Im tying to be able to run Xenoblade Chronicles HD Texture Packs.
My current specs are
Processor: Intel® Pentium® CPU G645 @ 2.90GHz 2.90 GHz
Installed Memory (RAM): 8.00 GB (7.89 GB Usable)
System Type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-Based Processor
I plan on getting either:
AMD FX 4350 Unlocked Quad Core Processor 4.2 4 FD4350FRHKBOX, Black Edition
Frequency: 4.2/4.3GHZ (Base/Overdrive)
Cores: 4
Cache: 4/8MB
or
Gigabyte ATX Socket AM3+ AMD 970 Chipset 2000MHz DDR3 SATA III 6Gbps Ready AMD 9 Series FX Motherboards GA-970A-D3P
or
XFX - Core Edition AMD Radeon R7 240 4GB DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card
Which one of the 3 would you recommend? Would It run Xenoblade HD with textures together with the computer specs?
Eh what ?
1st option : AMD CPU without AMD mobo ?
2nd option : AMD mobo without CPU ?
3rd option : a low end graphic card
1st & 2nd . I have no idea what you're thinking but AMD is bad for Dolphin anyway . I'm not even sure it will be faster than your current CPU or not . My AMD A10 6790k @ 5.0GHz is only on par with G3258 @ 3.2GHz
3rd : a low end card won't cut it . You can get HD 7750 on ebay for less than $30 and it will be 2times faster than R7 240
None of those will help you. What you're experiencing is a CPU bottleneck because your CPU is slow, and Xenoblade is a more demanding game that most others.
The AMD CPU is actually about the same speed as your Pentium G645 when it comes to single core speeds, which is what Dolphin needs.
I would recommend not getting an AMD processor, but instead a newer Intel one. What's your budget for upgrading? We can help you find something that will blow your old specs out of the water.
More likely a GPU bottleneck . He doesn't have a graphic card , his iGPU Intel HD does not meet the minimum GPU requirement . His CPU (Sandy Bridge Pentium) is probably fine , my underclocked i7 4700MQ @ 2.0GHz paired with GTX 860M can run Xenoblade at full speed
Perhaps , he should get a GPU first and if the game still not run at full speed , he can upgrade CPU later
Looks like im going about this all wrong seeing from the responses. Im going for about a 150 dollar budget, but it seems i might need more? So focus on GPU first?
A better GPU will be required. While the CPU might work for weaker games. I don't know... Intel is better for Dolphin and seems to be a lot better when it is about getting the max performance out of a core. Dolphin, such as many other emulations, only have an use for a limited amount of cores. Eight cores for example is not really that good in emulation. I wouldn't recommend Dual Core either. Quad Core should be the best option these days. I would start checking out the Intel i5 series. Otherwise check out the Intel i7 series which is a lot more expensive.
The GPU is not the most important here, most modern NVidia cards will do the trick here. 9-series cards all work perfectly fine. Personally I use the GTX 960. The GTX 950 should work fine too. You get the idea. Again, I would recommend NVidia above AMD. For emulation the CPU is the most important factor. The GPU should just not hold back the CPU. You definitely want a modern GPU, supporting features such as D3D12 and Bounding Boxes. The GTX 950 could cost you around 160 dollar, just an average price estimation (I hope so). This may seem expensive, but buying older hardware wouldn't do you much good. In fact, just start at the NVidia GTX 10 series (which currently only have the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, a GTX 1060 should come some time later). Older hardware may be fine for emulators for the GBA or N64, but not Dolphin. Dolphin is quite demanding. I know for sure that even better hardware may suit me even better (Anti-Aliasing just takes too much power... How I depise thy).
As I said, weaker games may suffice with your planned hardware purchases. But Xenoblade is not a weaker game, in fact it is one of the most graphical powerful games for the Wii. Especially when using HD texture packs. I would also suggest upgrading your RAM to at least 16 GB so you can prefetch the textures. It is going to be a pain to play Xenoblade with HD textures without prefetching them. In fact, my Intel i5-4430 CPU may occasionally struggle with Xenoblade. It has gotten better however with the many improvement of Dolphin over time. EFB-to-RAM is the biggest issue. But almost all the time Dolphin can maintain fullspeed with prefetching the HD textures on my Intel i5-4430 CPU.
If you wish to run something very easy on your hardware, try New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It is a massive difference.
Quote:Older hardware may be fine for emulators for the GBA or N64, but not Dolphin.
My GTX 660 disagrees! And probably GTX 750 Ti / 760 owners too
(They all play SMG just fine, which is IIRC one of the most GPU intensive games for Dolphin.)
Any decent GPU works for Dolphin and should be able to easily handle 3x IR with some anti-aliasing. But if you want more than that, you'll indeed need a more powerful GPU.
I used to have the GTX 660 previous year which worked fine with SMG too. The GTX 660 is not that old actually (September 2012). The 9 series are Maxwell and the 6 and 7 series are Kepler, which are basically last gen cards. I just meant older cards, the 4 series are a minimum for the Paper Mario games. There are those of course with cards way older, we are talking pre-GTX cards. But if we were to specifically talking about buying a new GPU I would not recommend the GTX 660, it is just older than the 9 series. The GTX 950 or GTX 960 are not that expensive for example and still easily available to buy. Or you could just wait until the GTX 1060 is released. The older the hardware, the faster it gets outdated. Besides, I also meant CPU's. Pentium CPU's are still used, I mean... Aren't the i3, i5 and i7 today's standard for Intel?
Shouldn't Xenoblade with HD textures require even more GPU power than the SMG games? The Last Story is also dreadful... But suppose the thread author wants to run Xenoblade at 4x IR? With max anti-aliasing? In that case, you would need cards such as the GTX 970, 980, 980 TI, 1070 or 1080. But the GTX 1080 would be too much overkill I guess, as well the 1070 and 980 TI... Ya never know, prepare for the future of gaming. What could Dolphin possible hold for us that might require more GPU power? Perhaps a xBRZ scaling filter, SSAO, FXAA or similar.
Also consider that there might be more than emulation for the reader here, in which case the GPU serves to be more useful. It is just that emulation is dying for CPU power unlike a lot of native Windows games. There is still a lot of room for hardware to improve to get the most out of Dolphin. Perhaps in 10 years time that even a toaster can run Dolphin at fullspeed. I meant to say that as long you have a modern GPU and CPU that emulators such as Project64 and VBA-M will run without any issue no matter what you throw at it... That is until you start using plugins such as GlideN64...
Oh, of course. I wouldn't recommend anything older than Kepler, because it doesn't seem like they'll get DX12 or Vulkan support. And they're quite power-hungry and outdated, so definitely not future-proof.
For Intel, the only Pentium that's worth getting is the G3258 (in my opinion). But again, that's only if you only want to run emulators or other applications that heavily depend on single-thread performance. If you want to run PC games, that's another thing…
I don't know if Xenoblade with a HD pack is more intensive (I'll trust you that it is; I don't have the game); if it is, you will definitely need a more powerful card (though I agree that the 1080 is probably overkill).