Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

But most home users can't really go much past 4.2ghz or so since a lot of people haven't installed watercooling blocks, noctua air coolers or liquid nitrogen pipe.

on htpc my phenom II x4 will not boot after 3.92ghz on air, and with liquid cooler blocks on i7, system will not go past post-screen after 4.5ghz despite fsb settings, dimm timings etc. Overall I'd say these speeds are redundant for daily usage, and are only for boasting benchmark scores, not for 24/7 use

Then again, if you're into overclocking just for the sake of oc'ing, the phenom x6 does offer better value than the next available i7 980x at the enormous price difference of $700

That's exactly my point. Most people have been getting their phenom II x6 to 4.2 ON AIR! Some people have been able to go as high as 4.6 on air stable. That's f**king amazing.

(05-02-2010, 05:33 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Sorry, like I said check again various site on the net, majority of people, sans fanboy, will agree that overall (except in certain case) Intel is faster than AMD and of course, pricier.

Then prove it. When thuban came out I immediately started scouring the web for reviews and benchmarks on it. Tomshardware, anandtech, guru3d, all show it kicking the crap out of all intel cpus except the $1,000 gulftowns. That statement may have been true a year ago but thuban is definitely overall better than anything intel has to offer in the <$1,000 price range right now. Go on any reliable benchmarking or tech news site or any overclocker forums and you'll see for yourself.

*facepalm* go on living in your happy perfect dream world

I won't bother anymore, believe whatever that'll make you happy, this has been discussed and proven endlessly on many other bona fide tech forum and more. Logic and fact isn't a word that goes together by fanboism I guess. :/

Quote:*facepalm* go on living in your happy perfect dream world

I won't bother anymore, believe whatever that'll make you happy, this has been discussed and proven endlessly on many other bona fide tech forum and more. Logic and fact isn't a word that goes together by fanboism I guess. :/

Look I just buy the cpu that is better at my price point regardless of who makes it. My current cpu is a Q6600 because when I bought it in november 2007 when it was the best cpu in the $250-350 overall. Before that I had an Athlon 64 that I bought in 2004 back when I was poor lol. Brand marriage is never a good idea. But right now thuban is a better buy for that price range. Intel has better cpus (gulftown) but you have to pay way more. Apparently we're visiting different bona fide tech forum because everywhere I go I see people bragging about their new thubans destroying their old i7 920 rigs. If you want to debate go ahead, I welcome it, but don't call me a fanboy and say that I have no facts or logic when all you've said is that an i7's are better because everyone else says so. That's not a fact. Thuban has 6 cores, clocks higher, has a lower tdp, THOSE ARE FACTS. That's the kind of facts you should be using to back up your argument not "well everyone else says it's better". I mean that's basically the definition of where the fanboy logic comes from, peers telling uninformed people what to buy. Don't just blindly believe I7 is better just because it's intel and everyone says it's great. It's not magically better than thuban, can it beat thuban in performance under certain circumstances? Sure it can, but the reverse is also true, and I think for what he's trying to do thuban would be a better choice, that's my opinion, think what you want of me, your not the first person to call me a fanboy (happened a lot back when I was telling everyone that core 2 duo conroe was a better buy than athlon X2 windsor). I realize I've started an inevitable flame war here but oh well. Sorry gotest for letting this continue in your thread, I know you really don't want to see two guys arguing in your thread but when you start a thread about which cpu brand to get it tends to happen.......at least your getting lots of info out of it.

Gotest do you plan to OC?

My prediction is thuban will continue to go neck and neck with i7 unless intel decides to make gulftown more affordable (unlikely) this year. And sandy bridge looks like it's going to creme bulldozer next year. Only a prediction though, we'll have to wait and see when they actually come out.

And when you factor emulator, at least for now, 6 or 256 cores doesn't matter at all, want proves? find someone with core i3 and thuban and make the rest of setup similar enough. You'll see that at the lower speed Intel will give better performance, this'll go null as the clock get higher but not everybody overclock and some games can really do benefit from high clocked Intel CPU if they do overclock.

I avoid posting benchmark because if you cherry pick you can find one where AMD win which also goes for the others, it'll be pointless. It's true that in some benchmark WHERE it fully utilize the 6 cores it'll edge out Intel (though sometimes it'll only marginally win against i5 750) but where do you see in this world, right now, an emulator that can utilize 6 CORES.

Thuban is only a better buy if you do a lot of encoding or any software that can utilize all of its core.

Look, I'm not saying that AMD is a bad product no no, in fact I'm using AMD as my main rig, they have the best price/performance ratio now in the market. It just so happen that the fact, clock for clock Intel win (or you could say they have better IPC, google it) per core, no matter how you twist it that is still a proven fact (which right now I'm too lazy to get it for you).

There's a reason why Intel can price their cpu like a madman right now you know... (and I hate that) >.>

Quote:And when you factor emulator, at least for now, 6 or 256 cores doesn't matter at all, want proves? find someone with core i3 and thuban and make the rest of setup similar enough. You'll see that at the lower speed Intel will give better performance, this'll go null as the clock get higher but not everybody overclock and some games can really do benefit from high clocked Intel CPU if they do overclock.

1. When did I say having 6 cores would help speed up emulation?

2. He's deciding between thuban and core i7. I agree with you though core i3 is the best cpu right now for dolphin, it clocks to 4.8 on air and dolphin only uses 2 cores, although that may change soon because of all the work the devs are doing on lle on thread.

Quote:I avoid posting benchmark because if you cherry pick you can find one where AMD win which also goes for the others, it'll be pointless. It's true that in some benchmark WHERE it fully utilize the 6 cores it'll edge out Intel (though sometimes it'll only marginally win against i5 750) but where do you see in this world, right now, an emulator that can utilize 6 CORES.

He wants a pc for a lot of different things not just emulation. Otherwise he should just get an i3 because quite frankly even 4 cores completely useless for emulation.

Quote:Thuban is only a better buy if you do a lot of encoding or any software that can utilize all of its core.

Actually the reverse. I7 is a much better buy for video encoding or other well threaded apps because it can take advantage of all 8 threads. Thuban is better for apps that aren't well threaded like dolphin because it can clock higher.

Quote:There's a reason why Intel can price their cpu like a madman right now you know... (and I hate that) >.>

An interesting topic as well. I've always noticed how intel and amd differ a lot on this. As a cpu architecture ages amd will keep doing large price drops on it until they aren't making any money on it anymore then finally stop making it after a few years. Intel on the other hand only does small price drops on the rare occasion, even if they have competition in that price range. So instead intel just keeps the price at about where it started until it stops selling then they drop it. But amd assesses the competition from intel in each price range and constantly adjusts their prices accordingly. You remember when core 2 duo first launched how fast and how much athlon X2 prices dropped in just a month or two. And the same thing happened with phenom and phenom II. The reason amd has thuban priced the same as an I7 is because they assessed it just like they always do and they see it as on par with i7 920/930 and i7 860. What I'm hoping will happen is gulftown will get kicked down to $300 to take over that price range and if that happened amd would have to drop thuban down to whatever they lowered the price of 4 core I7's to. Although this is unlikely it has happened before. Back in 2007 when i built my current rig I was about ready to get an e7400 core 2 duo when intel took it's lower end core 2 extreme cpu's and lowered the price, and called them core 2 quad. At the time Q6600 was the only affordable one so I bought it.

Quote:Look, I'm not saying that AMD is a bad product no no, in fact I'm using AMD as my main rig, they have the best price/performance ratio now in the market. It just so happen that the fact, clock for clock Intel win (or you could say they have better IPC, google it) per core, no matter how you twist it that is still a proven fact (which right now I'm too lazy to get it for you).

This is true only if HT is being used. Or at least when your comparing phenom II X4 to core I7. I'm not going to dig it up right now but tomshardware did a really interesting test awhile back. They put an I7 920 up against a phenom II 965 in identical rigs (except for the mobo of course and triple channel ram) and set them both to the same clock rate (3.8GHz). All of the multithreaded tasks (video encoding, audio encoding, virus scans, compression/decompression, encryption/decryption) performed exactly twice as fast on the I7 920. While the single threaded tasks all had nearly identical performance on both rigs. In other words IPC was the same if HT wasn't being used and double if it was being used for an I7. Then this brings up another obvious question, if that's true then why don't phenom II processors destroy I7 in single threaded benchmarks at stock settings? The answer is turbo. This is especially true for the lower end like i5 750 (which as you know have much higher turbo clock rate increases), turbo allows them to clock up to the same clock rates phenom II is running at stock. But if your an OC like me you can't factor that in to your final decision since OC disables turbo boost. Turbo boost allows core i7 to do very well in single threaded apps at stock against phenom II but don't let that make you think I7 has a much higher IPC, the benchmarks don't always tell the full story, you have to do some serious testing to dig deeper into the root cause.

But of course now we have thuban, with 6 cores and it clocks even higher than deneb did. If an application is using HT core I7 will have a 1/3 higher IPC than phenom II. Meaning your thuban would have to be clocked at 5.1GHz to compete with a core I7 clocked at 3.8GHz. Which of course is impossible without liquid nitrogen or if your very lucky maybe liquid (doubtful). But if an application is single threaded a thuban clocked at 4.6 GHz will perform about 15% better than an I7 at 3.8GHz (bloomfield has about the same TDP at this clock rate) and most of the applications that he's going to be using are single threaded. On top of that if you factor in ram and mobo costs the core components a thuban system (mobo, ram, and cpu) will cost about 1/3 less than an I7 system. On top of that bulldozer (AMD's 2011 desktop cpu architecture) is almost guaranteed to use socket AM3 at this point while we already know that sandy bridge will be using a new socket (socket 1155 which is not compatible with socket 1156 boards). And you get the added satisfaction of not supporting one of the most anti-competitive companies ever known . Alright I think I have thoroughly explained my logic and rational for his choice. Now it's your turn to make your case.

(05-05-2010, 02:30 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]1. When did I say having 6 cores would help speed up emulation?

2. He's deciding between thuban and core i7. I agree with you though core i3 is the best cpu right now for dolphin, it clocks to 4.8 on air and dolphin only uses 2 cores, although that may change soon because of all the work the devs are doing on lle on thread.

1. When you suggest Thuban over i7 on this thread, read the first post
2. I doubt it'll go beyond 3 cores, but who knows?

Quote:He wants a pc for a lot of different things not just emulation. Otherwise he should just get an i3 because quite frankly even 4 cores completely useless for emulation.

6 cores is, for now, quite useless for regular users too. Again read first post of this thread (how the hell did you know what he'll mainly do anyway?).

Quote:Actually the reverse. I7 is a much better buy for video encoding or other well threaded apps because it can take advantage of all 8 threads. Thuban is better for apps that aren't well threaded like dolphin because it can clock higher.

Thuban pretty much beat Intel offering at the same price at all x264 encoding test that I saw. Clock higher? 920 pretty much can clock as high as Thuban.

Quote:This is true only if HT is being used. Or at least when your comparing phenom II X4 to core I7. I'm not going to dig it up right now but tomshardware did a really interesting test awhile back. They put an I7 920 up against a phenom II 965 in identical rigs (except for the mobo of course and triple channel ram) and set them both to the same clock rate (3.8GHz). All of the multithreaded tasks (video encoding, audio encoding, virus scans, compression/decompression, encryption/decryption) performed exactly twice as fast on the I7 920. While the single threaded tasks all had nearly identical performance on both rigs. In other words IPC was the same if HT wasn't being used and double if it was being used for an I7. Then this brings up another obvious question, if that's true then why don't phenom II processors destroy I7 in single threaded benchmarks at stock settings? The answer is turbo. This is especially true for the lower end like i5 750 (which as you know have much higher turbo clock rate increases), turbo allows them to clock up to the same clock rates phenom II is running at stock. But if your an OC like me you can't factor that in to your final decision since OC disables turbo boost. Turbo boost allows core i7 to do very well in single threaded apps at stock against phenom II but don't let that make you think I7 has a much higher IPC, the benchmarks don't always tell the full story, you have to do some serious testing to dig deeper into the root cause.

But of course now we have thuban, with 6 cores and it clocks even higher than deneb did. If an application is using HT core I7 will have a 1/3 higher IPC than phenom II. Meaning your thuban would have to be clocked at 5.1GHz to compete with a core I7 clocked at 3.8GHz. Which of course is impossible without liquid nitrogen or if your very lucky maybe liquid (doubtful). But if an application is single threaded a thuban clocked at 4.6 GHz will perform about 15% better than an I7 at 3.8GHz (bloomfield has about the same TDP at this clock rate) and most of the applications that he's going to be using are single threaded. On top of that if you factor in ram and mobo costs the core components a thuban system (mobo, ram, and cpu) will cost about 1/3 less than an I7 system. On top of that bulldozer (AMD's 2011 desktop cpu architecture) is almost guaranteed to use socket AM3 at this point while we already know that sandy bridge will be using a new socket (socket 1155 which is not compatible with socket 1156 boards). And you get the added satisfaction of not supporting one of the most anti-competitive companies ever known . Alright I think I have thoroughly explained my logic and rational for his choice. Now it's your turn to make your case.

The point of this thread is building a pc centered at emulation, of course some (irrelevant) bench will favor AMD while some Intel (though this can be easily manipulated, I don't trust tomshardware, look up techpowerup if you want a reliable tech site). And I also suggest that collecting information from other tech sites and first hand user input from tech forums to get better picture.

But okay, try this, play any one of the most demanding game in modern emulator like shadow of colossus, tekken 5, tekken tag, gran turismo 4 with pcsx2 (sorry I'm more familiar with pcsx2 games than dolphin) or ask someone with Intel (Penryn and above) and other with AMD (Phenom II and above) to test, both similarly clocked, see for yourself who'll get better fps.

I have seen many report and case about this one (I can compare their result with my Phenom II too btw) and am convinced that even Core 2 is faster for this type of works, let alone Core i.

P.S. Price is a moot point, depending on where you live you can pretty much get the same price or insignificant difference. All I'm saying is that Intel is faster, I don't factor: price, parts, platform, or if Intel kill your baby.

P.S.S Please separate your paragraph next time, a wall of text may look intimidating but PITA to read.

Quote:6 cores is, for now, quite useless for regular users too. Again read first post of this thread (how the hell did you know what he'll mainly do anyway?).

Glad we agree on something. And I don't know what he'll do with it I'm just assuming he won't be doing a lot of video encoding since he didn't say anything about video encoding....

Quote:1. When you suggest Thuban over i7 on this thread, read the first post

*facepalm* I suggesting thuban is a better buy for him because it clocks higher and would be a cheaper overall build. How exactly does saying that suggest that I believe 6 cores helps speed up dolphin?

Quote:2. I doubt it'll go beyond 3 cores, but who knows?

Another thing we agree on.

Quote:Clock higher? 920 pretty much can clock as high as Thuban.

Lol. Ok when you get a core i7 920 running at 4.6GHz on air you call me ok? Actually you put it up on a forum since some mad overclocker would probably pay $2,000 for a cpu like that. Not to mention the tdp of a core i7 running at 4GHz are basically twice as high as a thuban running at 4.6GHz, even if you think core i7 is better you have to admit that's impressive considering it has 6 cores and it's 45nm. I didn't expect thuban to clock past 3.6 on liquid, so I was stunned when it came out and saw people getting it to 4.6 stable on air.

Quote:The point of this thread is building a pc centered at emulation, of course some (irrelevant) bench will favor AMD while some Intel (though this can be easily manipulated, I don't trust tomshardware, look up techpowerup if you want a reliable tech site). And I also suggest that collecting information from other tech sites and first hand user input from tech forums to get better picture.

But okay, try this, play any one of the most demanding game in modern emulator like shadow of colossus, tekken 5, tekken tag, gran turismo 4 with pcsx2 (sorry I'm more familiar with pcsx2 games than dolphin) or ask someone with Intel (Penryn and above) and other with AMD (Phenom II and above) to test, both similarly clocked, see for yourself who'll get better fps.

I have seen many report and case about this one (I can compare their result with my Phenom II too btw) and am convinced that even Core 2 is faster for this type of works, let alone Core i.

I don't know about pcsx2 since I grew up with nintendo and I don't care about emulating anything other than nintendo consoles and genesis. But a couple weeks ago I started up a little benchmarking project for dolphin with a few friends and JADS. And from what I've seen so far core 2/core 2 quad, phenom II, and core i3/i5/i7 all had identical performance per clock in dolphin. Which was actually kind of odd considering some of the variables like sse version that we expected to make a difference but didn't. We also tested spellforce builds out of curiosity (since he uses an intel compiler) and I was shocked but the results were the same, except JADS I haven't talked to him in awhile so I haven't asked him to do the spellforce test yet.

Quote:I don't trust tomshardware, look up techpowerup if you want a reliable tech site

You trust techpowerup more than tomshardware? I don't agree but I'm not going to comment, instead I'm just going to ask why.

Quote: or if Intel kill your baby.

Lol, that made my day. Although some people might have had to give their baby to an orphanage to pay for gulftown.....

No, I do not plan to OC...for now, but I'm just going to buy a budget CPU for now with a motherboard that has Phenom II X4/6 support.
here is what i plan to get:
AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor
and
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard or unless someone can make another suggestion that supports Phenom II x4/6 with USB 3.0 (I just want it to have it ya know?)
Sorry for the very late response, I have been busy lately...

(05-05-2010, 06:41 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:*facepalm* I suggesting thuban is a better buy for him because it clocks higher and would be a cheaper overall build. How exactly does saying that suggest that I believe 6 cores helps speed up dolphin?

Cause um, the question he asked is crystal clear? oh whatever I'm sorry I am wrong, drop it.

Quote:Lol. Ok when you get a core i7 920 running at 4.6GHz on air you call me ok? Actually you put it up on a forum since some mad overclocker would probably pay $2,000 for a cpu like that. Not to mention the tdp of a core i7 running at 4GHz are basically twice as high as a thuban running at 4.6GHz, even if you think core i7 is better you have to admit that's impressive considering it has 6 cores and it's 45nm. I didn't expect thuban to clock past 3.6 on liquid, so I was stunned when it came out and saw people getting it to 4.6 stable on air.

I don't see many people getting 4.6, and you must understand that Overclocking isn't something universal on all chip; people may get lucky and get a chip (both I7 and Thuban) that could go very high but most will not. There are also many other thing to factor (cooling, ram, mobo, OC're skill etc etc)

Quote:I don't know about pcsx2 since I grew up with nintendo and I don't care about emulating anything other than nintendo consoles and genesis. But a couple weeks ago I started up a little benchmarking project for dolphin with a few friends and JADS. And from what I've seen so far core 2/core 2 quad, phenom II, and core i3/i5/i7 all had identical performance per clock in dolphin. Which was actually kind of odd considering some of the variables like sse version that we expected to make a difference but didn't. We also tested spellforce builds out of curiosity (since he uses an intel compiler) and I was shocked but the results were the same, except JADS I haven't talked to him in awhile so I haven't asked him to do the spellforce test yet.

Well the OP cares.

Quote:You trust techpowerup more than tomshardware? I don't agree but I'm not going to comment, instead I'm just going to ask why.

Just look at both forum and it's easy to decide.

(05-05-2010, 07:33 AM)gotest Wrote: [ -> ]No, I do not plan to OC...for now, but I'm just going to buy a budget CPU for now with a motherboard that has Phenom II X4/6 support.
here is what i plan to get:
AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor
and
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard or unless someone can make another suggestion that supports Phenom II x4/6 with USB 3.0 (I just want it to have it ya know?)
Sorry for the very late response, I have been busy lately...

That's a solid choice, there may be some games that won't run at full speed at that clock though so you must inevitably OC someday. Also consider i5 750 unless you're hellbend on AMD platform or Thuban.