Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I got this PC from a friend. Got Dolphin 5.0-12716 x64, go it loaded, got it running Luigi's Mansion at 60fps. When I actually go to play, it drops down to 30~ FPS.

I was looking at an ASUS GT 710 2GB GDDR5 graphics card.. my desktop only has what's built in. I have read for days and days now, I saw a few things saying the above card would help (I would like to play a few different wii games too, nothing like Zelda or any other games like that). Will my PC run into bottlenecks with the GPU even with the ASUS card? I know there are much better, more expensive cards, but Im just looking for playable performance, not crazy good graphics.

sadly Im more of a console game and laptop user...so new to the whole desktop/upgrading scene

Running Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q8200 @2.33GHz
6GB RAM
Windows 10 x64

annnnd I just googled...Was told this was a few years old...and saw it's from 2008. Best to just get a new PC? or can I salvage this with a few upgrades? I'm ready to order the parts as soon as I get some info. Much appreciated

Ultimately, I would recommend a new PC. Your CPU isn't really in any shape to be running Dolphin if you're aiming for fullspeed. It's simply too old, and by that extension, too slow. That line of CPUs from Intel hasn't been viable for Dolphin for a long time.

If you have a budget, we can help you pick out parts to hit that number. These days, if you're looking for basic GC/Wii emulation (1x native resolution at fullspeed) almost any modern/current x86-64 computer you'll buy is going to be fast enough for most games, even with integrated graphics. As long as it isn't a "thin-client" like device used in corporate settings or some super cheap laptop running a 1GHz ultra-low-voltage CPU, you'll be able to run Dolphin at the lowest settings without issue.