Hello! I'm new to the Dolphin forums, and would just like a bit of advice on if this computer that I may get can run Dolphin fine. I'll list the games after the specs.
i5-7500 @ 3.4 Ghz
GTX 1050 OR 1050 Ti if that is required after getting advice (Note - I read that RX 470s and 480s weren't working well with Dolphin and I saw a few threads about that. Is that the case? Because I would prefer to get one of those if it's not the case.)
8GB DDR4 RAM (Though RAM doesn't matter, right?)
Also, I'd get an SSD, but is it any faster than an HDD for Dolphin?
Version of Dolphin - most stable one in June
Windows - probably 10
Now, I'd like to basically be able to play most GameCube and Wii games at 1080p with custom textures. For the GameCube, my research says these specs should be fine, but for the Wii:
Will I get Xenoblade Chronicles at 1080p? What about with custom 1080p textures?
Will I get Super Mario Galaxy at 1080p at all? Can I add 1080p custom textures to that?
How about Skylanders: Swap Force at 1080p? Do 1080p textures for this even exist?
Super Smash Bros Brawl at 1080p? How about with custom textures?
And I'll be fine on all the 4 or 5 star playable games from the Wiki regarding GameCube, right? Even at 1080p?
Thanks!
All three of the games you listed should run at fullspeed at 1080p. However, if you want to use custom textures, I would advise you to get 16GB of RAM rather than 8; it actually does matter for this specific purpose. If you use a custom texture pack and don't prefetch the textures into RAM, you're going to stutter and slow down horribly, so you want to have lots of RAM so you can prefetch the bigger texture packs. For what it's worth, I've used both the Xenoblade and Mario Galaxy texture packs, so I can guarantee they fit easily into 16GB of RAM, but I don't know if they would fit into 8 (especially Xenoblade).
As for the GameCube games, it's a very bad assumption that GameCube games are automatically faster than Wii games because this is simply not the case. It's an entirely game-by-game basis for this. But with that setup, I think you'd be able to play anything you wanted. I'm not sure if we've gotten the Rogue Squadron games to the point that you could play them fullspeed yet, but it's possible.
(02-16-2017, 06:30 PM)Kurausukun Wrote: [ -> ]All three of the games you listed should run at fullspeed at 1080p. However, if you want to use custom textures, I would advise you to get 16GB of RAM rather than 8; it actually does matter for this specific purpose. If you use a custom texture pack and don't prefetch the textures into RAM, you're going to stutter and slow down horribly, so you want to have lots of RAM so you can prefetch the bigger texture packs. For what it's worth, I've used both the Xenoblade and Mario Galaxy texture packs, so I can guarantee they fit easily into 16GB of RAM, but I don't know if they would fit into 8 (especially Xenoblade).
As for the GameCube games, it's a very bad assumption that GameCube games are automatically faster than Wii games because this is simply not the case. It's an entirely game-by-game basis for this. But with that setup, I think you'd be able to play anything you wanted. I'm not sure if we've gotten the Rogue Squadron games to the point that you could play them fullspeed yet, but it's possible.
Thank you very much for that help! Would only 12 GB of RAM be sufficient, though? I hear that Dolphin barely takes up 2 or 3 GB, so that much for textures is quite a lot! Just to make sure - my CPU is fast enough, right?
As for GameCube, I'd like to play:
Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
Pokemon Colosseum
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Paper Mario
Would that be possible?
Also, getting 16GB of RAM would not make sense with such a budget graphics card. Is there any way in which I can only use some of the textures to take up less RAM?
Thanks!
(02-16-2017, 08:33 PM)Static Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you very much for that help! Would only 12 GB of RAM be sufficient, though? I hear that Dolphin barely takes up 2 or 3 GB, so that much for textures is quite a lot! Just to make sure - my CPU is fast enough, right?
As for GameCube, I'd like to play:
Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
Pokemon Colosseum
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Paper Mario
Would that be possible?
Also, getting 16GB of RAM would not make sense with such a budget graphics card. Is there any way in which I can only use some of the textures to take up less RAM?
Thanks!
That would be not prefetching them, which will make you stutter a lot of course. And if you're deleting some of the custom textures, that defeats the point of a texture pack doesn't it? You'd get those things looking really bad compared to all the higher res textures.
Also, I have 16gb of ram and a GTX 950. If you want to prefetch large texture packs, you need a lot of ram, due to dolpin uncompressing them when it loads them into ram iirc. The extra ram won't hurt you, so I don't see why a 'budget' but still pretty powerful graphics card has to do with it. (The 1050Ti is roughly equivialent to a 960, so it's really not bad)
You should be able to play those games pretty well though, I've played paper mario and the pokemon games with my Athlon 860K and they were playable, and that i5 is much faster, especially in Dolphin.
(02-16-2017, 09:17 PM)Ivybridge11 Wrote: [ -> ]That would be not prefetching them, which will make you stutter a lot of course. And if you're deleting some of the custom textures, that defeats the point of a texture pack doesn't it? You'd get those things looking really bad compared to all the higher res textures.
Also, I have 16gb of ram and a GTX 950. If you want to prefetch large texture packs, you need a lot of ram, due to dolpin uncompressing them when it loads them into ram iirc. The extra ram won't hurt you, so I don't see why a 'budget' but still pretty powerful graphics card has to do with it. (The 1050Ti is roughly equivialent to a 960, so it's really not bad)
You should be able to play those games pretty well though, I've played paper mario and the pokemon games with my Athlon 860K and they were playable, and that i5 is much faster, especially in Dolphin.
Well, thanks very much for the help! I would just like to confirm that my CPU is capable, though...
(02-16-2017, 09:18 PM)Static Wrote: [ -> ]Well, thanks very much for the help! I would just like to confirm that my CPU is capable, though...
7th gen intel at over 3 Ghz? Yeah, that's plenty capable.
(02-16-2017, 10:04 PM)Ivybridge11 Wrote: [ -> ]7th gen intel at over 3 Ghz? Yeah, that's plenty capable.
Alright, thank you very very much! I really appreciate the help! It's enough for custom textures, too, right?
(02-16-2017, 05:42 PM)Static Wrote: [ -> ]Also, I'd get an SSD, but is it any faster than an HDD for Dolphin?
It shouldn't make any difference for the emulation performance (except maybe if you're using custom textures without prefetching, but the performance of that will be bad even if you have an SSD).
(02-16-2017, 11:28 PM)Static Wrote: [ -> ]Alright, thank you very very much! I really appreciate the help! It's enough for custom textures, too, right?
Custom textures don't really affect the CPU load.