I have an old laptop and a old desktop. I have used Dolphin on the laptop before but not the desktop, laptop was mine, desktop was son's.
My understanding is that the clock speed is more important for Dolphin emulator as it only uses 2 cores (wanting to run GameCube games mainly Mario kart Double Dash).
The clock speed for both is the same but the i5 has a slightly higher boost. I'm wondering if there would be much difference? Does the boost speed even matter?
The old desktop has a i5 8400, 8 GB of DDR-4 2400 RAM (going to add another 8GB if this is the better PC to use for emulation), SSD and HDD (not sure of sizes but more than plenty for what is needed) Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB graphics card. Currently running Windows 11.
The laptop has a i7 7700HQ, 16 GB of DDR-4 2400 RAM, I think a 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD, Nvidia GTX 1060 6 GB but only runs Windows 10 (considering Linux as can't upgrade officially upgrade to Windows 11).
If there's not much difference then I might go with the laptop as I plan on hooking up to TV in living room so it would fit nicer. Also don't want to buy more RAM if not going to use the desktop.
I wouldn't think there would be much difference, however laptops can be finicky sometimes. I also think that 8GB should generally be enough if you are only running Dolphin (unless you are doing something like preloading a bunch of custom textures, which I don't think that you are).
(04-29-2024, 12:27 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: [ -> ]I wouldn't think there would be much difference, however laptops can be finicky sometimes. I also think that 8GB should generally be enough if you are only running Dolphin (unless you are doing something like preloading a bunch of custom textures, which I don't think that you are).
Thank you. Confirmed what I thought that there wouldn't be much difference. I was thinking of upgrading it to 16GB as 8GB is not a lot to be running Windows 11 plus apps, although son was somehow gaming on it even with only 8GB.
I'll use the laptop anyway as it will fit in the space nicer but with a Linux distro on it. I can always fall back on the desktop anyway as I have no other use for it if things don't go to plan.
(04-29-2024, 08:28 PM)XanderX Wrote: [ -> ]I was thinking of upgrading [the i5 PC] to 16GB
Technically if your i5's 8GB is only a single 8GB stick aka "single channel" rather than two 4GB sticks aka "dual channel" (you can check this via
CPU-Z (PortableApps version) in its
"Memory" tab), then adding a second stick as similar as possible to the first stick could actually improve CPU performance a teeny bit (as long as you put it in the correct slot of course
If there are 3 empty slots, the correct slot will be only two slots away from the other stick, meaning you'll have a single vacant slot located in-between the two RAM sticks).
That being said, it's questionable if you'd actually notice a difference since you might be at full speed with that CPU already—really the biggest improvement would be to the integrated graphics which
would be fast enough for at least 1x, maybe even 2x, but you're using a discrete GPU anyway, so...
(04-29-2024, 08:28 PM)XanderX Wrote: [ -> ]I'll use the laptop anyway as it will fit in the space nicer but with a Linux distro on it
Just be warned that laptop Nvidia graphics are notorious as being one of the most troublesome configurations on Linux and is basically the cause of why Linus Torvalds famously gave Nvidia the bird.
Also I figured I'd mention the point that both CPUs use the exact same core architecture with identical per-GHz performance (outside of possible cache tweaks) and, even in multi-threaded non-gaming production workloads at the same clockrate, 4core/8thread was only a teeny bit slower than 6core/6thread (fun fact: 6core/12thread and 8core/8thread are virtually identical in multi-threaded non-gaming production workloads).
My previous laptop had that cpu. It shipped with a single stick of memory also, adding a second stick didn't help much for the cpu for dolphin either(it has a gtx 1070 though so i wasnt using the igpu). I doubt it would be noticeable between the 2 cpu also. The ram would only benefit you if your running multiple task with dolphin or using hd textures or something similar.
The laptop has two sticks of 8GB filling up both RAM slots, the desktop has only 1 with 3 spare. I didn't realise it only had 1 of 8GB stick until cleaning it out, as it wasn't mine originally I never looked at it that much.
A lot of the issues I've seen with Nvidia seem to be from many years ago so hopefully it will be OK. If not I can use the desktop and Windows 11.
Hoping to get chance to do it soon but unfortunately the old laptop is still being used as the PC bought to replace it has been built by an apparently reliable company who decided to first fit the wrong motherboard and then when they put the correct motherboard in wedged cables between the mounting plate and motherboard meaning the case fans and front USB ports weren't connected and bent the side panel. Yet somehow it passed quality checking and was shipped out again. Once that's sorted hopefully can get the laptop set up.
Quote:The ram would only benefit you if your running multiple task with dolphin or using hd textures or something similar.
That's not quite how it works. With modern DDR memory, odd-numbered RAM sticks are accessed on the rising edge of the clock signal, and even-numbered ones on the falling edge (or vice versa, but it's not important). That means that if you've only got one stick, you're halving your memory bandwidth as you're skipping half the opportunities to access memory. Typically, the working set would be split between the two sticks, so you'd end up with some benefit in any workload, even if it wasn't starved for memory bandwidth most of the time.
(04-30-2024, 08:39 PM)XanderX Wrote: [ -> ]the PC bought to replace it has been built by an apparently reliable company who decided to first fit the wrong motherboard and then when they put the correct motherboard in wedged cables between the mounting plate and motherboard meaning the case fans and front USB ports weren't connected and bent the side panel. Yet somehow it passed quality checking and was shipped out again.
Gamers Nexus and their "secret shopper" for prebuilts would have had a field day.
To corroborate your "apparently reliable company", basically the vast majority of prebuilts they purchased had something wrong with them.
(04-30-2024, 09:53 PM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]If you've only got one stick, you're halving your memory bandwidth as you're skipping half the opportunities to access memory. Typically, the working set would be split between the two sticks, so you'd end up with some benefit in any workload, even if it wasn't starved for memory bandwidth most of the time.
So to go on what I said, the main thing is that, if one is at full performance even with 1 stick of RAM, then there wouldn't be a performance difference specifically for Dolphin.
Now that wouldn't mean it wouldn't be making
no difference, as it'd instead simply result in a a little bit lower CPU usage which would result in a little bit lower temperatures and a little bit quieter fan noise—whether any of these are actually to any noticeable or even a measurable degree can vary greatly depending on the program, and I've never gotten to see what difference there is in Dolphin between single and dual channel DDR4 (In theory I could test on single-channel DDR3 at various speeds paired with a discrete GPU and then try to extrapolate what it'd be like for DDR4).
I want to clarify my previous post. When I metion extra ram I was purely talking about dolphin with the the Nvidia card. As dolphin didn't improve with dual channel memory on my old laptop with the same cpu. If all he was doing was dolphin and web browsing on that laptop and didn't run enough other programs with dolphin to run out of ram or use large textures packs that need more ram then the benefit of more memory is going to be minor and probably not worth the cost or time.