Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello, first time poster so I will try not to make an asinine post.  I read through the FAQ looked at the benchmarks and searched the forums as best I could.  
I have parts enough to build a couple of computers and recently became enamored with building a PC that could run Dolphin from spare parts.  I have an i5-2500k an i5-6400t overclocked (yes you can overclock non-k cpus and update windows without too much fuss.  It works, trust me) and some that I think are too dated to even discuss.

I am having difficulty translating the CPU benchmark data to real world performance.  Is there a bracketed explanation or metric to help understand the benchmarks? 
The only thing I have found in the forum is where somebody suggested that a benchmark value of 7 minutes should be good for everything. Based on benchmarks (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...=485052351) an i5-6500 @ 3.2ghz or i7-4770k @ 3.5ghz satisfies that 7 minute requirement.

From the benchmarks it looks like I should be able to get a benchmark of 9min with the i5-2500k @ 4ghz.  It looks like I should be able to get a benchmark of about 9.5minutes from the i5-6400t 2.2ghz stock(extrapolated from the i5-6400 @2.7ghz. with the i5-6400t being 20% slower with a 2 core turbo to 2.7ghz).  Overclocking the 6400t is not desirable to me for this project.
So now that I know I have two processors that are "insufficient" what does that translate to functionally?

Does anyone have an intuitive sense for what range of benchmark times will begin to be able to reasonably handle Wii emulation? 
What range of benchmark times does Wii emulation fall apart?
What range of benchmark times will be able to definitely handle Gamecube emulation?
What range of benchmark times does Gamecube emulation begin to fall apart?

Does cranking the graphical improvements add additional load to the CPU?

Thank you in advance!

The thing is, that Dolphin benchmark is really only designed to tell you the relative difference in performance between different CPUs in emulation workloads, not absolute.

A key point is that different games have different requirements - Star Wars Rogue Leader is more demanding than Smash Bros Brawl even though the former is "only" a GameCube game.

(12-06-2017, 07:31 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: [ -> ]The thing is, that Dolphin benchmark is really only designed to tell you the relative difference in performance between different CPUs in emulation workloads, not absolute.

A key point is that different games have different requirements - Star Wars Rogue Leader is more demanding than Smash Bros Brawl even though the former is "only" a GameCube game.

Thank you and I think I understand your point. I also realize that I am not asking a simple question. I was just trying to think of a framework to communicate along the performance spectrum. Most of the threads I read resulted in the recommendation that the person buy a faster (dual core) CPU or a statement that they won't be able to run everything. Is there something compiled, or documented that would help me to understand in a more intuitive sense what is demanding or not demanding and how a cpu will handle it? They say that "you can't teach experience" so I think all I can do is ask and try to learn.

If what you are saying is that the hardware requirements for the most demanding Gamecube game are equivalent or exceeds the most demanding Wii game then I consider that valuable information.

Ultimately I have two cpus that are insufficient for Dolphin Nirvana but I just can't tell if they are going to be purgatory or hell..

(12-06-2017, 07:27 AM)dreef1999 Wrote: [ -> ]From the benchmarks it looks like I should be able to get a benchmark of 9min with the i5-2500k @ 4ghz.  It looks like I should be able to get a benchmark of about 9.5minutes from the i5-6400t 2.2ghz stock(extrapolated from the i5-6400 @2.7ghz. with the i5-6400t being 20% slower with a 2 core turbo to 2.7ghz). 

That's not how that works. The i5-6400t is a Skylake (6th) generation CPU, and even running at the base speed of 2.2 GHZ should crush the i5-2200K in Dolphin. Intel did something in the Haswell (4th) generation that gave a magical 40% speedup in Dolphin clock-for clock over the 3rd generation. Broadwell (5th) and Skylake gave incremental increases clock-for-clock (about 5% or so, maybe a little more) over each previews generation.

Run the benchmark on the i5-6400t and be amazed at it's speed.

(12-06-2017, 09:04 AM)dreef1999 Wrote: [ -> ]If what you are saying is that the hardware requirements for the most demanding Gamecube game are equivalent or exceeds the most demanding Wii game then I consider that valuable information.

Factor 5, the game company that made the Rogue Squardon games on GC, were masters of using obscure tricks and barely documented features of game consoles, making their games hard to emulate/demanding. They also made the Netflix app on Wii, which has it's own problems best left for another thread.

The most demanding Wii game off the top of my head is the Last Story, which since 5.0 stable has become less demanding to run due to improvements to Dolphin. Thus, what game is the most demanding on GC/Wii is constantly changing, as a Dolphin is optimized and made more accurate.