This is a subject that continually haunts me each time I consider new hardware!
I currently have a desktop with i7-4790K, nVidia GTX 770, 16GB RAM.
I plan on getting a new laptop and wondered if the
Acer Swift 3 were good enough to run Dolphin at full speed/efficiency?
Any hint of slowdown and I'll lose interest in it.
These are the important specs:
- Windows 10
- Intel® Core™ i5-7200U Processor
- RAM: 8 GB / Storage: 256 GB SSD
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce MX150
I know this is probably one of the most asked questions here, but I know no other way to answer the question other than to try it out, which I cannot do.
Thanks for your help.
Assuming you can keep that ULV processor from throttling, as they have a very low thermal threshold before they throttle, the CPU should be okay for most games you care about, I can think of a few that might not run quite at full speed, but whatever.
I'm guessing the MX150 is about as strong as a GT 1030 so it should be ok for 1080p. If you want to use ubershaders you'll very much want to switch to D3D11 and use hybrid mode.
I have Aspire F15 and it doesnt throttle at all, even at high usage, what suprised me after bought. Usually its around at 3Ghz. Gaming unplugged also possible but not for long session ofc.
Not sure about quality of Swift line, but should be as mine. Im ok with my acer. You can expect Wii 3x scaling if not 4x, GameCube lot more.
Keep in mind that the i5-7200u is a 2core/4thread processor unlike desktop i5 CPUs.
However, there
is a newer model Acer Swift 3 with an i5-8250u which is a 4core/8thread processor yet has the same 15w TDP. Assuming Intel didn't just glue "moar cores!" and call it a day, I would imagine that such a quad-core CPU would throttle less than a dual-core CPU of the same TDP under lightly-threaded workloads like Dolphin, in which case it may be wiser to get the i5-8250u model with an MX150 instead:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Swift...594.0.html
(12-27-2017, 04:19 AM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]I'm guessing the MX150 is about as strong as a GT 1030
The MX150 is in fact just a mobile varient of the GT 1030.
(also note, there's going to be a
Ryzen 2500u model of the Acer Swift 3 launching soon, but this is likely more to fill the gap between the weak performance of Intel integrated graphics and the reduction in battery life from discrete graphics; since you're already looking at the version with discrete graphics, the Ryzen version shouldn't really be all too relevant to you)
Well, in fact, intel glued additional cores:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core...172.0.html KL refresh has lower base frequency but higher turbo clock. The kabylake refresh is not widely researched terrority, so i cannot say how it would behave with emulators. We can only hope, that thanks to dualcore nature of dolphin, turbo clocks would be around 3,0 but that would be same as precedessor.
(12-27-2017, 07:11 AM)sirdaniel Wrote: [ -> ]Well, in fact, intel glued additional cores
The problem is that nearly all of the tests ran are designed to have a single processing thread or 4+ processing threads, and Dolphin has 2 heavy processing threads.
The closest I see on that is x264 benchmark pass 1 which I believe also uses only a couple heavy processing threads (rather than just 1 or 4+ threads), and in that case it looks like the i5-8250U is comparable to the i7-7660U (which is basically just a higher-clocked dual-core variant of the i5-7200U).
I looked at this test and with only one exception all cpus were i7, from what i deduct x264 benchmark favours more cores. Anyway, this means performance is not crippled.
Looking at cinebench cpu multi we have Intel Core i5-7440HQ range - not bad as we compare U version. So I expect at dual full turbo clocks. Still we have 15 W device..
(12-27-2017, 08:08 AM)sirdaniel Wrote: [ -> ]from what i deduct x264 benchmark favours more cores
It does, but that's more-so pass 2 than pass 1.
You can see this in that pass 1 has identical performance between the i7-7660U and the i5-8250U, and also that the fastest time for pass 1 was set by an i7-7740X of all things (by comparison, the fastest time for pass 2 was set by an i7-7900X).
I mean, the comparison still isn't great for our needs, but it's the best we have.
Thanks for all your replies
But I'm still confused as to whether the question has been answered? The Swift 3 model I linked to has a graphics card, the nVidia MX150.
But you think the processor isn't good enough?
(12-30-2017, 01:20 AM)sl23 Wrote: [ -> ]But you think the processor isn't good enough?
It was mainly that there's an updated model of the Swift 3 with a 4core/8thread CPU rather than a 2core/4thread CPU.
Thing is, Dolphin only heavily uses 2 cores so it's difficult to say which CPU would actually be better as most benchmarks only really test with 1 core or 4+ cores.