Hardware Will these specs be good enough to run most games on PCSX2?

[Hiz_95]

In just over two weeks I'll be starting university and I'll need a laptop, from what I understand I won't be able to buy a laptop for under around £550 that can run most games on Dolphin well. I'd also like to be able to play PS2 games through PCSX2.
Will games such as FFX, FFXII, Kingdom Hearts I and II, the R&C, Crash, Rayman games and the GTAs work at a playable speed with these specs:
Intel i5-3230M @2.60 GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
GeForce GT 650M with 2GB VRAM

Any help would be appreciated

 

[james50a]

Lol. With those specs you can easily run dolphin as well as current AAA games. Gta5 though you could probably only get away with mid-low settings just cause of the ram. Im asuming here your running windows 32bit

 

[Hiz_95]

Lol. With those specs you can easily run dolphin as well as current AAA games. Gta5 though you could probably only get away with mid-low settings just cause of the ram. Im asuming here your running windows 32bit

It would be Windows 7 64bit. What about games such as TP? I've read that with this kind of cpu I'd get really low framerates in Hyrule field.

 

[Celice]

I don't know if the mobile series of stuff works drastically different from their desktop counterparts, or if they're just usually underpowered... in any case, you should be able to emulate the games you'd want to somewhat fine. Just don't expect a full 60fps in every game, especially if you're going to try and run the games at a higher native resolution than usual.

 

[Hiz_95]

I don't know if the mobile series of stuff works drastically different from their desktop counterparts, or if they're just usually underpowered... in any case, you should be able to emulate the games you'd want to somewhat fine. Just don't expect a full 60fps in every game, especially if you're going to try and run the games at a higher native resolution than usual.

Is the CPU sufficently powerful to run them, or is the gpu (or both) the main problem with trying to reach 60FPS on most of the games?

 

[ilman]

Is the CPU sufficently powerful to run them, or is the gpu (or both) the main problem with trying to reach 60FPS on most of the games?

The CPU is nice for emulation. Graphics Cards only matter to High-End AAA games. It should run almost anything in Dolphin at 60 FPS with no graphical boosts. And PCSX2 should run absolutely everything at 60 FPS with 2x upscaling, 4xAnti-aliasing and 4x anisotropic filtering, ya know, the ultimate settings. At least that's how my laptop runs everything and the performance gap isn't too big.

Oh, and every PC game should run at 60 FPS at Max settings. (Exclude the Crysis games and GTA V. Those will drain graphical performance a lot.)

 

[PityOnU]

In just over two weeks I'll be starting university and I'll need a laptop, from what I understand I won't be able to buy a laptop for under around £550 that can run most games on Dolphin well. I'd also like to be able to play PS2 games through PCSX2.
Will games such as FFX, FFXII, Kingdom Hearts I and II, the R&C, Crash, Rayman games and the GTAs work at a playable speed with these specs:
Intel i5-3230M @2.60 GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
GeForce GT 650M with 2GB VRAM

Any help would be appreciated

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stuff

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No, this will not run Dolphin well.

You need a beefy i7 with a laptop to get even close to playable with the vast majority of GCN games. Good luck with Wii games.

Not sure about PCSX2, though.

Source: My i7-3520M workstation struggles with even the most simple of GCN games. It can run the original Animal Crossing top notch, though (it was an N64 port)

 

[Vipera]

No, this will not run Dolphin well.

You need a beefy i7 with a laptop to get even close to playable with the vast majority of GCN games. Good luck with Wii games.

Not sure about PCSX2, though.

Source: My i7-3520M workstation struggles with even the most simple of GCN games. It can run the original Animal Crossing top notch, though (it was an N64 port)

I have a GTX 650 1GB and a i5-3570k @ 4.20Ghz and I can run all of my Wii games and some GC one like Resident Evil 4 and Madworld. The only thing that doesn't work well is the AA.

 

[PityOnU]

I have a GTX 650 1GB and a i5-3570k @ 4.20Ghz and I can run all of my Wii games and some GC one like Resident Evil 4 and Madworld. The only thing that doesn't work well is the AA.

That's a 77W desktop CPU, chief. OP is talking about mobile (aka laptop) CPU's.

 

[Vipera]

Are M versions that underpowered though?

 

[PityOnU]

Are M versions that underpowered though?

Yes

 

[ilman]

No, this will not run Dolphin well.

You need a beefy i7 with a laptop to get even close to playable with the vast majority of GCN games. Good luck with Wii games.

Not sure about PCSX2, though.

Source: My i7-3520M workstation struggles with even the most simple of GCN games. It can run the original Animal Crossing top notch, though (it was an N64 port)

Umm, I'm not sure where you're getting your facts there, buddy. I've been able to complete both Sonic Colours and Super Mario Galaxy on my specs down below with most of them running at 60 FPS. His Core-i5 seems at least as fast per core as my i7 and, since Dolphin uses no more than 2 cores, I think he'll find most games to be at least playable. Heck, I even tried to pay attention to my FPS the whole time I was playing Wind Waker and it never dropped below 55 FPS.

And a tip for the OP: Dolphin doesn't like Optimus much(ya know, the program that tells which programs to work with which GFX card you have - the integrated Intel one or the more powerful Nvidia one). For example, if you try to render in DirectX 11 with your Nvidia card, Dolphin will switch to DX9 for some reason. Just be careful with what card you're using Dolphin and your settings. I bet PityOnU doesn't open Dolphin with his Nvidia card to get such bad results.

 

[nukeboy95]

my i5 m450 (2.40) runs dolphin fine
wii games around 40FPS
gamecube around 50FPS

 

[Originality]

Intel i5-3230M scores 4016 in PassMark.
That is comparable to a Phenom II X4 955 or a Core2Quad Q9550 (within 50 points of each other).

Intel i7-3520M scores 4558 in PassMark.
An Intel i7-920 scores 5024 for comparison. This is the difference between desktop and mobile.

Intel i7-3610QM scores 7534 in PassMark.
That's higher than a Core i5-3570K at stock speeds (7120 in PassMark).

Now I can't find an M450, but M460 is 2395 in PassMark.

This gives you an idea of the strength of the varying processors. Now whilst this is purely benchmark data, emulation is heavily dependant on the strength of the CPU. After that, tweaking the settings and using the various speed hacks/tweaks to suit each game is how people get the best performance. As mentioned, Optimus does interfere with emulators (emulators are just not optimised for Optimus drivers). I can't provide any more information because I don't emulate - I use the original (hacked) consoles. The way it's meant to be played (nVidia).

Now please stop bickering with anecdotes and use a little more evidence in your arguments.

 

[Damon Vaughn]

I'm currently looking into buying a computer. I know I will be getting something with 1TB of HDD space, 8GB of DDR3 ram, and an intel core i7, and most likely nvidia graphics card. so I should be ok with running most games, but how likely am I to have hiccups with the emulator?

 

[vayanui8]

That should be enough in regards to emulator compatibility. Gamecube games in Dolphin and well supported pcsx2 games can function on a 2.0 ghz processor with the right settings, so that should work for you.

 

[CompassNorth]

I'm currently looking into buying a computer. I know I will be getting something with 1TB of HDD space, 8GB of DDR3 ram, and an intel core i7, and most likely nvidia graphics card. so I should be ok with running most games, but how likely am I to have hiccups with the emulator?

Depends on the game, but you should be fine mostly.
If it's mostly for gaming i5 is good enough, and don't rule out AMD graphics cad either.

 

[BORTZ]

This thread is over a year old, the OP probably not looking anymore.