Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Greetings everyone.

I play Dolphin with a HD5850 1GB, Core2Duo E8500 3.16 ghz, 6 GB Ram, 550 watt psu, Windows 7.
I am able to play my games at full speed with low settings (1x native, no AA).

But, my graphics card decided to go away on me (fan issues).

Can anyone recommend a graphics card that is around at least the sameish to replace it that will not downgrade my performance? I was wanting a Nvidia card instead of AMD though, if possible.

I was looking at a GT 1030 2GB GDDR5, is that a good card to get?

That should be fine at low settings, just make sure to get the GDDR5 version.

Thank you for the reply.
How about a GTX 1050 Ti?
I think it is a bit high end for my CPU, though.
I was planning on upgrading my board, cpu and ram some time down the line, though, but not anytime soon, since I was going to install W11 after, so I want to hold out for a while more.

(05-01-2022, 08:00 AM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you for the reply.
How about a GTX 1050 Ti?

If you have the money, it's obviously better. However, I'm not sure that it would really do much good for your use case (I'm not sure what it is, but doesn't seem like you are using anything modern).

I only use my computer to play older console games in emulators and older native computer games released many years ago (like ms-dos games in scummvm, or games released back in the 2010-era and before).
I have my Switch to play anything newer/modern.

It may be worth noting that modern integrated graphics, particularly those from AMD (or mobile Intel chips if ran on Linux), have GPU performance quite similar if not stronger than an HD5850. The current DDR4-equipped Ryzen G-series chips in particular tend to compare pretty similarly to the GDDR5 GT 1030 (in some software the Ryzen APUs are faster, and in others the 1030 is faster).

I say this as someone with both a Ryzen 4800U and an HD5870 (albeit flashed with an HD5850 bios to allow for undervolting).

Unless you can get a GPU for really cheap, you can practically get a lower-end albeit modern CPU with integrated graphics and motherboard + two sticks of not-slow RAM for a price that is not far removed due to the crazy prices of used GPUs at the moment (they're better than they were 6 months ago, but still nowhere near what they were 3 years ago). It's also worth noting that Nvidia GPUs at this time tend to have higher prices on the used market relative to comparative-performance AMD GPUs.


EDIT: That being said, if you're willing to be a bit of a hardware tinkerer (which I know that not everybody is - I've a friend that loves building PCs but always just wants to just plug-and-play parts and have them "just work"), there's always the option of removing the shroud of your HD5850 (not the heatsink itself) and strapping on some 120 or 140mm case fans which should be fine? My own HD5870-with-5850-BIOS is configured as such with 2x 120mm case fans because its reference blower-style cooler was way too loud, though because the card is undervolted it doesn't run as hot but, at the same time, I am running the case fans at 5v rather than their full 12v - so maybe if you just make sure to use the normal 12v then it'll be plenty of cooling?

Additionally, an HD5850 should have waaaaaaaaay more performance grunt than 1x internal resolution since, around 3 years ago, on my HD5870-with-5850-BIOS I played 3-player F-Zero GX split-screen with 3x IR (~1440p) and 4x SSAA (not a typo), thereby effectively rendering at 5k or 2880p resolution. That being said, I was running the game capped at 50% speed, but 3x IR + 4x SSAA should require way more than just twice the GPU grunt.

...however, I was running Dolphin on Linux Mint 19.x since it's a bajillion times easier to get the official 1st party GameCube USB adapter working under Linux than Windows, and I know that OpenGL performance on Linux tends to similarly be a bajillion times better, so maybe that has a lot to do with it?

Is $210 too much for a new GTX 1650?

I choose to play my games at only 1x because I like them that way. I never tried increasing the resolution, but thought my cpu would be too weak though?

I took a look at the Ryzen cpus, but it seems they are almost $200, and then I would need a board and ram and Windows. Seems a bit much, at the moment. But maybe I am looking at the wrong thing. There is a lot of different cpus I am kinda confused.

I figure if I just get a new gpu now, I can always put it in a new computer that has a faster cpu and stuff later.

I appreciate the suggestions with this matter. I just want to make sure I am not spending too much money and making a bad decision.

(05-03-2022, 08:02 AM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]Is $210 too much for a new GTX 1650?

It's probably a good price. Keep in mind that it originally cost $150 USD when it released in 2019, but GPU prices across the board have been hyper-inflated thanks to the pandemic and lack of supply. So while the extra $60 USD is a premium, it's a fairly small price increase, all things considered. GPU prices (new and used) are expected to lower even more later this year, but I'm not sure how much lower than $210 you'll see for the GTX 1650.

(05-03-2022, 08:02 AM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]I took a look at the Ryzen cpus, but it seems they are almost $200, and then I would need a board and ram and Windows.

It would seem that the lower-end Ryzen chips with integrated graphics have kind of dried up on the market (not counting used market) and/or aren't quite available just yet. The Ryzen 4600G just recently launched and should be a decent price but seems to be MIA currently. I wonder if AMD is holding out for the upcoming AM5 socket later this year where there's an oft-rumored budget-class 12nm 4core Zen3 chip with RDNA2 integrated graphics supposedly launching as the low-end option next to Zen4 (perhaps as a new Athlon)?

Speaking of which, there's always the Athlon option which is basically a 2core/4thread Ryzen but with integrated graphics comparable to Intel's higher-end desktop integrated graphics (though, in Vulkan as used by Dolphin, the Athlon could very well perform better unless you used Linux).

Here's a list of AM4 chips with integrated graphics that have any actual availability (again, not counting used market):

• https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#k=33&g=430,489,418,419&sort=price

But honestly, if you're fine with 1x IR then even Intel graphics are an option. Also, I don't know about other applications that you use, but Dolphin is available for Linux (which would also improve the performance for Intel graphics as I alluded to).


Lastly, I don't suppose you know if you're using DDR3 RAM rather than DDR2? Because if so, then there's even the option of a used LGA1150 Haswell system with its integrated graphics. And, while it's integrated graphics performance isn't great (again, Linux would help here as Haswell even has Vulkan support exclusively on Linux), there's always the el-cheapo Haswell-based Pentium G3258 which is like 10 to 15 bucks on the used market despite being overclockable (which makes it possibly the best bang-per-buck CPU for Dolphin as it also includes integrated graphics that might be enough for 1x IR? I haven't really tried graphically-demanding games on my own G3258 in a while).



Oh and just to clarify a couple of things, Intel's graphics drivers on Windows are... really just not great on all fronts (with OpenGL being particularly bad). AMD's graphics drivers on Windows for Vulkan and DirectX are fine but their OpenGL implementation is focused on accuracy and lacks performance. Intel's graphics driver on Linux is waaaaaaay better than their Windows driver on all fronts. AMD's graphics driver on Linux is also better, but OpenGL is really the only noticeably improved as their Vulkan driver works well on both Windows and Linux.



EDIT:

(05-03-2022, 08:02 AM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]Is $210 too much for a new GTX 1650?

I don't suppose you could find a 1650 Super for a similar price? It's basically substantially better in every way and, at least back in early 2020 when a friend of mine got it instead of a 1650 non-super due to my recommendation, the 1650 super actually cost about the same as the 1650 non-super. The one main benefit of the 1650 non-super was that it could run without additional power connectors, but like 99.99% of all 1650 non-super GPUs required the additional power connectors anyway, so...

Also just as a reference point so you understand the borked-ness on pricing of low end GPUs, the cheapest new Radeon RX 6600 non-XT listed on PCPartPicker as of this edit is $335 USD and, performance-wise, is something absurd like nearly three times faster than the 1650 non-super.

I mean, considering how GPU pricing is almost kind of in a slow-motion crash right now, the longer you take to purchase, the cheaper pricing will be and the better your options will get (though if you wait too long e.g. multiple months then who knows what will happen), especially once the used market really starts getting flooded with used GPUs from crypto farms like what happened after the previous crypto-mining boom.

Is a GTX 750 ti worth $115 new? I know its older and I think its comparable to my HD 5850, so I thought it better to put in my PC. A local shop has it. It is also some kinda special one that has two fans.

And my computer has DDR2 Ram. If I changed the board and cpu, would I not have to change the Ram as well? I thought newer boards used DDR4 and stuff. And Ram is cheaper these days than it used to be. I remember having to pay $100 for my 8GB DDR2 set (which one 2GB stick was causing my computer to not boot up, which is why I am down to 6GB).