Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

New to the forums (and to Dolphin).
Don't know a whole lot about computers.

I have an older Sony Vaio Laptop that was just given to me.
It has an AMD A10 5745M x64 with Radeon HD graphics (2.1ghz).
Quad core I believe, has 8gb of RAM (unsure of brand, factory I assume).
Running Windows 8.

Looking to play games like Super Mario Sunshine, Smash Bros, Zelda Windwaker.
Wondering if my computer is strong enough to run these games (or run Dolphin at all).

Any insight or tips would be appreciated. Thanks

Oh my, Richmond cores at 2.1 to 2.9 ghz. Even at 5ghz+, Bulldozer and children architectures struggle with Dolphin, but at 2.1ghz? OOPH. I'll quote the FAQ then get more specific to explain this.

https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#which-...ould-i-use

Dolphin FAQ Wrote:Dolphin is a dual core application that relies upon IPC (Instructions Per Clock) and clockspeed for performance. Additional cores will not make Dolphin go any faster, though an "extra" core that Dolphin isn’t using may help slightly by keeping background tasks from using the same cores as Dolphin.

Accordingly, the perfect CPU for Dolphin has high IPC, a high clock rate, and four cores or more. With four cores, Dolphin has two cores for the main emulation threads, a third core for other tasks, and another core for the operating system and background tasks to run without taking resources from the emulator.

Dolphin relies on IPC and frequency, and your AMD A10 is bad at both of those. Dolphin will run on that CPU, but very, very few games will be fullspeed.