Hi
I've just joined the forum, I'm based in the UK (PAL) and loved my Gamecube when I played all the time 10+ years ago. I recently dug it out and realised I can't plug it into my new smart TV.
I've decide I'm going start playing it again and collecting games. I'm currently using my WII with a WII 2 HDMI converter, this looks OK, but I imagine I can get a much better experience via a different solution.
I saw recently that a HD Mod has been developed:-
Nintendo Life HD Mod Review
I would like your opinions on which will give me the better solution, Dolphin or a HD Modded Gamecube?
I can think of a few considerations:-
1. Apparently the Mod works best with Progressive Scan games which is NTSC only, so I would have to buy NTSC games (I have about 10 PAL games at the moment)
2. There seems to still be lots of improvements needed to Dolphin from a quick look at the website - not sure how many of these are enhancements vs game play bugs
3. Dolphin would allow me to protect my games as after i'd created a ROM they could stay in there cases
4. HD Mod would allow me to use the original hardware - not a big deal either way for me
5. I would buy a new small profile PC to sit under my TV if I go for Dolphin
Thanks!
Ask yourself:
- Does your GameCube run games at 1080? Or even 4k? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube upscale textures to HD? Dolphin does with texture packs!
- Does your GameCube support save states? Dolphin does! Bind it to your controller.
- Does your GameCube support every controller? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support SSAA or Anistropic Filtering? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support widescreen? Dolphin does with Gecko and AR! Althrough a modded GameCube does too...
- Does your GameCube support Super Mario Sunshine at 60 FPS? Dolphin does!
- Does your GameCube support improve distance drawing (check Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time). Dolphin does!
I can continue this list for a while. The point is, if you are really looking for a HD experience. Stick to Dolphin, Dolphin does what Nintendo doesn't. However, if you demand the purest of accuracy you need a real GameCube. Althrough most common games are actually close to perfection on Dolphin. Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, these are all examples of games that play flawless on Dolphin, provided you use Dolphin 5.0 or newer.
The big issue is that you need a bit of powerful hardware. It is not that hard these days to obtain the proper hardware. Any NVidia card from the GTX 600 series and newer will work fine. An GTX 960 isn't that expensive these days, but there is also the newer GTX 1060. As for the CPU, in my case an i5-4430 at 3 GHz works perfectly. My model is already a few years old, you should check the Intel i5-6000 series such as the Intel i5-6600k. If you want an even stronger CPU you would need to look at the Intel i7 series If you want to make use of HD textures make sure you have at least 8 GB RAM, but you probably would need 16 GB for the larger texture packs.
With Dolphin you would not need to worry any longer about Region Locking either. But Dolphin is more than a simple GameCube. It supports both the GameCube and Wii (even better, it also supports the Virtual Console of the Wii), and that within one application!
That's not an HD mod, it's a HDMI mod. As far as I know, there's not a significant difference between that and what you already have. The only way to render at higher resolutions is through emulation.
Thanks for the quick response Admentus! It's clear what the answer it!!! In an ideal world I'd love to use original hardware, but the best experience is my priority.
Thanks JosJuice!
Does it matter if I have PAL or NTSC games with Dolphin?
(09-09-2016, 10:51 PM)MarioBrickLayer Wrote: [ -> ]Does it matter if I have PAL or NTSC games with Dolphin?
Dolphin doesn't have compatibility problems with only certain versions of a game except in very rare cases, like the Virtual Console release of Majora's Mask.
Just like on a real console, the framerates and resolutions that a game supports are different between PAL and NTSC. However, Dolphin lets you use higher resolutions and always forces progressive scan, so what resolution a game runs at natively is not especially relevant. Framerates don't work the same way – if you want to use 60 Hz in a game where the PAL version only supports 50 Hz, you need to use the NTSC version. Other than that (and differences in game content, like PAL having more languages), there aren't really any differences.
"small profile PC to sit under my TV" this can and will get expensive. Dolphin needs a lot of power. I'd say about minimum requirement is the G3258 cpu(when overclocked), and an actual gpu. Anything midrange and up should be ok.
An alternative to this might be long cables. One hdmi, one usb cable, and one usb hub with active power supply should do the trick. Well, if you have a gaming desktop pc.
Since Dolphin is emulation, it needs to run at 100%, or games will lag, instead of just playing at lower fps. That's why you really need a strong cpu. Anything amd is out of the question right now, we'll see if amd's zen will change that. You have to consider that even the latest quad core intel cpu can't run all games fine, and that's with overlock(4.5Ghz) already.