Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi, this morning, my old laptop had a catastrophic hard drive failure and I’ve decided to get a new one straight away. It’s an older machine & I was thinking about upgrading anyway, mainly for Dolphin.

I’m looking to buy one for around £1200 to run dolphin at 4K flawlessly, with no frame drops at all in the games below, i.e. with plenty of headroom. I’m aware that many laptops tend to throttle the processor, so I’m looking for one that will never throttle, even during long play sessions. I don’t need to play PC games, this is going to be my dedicated long term GameCube and Wii machine, played on a 4K TV with Wiimote/nunchuck. I’d like to be able to always use Ubershaders at least in Hybrid mode - I think Exclusive would be pushing it at this price point? Obviously I want to stay away from Nvidia graphics due to the lower performance on Dolphin.

The games I want to run are:

Super Mario Galaxy 1&2
Metroid prime trilogy
Mario sunshine
F-zero gx
Pikmin 1&2
Donkey kong country returns
Skyward sword
Mario golf
Monkey ball 1&2

And a few others.

Cheers.

(03-21-2019, 02:00 AM)andykara2003 Wrote: [ -> ]Obviously I want to stay away from Nvidia graphics due to the lower performance on Dolphin.

As far as I'm aware, NVidia doesn't have any performance 'issues' on Dolphin. I guess it depends on platform - I assume you're intending to run Windows?

There is no GPU vendor outside of Qualcomm and Mali that particularly struggles with Dolphin, outside of lacking general performance.

If you use AMD, you simply use D3D or Vulkan to avoid GL.

If you use Nvidia, you can use anything

If you use Intel, you can use D3D.

Thanks very much both. In that case I’m happy with Nvidia. Does it look like I’ll need to go with a gaming laptop to guarantee long play sessions without throttling?

(03-21-2019, 03:30 AM)andykara2003 Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks very much both. In that case I’m happy with Nvidia. Does it look like I’ll need to go with a gaming laptop to guarantee long play sessions without throttling?

Ideally, yes. And even then, certain gaming laptops come with less than adequate cooling solutions...

(03-21-2019, 03:48 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]Ideally, yes. And even then, certain gaming laptops come with less than adequate cooling solutions...

Thanks - I’m doing a little digging on the gaming laptops I’m finding and I can see what you mean. The more powerful ones seem to need tweaks to keep the temperatures down. It seems like I’m going to need to do quite a bit of research.

It’s a little over my budget (1450), but I found this:

MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 15.6-inch

CPU: Intel Core i7-8750H | GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q | RAM: 16GB DDR4-2400MHz | Screen: 15.6-inch FHD (1,920 x 1,080) wide-view 144Hz | Storage: 512GB M.2 SSD | Battery: 82 Whr | Dimensions: 9.75 x 14.08 x 0.69 inches | Weight: 4.14 lbs


Is this able to run Dolphin with the games I mentioned in 4K with exclusive ubershaders?

Why do you need exclusive? Use Hybrid.

Exclusive is only useful if you want to torture your GPU for no reason or diagnosing weird ubershader issues. If you get an nvidia GPU, the hybrid stuttering issue can be worked around with D3D.

It's the JMC47 option.

4K? I´d say yes. With Exclusive Ubershaders? Nope.

Certain tests have shown that even the RTX 2080 can be brought down to its knees using Exclusive + very high IRs.

EDIT: Ninja´d.

Great to know, thanks, I didn’t know that.

So having said that, I’m guessing the laptop spec above might even be a little overpowered? Could I easily run Mario Sunshime at 60fps on it?

a 1050ti could probably do hybrid ubers at 4k.

Maybe a 1060 for a bit of headroom.

Either option will let you buy a much cheaper laptop that both looks nicer and runs cooler