I know I might be asking for an "unicorn" machine here... but I am looking for an always-on pc which can also run Dolphin. I am looking to play Gamecube games, games have to be playable but I am not expecting to run HD graphics packs or anything.
Initially I was looking at an ASRock J3455-ITX motherboard with the Intel Celeron J3455 Apollo Lake CPU since the main function of the device will be running 4K video. However for running Dolphin this is probably not going to work at all...
Currently I am looking at a combination of a NVIDIA GTX 1030 (low TDP) and an Intel i3-7100T or
Pentium G4560 CPU.
- Is the GTX 1030 enough to run Dolphin?
- I've heard good things about the G4560 and emulation however are there more energy efficient alternatives?
Do more people here have experience with building an always-on pc which can run Dolphin? I am less concerned with the initial cost then with the cost of running the device...
Thanks!
(01-30-2018, 12:16 AM)bouke Wrote: [ -> ]I know I might be asking for an "unicorn" machine here... but I am looking for an always-on pc which can also run Dolphin. I am looking to play Gamecube games, games have to be playable but I am not expecting to run HD graphics packs or anything.
Initially I was looking at an ASRock J3455-ITX motherboard with the Intel Celeron J3455 Apollo Lake CPU since the main function of the device will be running 4K video. However for running Dolphin this is probably not going to work at all...
Currently I am looking at a combination of a NVIDIA GTX 1030 (low TDP) and an Intel i3-7100T or
Pentium G4560 CPU.
- Is the GTX 1030 enough to run Dolphin?
- I've heard good things about the G4560 and emulation however are there more energy efficient alternatives?
Do more people here have experience with building an always-on pc which can run Dolphin? I am less concerned with the initial cost then with the cost of running the device...
Thanks!
I own a G4560 and it is fast enough to run basically anything but the most demanding titles at full speed and I think that if you downclock a bit and reduce the voltage you might be able to have a very decent experience. The 1030 might be fast enough to do 720p maybe even 1080p. If you want higher IR's I can recommend the 1050 non-ti (But don't know for sure if it does 4k Dolphin reliably though since I use a 780 non-ti).
(01-30-2018, 12:40 AM)mstreurman Wrote: [ -> ]I own a G4560 and it is fast enough to run basically anything but the most demanding titles at full speed and I think that if you downclock a bit and reduce the voltage you might be able to have a very decent experience. The 1030 might be fast enough to do 720p maybe even 1080p. If you want higher IR's I can recommend the 1050 non-ti (But don't know for sure if it does 4k Dolphin reliably though since I use a 780 non-ti).
Thanks for the reply! I am definitely not looking for something which can run Dolphin at 4k. I did consider the 1050 however with the current crazy GPU prices it is almost three times the price of the 1030 and a higher TDP.
Thanks for the advice to downclock/undervoltage the CPU, I did not yet consider that but that might indeed save a few watts.
Wouldn't the
upcoming Ryzen 2200G or Ryzen 2400G be exactly what you're looking for － CPU performance seemingly comparable to a quad-core Haswell and an iGPU supposedly around GT 1030 level?
I mean, it's basically desktop Broadwell (not Broadwell-E) without the price-gouging and an even faster iGPU, what more could one ask for?
(01-30-2018, 05:52 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: [ -> ]Wouldn't the upcoming Ryzen 2200G or Ryzen 2400G be exactly what you're looking for － CPU performance seemingly comparable to a quad-core Haswell and an iGPU supposedly around GT 1030 level?
I mean, it's basically desktop Broadwell (not Broadwell-E) without the price-gauging and an even faster iGPU, what more could one ask for?
Ooh I did not know about those yet! I will definitely look into those tomorrow, thanks! Then I would have to find a motherboard with the AM4 socket that supports HMDI 2.0 (for 4K video streaming) though...
Gotta second the ryzen APUs. You can get some silly low wattage from the wall with the G4560 but you'll still be hamstrung by the iGPU and stuck at 1-2x IR for the most part.
Haswell class perf will let you play everything worth playing in Dolphin.
(01-30-2018, 08:45 AM)bouke Wrote: [ -> ]Ooh I did not know about those yet! I will definitely look into those tomorrow, thanks!
Just don't make the mistake of choosing/buying a motherboard before the parts are out since you would ideally want a motherboard that has out-of-the-box support for the 2200G/2400G.
In particular, I would imagine that most of the currently-available AM4 motherboards would need a BIOS update to support the 2200G/2400G, and that doesn't really work for new PC builds since you typically need to have a processor that the board supports out-of-the-box in order to even perform a BIOS update (though, if buying from brick-and-mortar, they'll sometimes perform the BIOS update for you in-store using a compatible processor that they have on-hand).
(01-30-2018, 08:48 AM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]Gotta second the ryzen APUs.
Good to get confirmation that my recent minor obsession over the Raven Ridge chips isn't clouding my judgement; I honestly was getting a bit paranoid that people reading my posts in this here hardware sub-forum in the last few weeks would start thinking if I was an AMD shill or something.
Does "always on" include suspend-to-ram? If so, then it's likely ancillary peripherals, other stuff on the motherboard, ram refresh and power supply losses would be larger than the CPU or GPU use.
Hell, if the CPU/GPU is idle most of the time it's probably going to use less power than those too...
It's likely that an APU (or other iGPU) would use significantly less power when idle than even the most efficient add-in graphics card, due to signaling and extra power circuitry required to just keep the lights on.
Only if it's actually running something most of the time it's on will the "small" differences between nearly equivalent products from different vendors quoted as being more/less power efficient add up to be more than that.
(01-30-2018, 09:00 AM)JonnyH Wrote: [ -> ]It's likely that an APU (or other iGPU) would use significantly less power when idle than even the most efficient add-in graphics card, due to signaling and extra power circuitry required to just keep the lights on.
It's not likely, it's definitely.
Even a wimpy HD5450 I got for free from a friend adds something like 15 more watts at idle than if I just used my Pentium's on-die integrated GPU.
(01-30-2018, 09:05 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: [ -> ]It's not likely, it's definitely.
Even a wimpy HD5450 I got for free from a friend adds something like 15 more watts at idle than if I just used my Pentium's on-die integrated GPU.
Though a more modern AMD GPU should idle lower, and they even support cutting down the PCI-e speeds and lane count in some cases.... Not sure how well (or _if_) that's hooked up in the driver though.
But my original point was that a "15w vs 10w CPU" is probably lost on the noise of different motherboard implementations/excessive power delivery optimized for "max power" instead of efficiency at low utilisation/fans and stuff unless you're running at 100% load for all time.
People don't really advertise the idle power usage of whole systems outside of specific embedded/industrial designs, so you might not get real numbers to make a rational decision until you have hardware in hand and a kill-a-watt plugged in...