Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(05-04-2022, 11:21 PM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]Is a GTX 750 ti worth $115 new?

That's actually not bad considering that its performance is sadly pretty similar to GDDR5 GT 1030 which, when launched, tended to max out at.around that price

I'm guessing the used market isn't something you're interested in? Those go for like $70 or so on ebay for example.

Now it being a lower-end GPU does mean that it'll be a bit useless compared to integrated graphics if you ever want to upgrade your PC as a whole, but there is the side-benefit that the GPU is old enough to actually have good support on Linux (newer Nvidia GPUs can be problematic) which could be useful in the future if you ever want to repurpose your old PC into a dedicated emulation-machine SteamOS or the like (when SteamOS 3.0 actually gets released as a generally-available OS and not something exclusive to the Steam Deck of course!)

(05-04-2022, 11:21 PM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]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.

Yes, newer stuff wants DDR4 (or even DDR5), but the thing was that some Core 2 Duo systems used DDR3 which is the same ram used by 4th and 5th gen Intel (Haswell and Braodwell respectively). And, for whatever reason, Haswell brought substantial performance gains for emulation to the point that it took until Zen2 to match it specifically for emulation because emulation seemed to be one of the worst-case scenarios for AMD until Zen3. This is why I mentioned the Pentium G3258 which, nowadays, is basically a one-trick pony for great emulation performance on an extreme budget (with the caveat that it only being dual core means that it can't really emulate any console that had multiple CPU cores such as the PS3, Xbox 360, and maybe even the 3DS, but some of those require AVX support anyway which the G3258 also lacks).

...but if buying used isn't desired then the G3258 and/or any other 4th gen/Haswell CPU isn't really an ideal option anyway as it's specifically its price on the used market that makes it a deal, not on the new market (is it even available anywhere?).

(04-30-2022, 11:03 PM)chocolates Wrote: [ -> ]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?

Hi,
I wonder why you got only 1x with HD5850, which should go way behind this.

That Radeon might been too heavy on your CPU.
Also your memory system is old (some mobos might have only DDR2 support) and odd memory quantity - 6GB - so obviously you do not use Dual Channell.

However, all mentioned GPUs will be okay. Nvidia is preferable for emulation.

(05-05-2022, 10:32 AM)sirdaniel Wrote: [ -> ]Nvidia is preferable for emulation.

As I alluded to on the previous page, that only applies when dealing with OpenGL on Windows (and even then its generally only an issue when you need to maximum GPU performance - 1x IR in Dolphin is not really such a scenario, nor is something like melonDS's OpenGL renderer) - as soon as Vulkan or Direct3D is an option then it's a non-issue (at least for AMD; Intel... not so much) and, in general, there's little reason to not use Vulkan if it's an option. Furthermore, as soon as Linux is involved, pretty much anything but Nvidia is preferred (though older Nvidia GPUs can also work well), and that means not just AMD but even Intel is a good option on Linux (lack of performant hardware notwithstanding).

I know that 99% of people gaming don't use Linux at this time, but I only keep bringing it up because the Steam Deck and/or SteamOS is a major wildcard in all of this going forward, especially since SteamOS 3.0 could make for an ideal dedicated emulation system setup in the future in a sort of "docked Steam Deck" fashion for HTPC and/or console-replacement setups.

If this were a more active sub-forum I wouldn't be so worried about this, but there are forum threads on the first page of the hardware sub-forum that are 6 months old at this point, and there are a lot of new hardware releases coming in the next 6 months or so not to mention the elusive general-release version of SteamOS 3.0.

Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:Furthermore, as soon as Linux is involved, pretty much anything but Nvidia is preferred

If we're talking strictly emulation, there's nothing wrong with going with an Nvidia GPU, as long as you stick to the proprietary drivers. I've been on Nvidia + Linux for 10 years at this point, and no complaints running Dolphin. As far as I know, both AMD and Intel have phenomenal open source drivers, and their stability/performance has finally gotten up to par with the ones Nvidia make. It used to be Nvidia was the way to go, but today it's more like "take your pick", a more level playing field.

Granted, I don't keep up with all the latest developments and performance requirements with Ryujinx, Yuzu, or RPCS3, so maybe specific emulators favor certain drivers on Linux. I vaguely recall something negative about Nvidia and integer math, but in general I'd say for emulation it doesn't particularly matter.

(05-05-2022, 11:37 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]both AMD and Intel have phenomenal open source drivers, and their stability/performance has finally gotten up to par with the ones Nvidia make.

At least until you want to try doing aspect-preserved GPU-based upscaling for non-native resolutions on external monitors that don't have their own aspect ratio options (something common on TVs for example) - that is one of if not the biggest niggle I've ran into on both Intel and AMD open source drivers over the last couple of months:

• https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2132140

...that being said, emulators usually have built-in scaling options and/or support borderless window style of fullscreen as well, so that is much less of an issue for emulation use-cases (as I mentioned in that thread, it's more of a problem for mid-2000s software that is too new to run in DosBox but it too old to have widescreen support as well as support for borderless window style of fullscreen).


TBH the only other "niggle" with open source drivers I can think of is AMD's persistant lack of included OpenCL image support (ROCm doesn't count as it's not the easiest and lacks support for the likes of Ryzen 4000 APUs and the HD7850 dGPU), but it sounds like Rusticl is going to solve all of this anyway in possibly the near future (Mesa 22.2?).

Also getting Vulkan working on some slightly-older AMD APUs (A8-7600) and presumably dGPUs doesn't seem to be quite the stupid-simple experience as it is on Intel (let alone the "just works out-of-the-box" experience on newer AMD products), but I've not really needed to look too far into it at this time.

(05-05-2022, 11:37 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Granted, I don't keep up with all the latest developments and performance requirements with Ryujinx, Yuzu, or RPCS3, so maybe specific emulators favor certain drivers on Linux. I vaguely recall something negative about Nvidia and integer math, but in general I'd say for emulation it doesn't particularly matter.

I just know that, when trying to get Vulkan working on Mint 19.x on a GTX 780 (owned by the previously-mentioned friend that doesn't like tinkering and wants things to "just work") for use specifically with Dolphin, it was a paaaaaaaaain and I never did actually get it working and fell back to OpenGL... where there were weird half-second stutters in games like Metroid Prime 2 (Trilogy edition) yet not in Smash Bros Melee and, yes, all of the usual ubershader settings were configured and the like accordingly.

Furthermore, I actually installed that copy of Mint 19.x onto an SSD owned by the same friend, and he took the SSD and GPU back home wanting to use it on one of his own PCs since, in my experience, you can pretty easily move Linux installations between different PCs. I quickly found out that, as soon as Nvidia is involved though, this "easily" suddenly becomes "not-so-easy" and, while he was able to get it booted, he had no graphics acceleration, and nothing we did made it work outside of a fresh install (I also can't help but notice that Linus Sebastian was unable to boot his Linux+Nvidia NVMe SSD on an AMD graphics PCs in a video put out earlier this year).

Conversely, the previously-mentioned HD5870-flashed-with-5850-BIOS "just worked" on both Mint 18.x and Mint 19.x though, being an older GPU, Vulkan wasn't even an option - but at least it didn't stutter! Not only that but I was able to move the OS installation between different PCs as long as it was Intel or AMD graphics as that was exactly what I did twice and have also taken advantage of multiple other times with various other AMD and Intel GPU hardware.

Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:At least until you want to try doing aspect-preserved GPU-based upscaling for non-native resolutions on external monitors that don't have their own aspect ratio options (something common on TVs for example) - that is one of if not the biggest niggle I've ran into on both Intel and AMD open source drivers over the last couple of months:

To be fair, every GPU is going to have edge cases where it simply misses the target/goal, regardless the driver or manufacturer. My underlying point, however, was that we've really moved past the darker times when AMD or Intel were considered inferior to Nvidia's proprietary stuff. Mesa was always solid (at least in my experiences going back to 2008), but AMD in particular was notorious for stability and performance issues on Linux.

Today though, there's nothing like kind of gap that used to exist. So while Intel and AMD might not be perfect, they aren't seen as drastically lagging behind Nvidia anymore. Everyone has their own anecdotes (myself included) regarding what hardware works best, but overall I maintain that Intel, Nvidia, or AMD is more or less irrelevant these days for emulation on Linux. Pick your specs and your price, then go from there.

Decided to pop in again after a long while when I saw this thread. I don't know if it's the best option but I have a GTX 660 I just removed from an old desktop, works just fine and should be almost twice the performance of a 5850 in many use cases despite the age. Judging by OP's time zone I'd have to ship the card from Europe to the US but other than that I'm happy to give it away for free. Send a PM or follow up here if you're interested!