaxy doesn't start after the intro sequence. If you have specific recommendations that would be great (i.e. which graphics card would you recommend?)
thanks!
someone in another forum said upgrade to windows 7, and I will as soon as it arrives (I qualify for the upgrade). I'm not sure how that would help though.
someone in another thread said this.. is this true? is it much better than the hd4850?
""If you have i7 buy a nVidia 285 and switch GsdX to SSE4.1/hardware mode for full speed emulation in most titles"
windows 7 is optimized for better memory and cpu use. get the 64bit version if possible. what games are u trying to run that youre not getting full speed? your hardware looks just fine to me. whoever said that about the gfx card is just an nvidia fanboy, the radeon hd 4850 is in the same league as the geforce gtx 285.
The particular video card you have has little-to-no impact on emulation. In newer PCs, you might be able to get away with using on-board graphics. A lot of the graphics is actually handled by the CPU in Dolphin.
Make sure you have a dual-core CPU. (Quad-core has no advantage over dual-core; Dolphin is only programmed to use two cores.) And remember, some games don't run full speed on any hardware.
In my experience I've found quad-core performance in Dolphin superior compared to dual-core rated at the same clock speed (2.4 Ghz). So I would recommend the fastest CPU out there, and the more cores, the better.
(09-13-2009, 03:44 AM)kernel64 Wrote: [ -> ]In my experience I've found quad-core performance in Dolphin superior compared to dual-core rated at the same clock speed (2.4 Ghz). So I would recommend the fastest CPU out there, and the more cores, the better.
You really should go read the forums before dwelling any further.
Rene Dolphin PC Buying Guide
Why upgrade an already Decent Stock?
Just wait for better emulation you greedy bastard !
(09-12-2009, 06:30 PM)shateredsoul Wrote: [ -> ]What would you reccoment I upgrade on my desktop pc for better emulation w/ dolphin
Jack?
(09-13-2009, 03:52 AM)jedikevin20 Wrote: [ -> ]You really should go read the forums before dwelling any further.
Rene Dolphin PC Buying Guide
I'm too lazy for that, that's why I said "in my experience". You don't have to believe me though.
shatered soul you cant get a better cpu for emulation right now. However post your motherboard and what kind of cooling you have, you may be able to overclock it ( possibly to 4ghz with proper cooling and mobo)
Hi everyone! I really appreciate the advice. I guess I was under the impression that my graphics card was underpowered because some of the pcs I see on youtube run some games run pretty slowly. I'm glad to know that the graphics card is not really the issue. Thanks!
On a side note, any suggestions for how to set up the configuration for best performance on my setup?
I don't know if the processor you listed is multi-core (I assume it is if it's recent, it looks good) but regardless, turn *on* Dual Core emulation. It actually provides speedup even on single core systems because of better process management, and on hyperthreaded processors it's basically just like having Dual Core.
Make sure that Optimize Quantizers is on, unless the game specifically requires it to be off. (Metroid and Mario Kart Wii are known to have issues, among some others.) This makes an impact CPU wise, since it affects the translation from the GC's graphics format into DirectX/OpenGL's format, if I'm not mistaken.
Since you have an epic Graphics Card, you can probably run at whatever resolution you want and not suffer any issues. My nVidia 9600 GT (that's like the oldest one in the current series, if I'm not mistaken) can handle Dolphin just fine at 1680x1050. You're probably OK turning on AA and MultiSampling at that level too, although I had to tone this back a bit on my card, it can't quite handle 16x QSAA like I want it to XD. Note: to do this, you'll need to disable the "Native" option in OpenGL, I don't think DirectX even has that option. You'll need to *not* do this if you have shader issues, although I haven't noticed any.
Oh: if the game runs OK on it, the IL build is *slightly* faster sometimes, but I've never found it to make a significant impact.
I've found that SMS, Zelda Wind Waker, SA2B, Luigi's Mansion, Melee, and Pikmin 2 all run fullspeed and work basically flawlessly on my setup, and I've got *much* slower RAM than you, I'm just running 2G of generic DDR2 RAM, my biggest performance bottleneck. You should have no trouble at all.
Oh: Make sure that unless there are serious issues, you're using the directX plugin on windows, now that its fixed mostly. It runs a lot faster than OpenGL since it will take better advantage of your graphics card's capabilities. Not really a big impact most of the time, but you'll notice it in scenes where the polygon count or vertex shader complexity is really high. Also, make sure that EFB is set to the GL hack for basically all games except Super Mario Sunshine, as setting it to full Copy to Ram emulation will slow things down a lot.
Most of these settings and tips and things are pretty global, since Dolphin's main bottleneck performance wise is CPU based and has nothing to do with your card. Understand that with an awesome card, you basically get to *rule out* card slowness as an issue, and it just opens the door to investigating other things. ^_^
-gamefreak
On a side note that doesn't even apply to you: the DirectX plugin works with nVidia's stereoscopic rendering! It *rocks*!!