Dolphin Emulator Required Specs Question

[slingblade1170]

What hardware is required to run Dolphin fast enough to enjoy? I can run some games such as Luigis mansion but I have very random slow downs during playing and Sonic Adventure 2 seems to run slow altogether. Also, what is the best way to setup Dolphin?

My hardware specs:
AMD Phenom II 2.2ghz Quad Core
Radeon HD 4250
4GB DDR3 RAM

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Forum-hardware

Check the stickies here, it should give you a general idea. Also check the Dolphin Emu wiki for best settings for your games.

 

[KDH]

I would guess an i5 or i7 and 3.0 GHz or higher. I say that because my Core 2 Quad Q9550 overclocked to 3.6 GHz doesn't cut it. Other than that a half decent graphics card and 4+ GB of RAM should be all you need to run games at an acceptable speed.

 

[Shuny]

It will obviously depend of the games, but most games are really CPU dependant. You'll need a solid quad-core to enjoy most of the Wii/GC games. Something like i5-3570k will do fine.

As for the graphic card, take something decent but not too expensive: It is not needed.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

It will obviously depend of the games, but most games are really CPU dependant. You'll need a solid quad-core to enjoy most of the Wii/GC games. Something like i5-3570k will do fine.

As for the graphic card, take something decent but not too expensive: It is not needed.

Err...Dolphin only makes use of 2 cores, the additional cores wouldn't be used at all. So a solid dual core would be fine.

 

[Celice]

So an i3 should suffice?

I had an FX-4100 OC'd to 4.15GHz and I could run New Super Mario Bros. Wii alright, with a few stutters. Upgraded to an i5 3750k a bit ago at 3.6GHz and it runs pretty smooth. I have a GTX 570 too, had a HD 5770 with the FX processor.

The i5 and GTX 570 got me pretty great frames in almost any game I tried. It seems like way more than enough. This is with 3x native resolution, too.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

So an i3 should suffice?

I had an FX-4100 OC'd to 4.15GHz and I could run New Super Mario Bros. Wii alright, with a few stutters. Upgraded to an i5 3750k a bit ago at 3.6GHz and it runs pretty smooth. I have a GTX 570 too, had a HD 5770 with the FX processor.

The i5 and GTX 570 got me pretty great frames in almost any game I tried. It seems like way more than enough. This is with 3x native resolution, too.

Running an i3 now and so far I haven't had much slowdowns with the known working games.

 

[Shuny]

Err...Dolphin only makes use of 2 cores, the additional cores wouldn't be used at all. So a solid dual core would be fine.

AFAIK Dolphin can use 3 cores if using DSP LLE on thread. Since the current HLE implementation is broken (it's getting fixed by delroth but there's still much work to be done) the LLE may be useful in some games.

But you're right, most games should run fine with a dual-core.

 

[chyyran]

LLE requires a fairly powerful processor (I assume i5 @ 4.0+ GHz) to run smoothly, no matter how many cores you have. Your current specs aren't enough to get a constant framerate, let alone LLE.

I'm running Dolphin at a i5 2500k @ 3.30Ghz, 16GB RAM and I get some slowdowns as well, near unplayable at LLE. It's usually fine for me at 2x internal res, no AA, no AF, and HLE. Looks much nicer, jaggies are almost gone at 2x internal res, even without AA.

 

[Shuny]

LLE requires a fairly powerful processor (I assume i5 @ 4.0+ GHz) to run smoothly, no matter how many cores you have. Your current specs aren't enough to get a constant framerate, let alone LLE.

I'm running Dolphin at a i5 2500k @ 3.30Ghz, 16GB RAM and I get some slowdowns as well, near unplayable at LLE. It's usually fine for me at 2x internal res, no AA, no AF, and HLE. Looks much nicer, jaggies are almost gone at 2x internal res, even without AA.

I have the same processor as you, clocked to 4.6Ghz though and most games run smoothly using DSPLLE on thread. Obviously it requires a good processor, and preferably one with more than two cores since as I said, the DSP emulation can be run on a different thread and so use another core.

 

[chyyran]

I have the same processor as you, clocked to 4.6Ghz though and most games run smoothly using DSPLLE on thread. Obviously it requires a good processor, and preferably one with more than two cores since as I said, the DSP emulation can be run on a different thread and so use another core.

I cheaped out on my mobo, so I can't overclock it

Hoping to get a new mobo this year

 

[slingblade1170]

I have the same processor as you, clocked to 4.6Ghz though and most games run smoothly using DSPLLE on thread. Obviously it requires a good processor, and preferably one with more than two cores since as I said, the DSP emulation can be run on a different thread and so use another core.

This alone helped my speed by about 15%, thanks for this about another 15% to go to really enjoy this emulator.

http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Forum-hardware

Check the stickies here, it should give you a general idea. Also check the Dolphin Emu wiki for best settings for your games.

Thanks for the link to the Dolphin forums, for some reason I didn't think of even going there. My CPU is known to work very well with Dolphin and there are people on the Dolphin forums that are running it with less, so it must be all about the settings.

Changing the priority to high for Dolphin on task manager just helped me up my speed a bit more. I guess I'll keep messing around with the settings and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the replies and if you got anymore ideas feel free.