Hi
I will appreciate your opinion for a Linux PC with Phenom ii X6 1100T, 8GB RAM and a "decent" GPU.
Is this setup capable to run Gamecube games smoothly on latest Doplhin?
Thank you in advance for your opinion.
There are a couple of problems with your CPU. AMD CPUs of that era were notoriously slower than Intel for Dolphin. We don't get a lot of users still using Phenom CPUs, but the situation hasn't changed much over the years. They may need overclocking to reach acceptable levels of performance depending on the game (more likely than not, I'd say). Dolphin today is generally less demanding than it was a decade ago, but it's not magic; there's a limit to how low you can go for your PC specs. So, needless to say, a Phenom CPU is not ideal for Dolphin given its expected performance and its age.
Keep in mind, the GPU only determines how high you can raise the resolution before it becomes a bottleneck. If your CPU is too slow, however, it becomes the bottleneck and it doesn't matter what kind of GPU you've got. The requirements for 720p and 1080p are still pretty low in many cases. I used do both easily on a GTX 550 Ti a long time ago. Having said all that, Phenom CPUs weren't all that bad as long as people overclocked that sufficiently. They weren't terrible CPUs, just inefficient ones.
So, even with the issues of the Phenom, you might be able to get decent speeds as long as you crank the speed up. If you went this route though, be sure to read up carefully on how to do it properly/safely, and make sure you have the proper cooling and monitor your temperatures. I don't think it'd be impossible to get good performance in a handful of games; you'd just have to do some work first.
(04-12-2022, 02:08 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]ake sure you have the proper cooling and monitor your temperatures
As someone running a dual-core Phenom II unlocked to a quad core, one protip is that Dolphin really doesn't need anywhere near 6 cores so you could actually use the "downcore" function down to either four or three cores as a cheaty way to reduce heat.
Furthermore, certain cores may overclock better than others and/or require less voltage (which will similarly reduce heat), so if you're able to determine
that then disabling the cores that aren't quite as good of overclockers could help squeeze out a bit more performance. However, this can be a very time-consuming process, but I can at least recommend that OCCT's "large data set" seemed to be the end-all rock-solid stability test on non-AVX CPUs that I've overclocked or undervolted (never tried it on AVX CPUs), though honestly OCCT's "large data set" might even be a bit
too demanding in terms of voltage stability requirements (at least when it comes to running it for 24 hours straight at intentionally high CPU temperatures as a worst-case scenario). And while OCCT is Windows-only, at least the old 4.5.1 version (which is actually a portable application!) seems to run perfectly through WINE 7.x.
That being said, if this PC is doing other tasks and
not just emulation of systems weaker than the Xbox 360/PS3 (which very much take advantage of multiple cores, but also want really fast cores), then disabling cores could be a non-starter.