Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

So i have been using dolphin for quite awhile now, I have been using it on my HP Envy DV7 with its 630M graphics card from Nvidia.

And its i7 (with Intel HD 4000) 2.4GHz-3.2Ghz.

and i was wondering. What is truly the minimum specifications to run Dolphin?

I have been doing testing with my laptop and its been reaching 30fps and 60fps respectively.
i am able to run many games with a few hacks turned on (increasing performance sometimes dramatically)
and now i want to post my experience with you all.

So for benchmarking dolphin, i did a semi-controlled test. One on high-performance, and one on power saving (power saving which locks the CPU to half of its current speed. which for mine is 1.15ghz)

Twilight princess runs at about 60fps but in hyrule field would  drop to 38-48fps regardless.

chibi robo would run flawless. 30-60fps throughout.

Issues begin arising when i introduce Pikmin 2
Pikmin 2 would run flawless at first. but begin to lag due to the amount of pikmin onscreen.

after enabling power saving. Performance was.... actually cut 1/3rds of the original FPS

with twilight princess doing a 48-50fps and chibi robo nearly doing 27-50 fps

So my question is... How is it that 1.15GHz is not cutting my performance nearly in half?

Also what is the theoretical limit on how low can you go?


And as for desktops. im going to post the specifications on what i currently have(and going to get later on)

As for desktop specs. what would be the minimum. i know my old windows XP does run a few games at about 28fps (it had a family series gpu in it. oddly enough)

the desktop im getting will be a rendering/gaming desktop

Specs are

Windows 7 64-bit(free upgrade to 10)
Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB AMP! Extreme Video Card (2-Way SLI)

as a maximum to replace my current laptop (ordering a new one from Origin. since HP quality has gone down hill)

which i can say that is way more than the reccomended specs to run dolphin

the required hardware varies from game to game and depends on what settings you're using. you'd have to be more specific for exact specifications. generally though, dolphin runs best on Haswells and various processors with good IPC.

Quote:So my question is... How is it that 1.15GHz is not cutting my performance nearly in half?

Show me a screenshot of that . It sounds completely unbelievable to me , better use throttestop to verify that , not some crappy programs like CPU-Z .

How on earth you got over 30 FPS on TP?? (isn´t that game locked to 30?)

(09-08-2015, 10:27 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]not some crappy programs like CPU-Z .

I disagree with this man

Although you didn't say the exact i7 model you have, I'm assuming it's the same as my laptop (except for the GPU). I can safely say that all games I own runs at full speed (except for some hiccups in Madagascar an in multiplayer mode from MK Wii) when running in performance mode and plugged to AC power (using latest dev builds and 2 or 3x IR, depending of the game). However, if I use it on battery or enable power saving modes, I can't reach full speed anymore, not even in lightweight games...

Quote:I disagree with this man

Feel free to disagree but CPU-Z can't read CPU speed correctly . Especially mobile Haswell and all current AMD CPU

(09-08-2015, 10:27 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:So my question is... How is it that 1.15GHz is not cutting my performance nearly in half?

Show me a screenshot of that . It sounds completely unbelievable to me , better use throttestop to verify that , not some crappy programs like CPU-Z .

There is no screenshot, the maximum speed for a 50% performance cap is 1.15GHz flat on a 2.4GHz-3.2GHz CPU. Reported in Task manager and Resource Monitor.
I also use Nvidia Inspector to monitor the GPU load. (interestingly enough. even in animal crossing, the NES games still run the GPU at 45%-48% just like the base game)

The answer is math.
1.15GHz = 66% dolphin performance, therefore 100% dolphin performance = 1.7GHz.
In your particular case and for the games you've selected, anything higher than 2GHz is not necessary to run Dolphin at full speed. This is useful for laptops, since limiting the CPU frequency will help keep temperatures under control.
Obviously your mileage will vary for different games. On my laptop, I use multiple ThrottleStop profiles that I select based on the game I'm playing, ranging from 2.4GHz to 3.4GHz.