Homebrew Notebook and Dolphin

[WiiUBricker]

I have a pretty old notebook with an integrated Intel graphics chip (I think it supports Pixel Shader 2.0) and approx. 2Ghz single core CPU. I can run Dolphin with a few FPS, way too few to play games on it. I am totally not going to buy a desktop PC but would like to play a few games in HD nonetheless.

According to this the system requirements are a "Fast CPU with SSE2" and a "GPU with pixel shader 2.0".

Anyone know what approx. it takes to play GC/Wii games on Dolphin with at least 30 fps? What are the specs of your weakest machine and how many fps do you get? Also I would think that the requirements for GC games are less heavy than for Wii games, no?

 

[Rydian]

In general GC games will be less heavy than Wii games, but there's exceptions... like Super Mario Sunshine for the GC employs lots of special famebuffer/EFB effects (for the heat waves) that take a toll on the GPU, while Super Paper Mario for the Wii is a 2D game with sprite manipulation so it's relatively easy on the specs.

Anyways a single-core CPU is not considered a "fast CPU" nowadays. It's like taking a ford Model T to a race, because it's "a car". Single-core indicates it's either an older Atom (which is a weak in-order processor and they didn't even get up to 2GHZ before going dual-core from what I remember) or something before the Athlon 62 X2 and Core 2 days, and those were quite a power jump leading to today.

As far as the GPU, integrated Intel graphics are the tricycle of gaming. It doesn't matter what technologies it supports, it's slow as shit because it's an integrated chipset built to be low-cost, not take up additional space in the case, and have a low power drain. You'll never see a gaming machine with integrated Intel graphics (unless you get Best Buy employees lying to you) because it's not what they were made for, if that tells you anything.

Both of your main components (CPU and GPU) are below baseline for emulation, and there's not much you can do about it other than disabling various emulation effects to try to get rid of some of the more costly effects.
http://wiki.dolphin-emulator.com/index.php?title=Performance_guide
This gives an overview of which settings do what, so you can see which ones you can try to tweak to get performance to a more playable level.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Thank you Rydian. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I want to play Dolphin on my current notebook because that's not what I meant. I will buy a notebook later this year and before I do that I wanted to collect information about the specs a notebook should have to be able to run games at at least 30 fps. It's true that integrated graphic chips are slow as hell but apparently intel's newest chip from the Ivy bridge (HD 4000 I think) won't be that bad. I don't know if it does suffice for Dolphin if a machine can run Crysis on low settings with decent speed.

 

[Rydian]

Ahhh, that's why you asked for our specs. Intel's new chipset won't be that bad compared to it's old chipsets, but it'll still be leagues below dedicated graphics of the time as usual (seriously, dedicated cards now are getting insane).

Crysis was released in 2007, it turns out part of the reason it's still so hard on graphics is because it's implementation of DX10 is incorrect (it's shoving DX10 shaders ontop of the DX9 engine so they didn't have to write two separate renderers).

Anyways for emulation the CPU is the main issue, the GPU just needs to be average or so. Any sort of Core i5 (or perhaps Core i7 since you're going with a mobile chip) should be the least you go for, whereas the graphics can be mid-range for a laptop (say, x40 for Nvidia or x600 for AMD/ATI, where the x represents the latest or second-latest series) and still work just fine.

EDIT: I didn't mention my specs because outside of benchmarks, comparing older desktop specs to newer laptop specs is kinda' iffy, but I'm on a Q8400 with 4GB of RAM and an HD 5770, and most things run okay. Smash bros brawl can get slow with four players on-screen.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Anyways for emulation the CPU is the main issue, the GPU just needs to be average or so.

Hm.. that's interesting. If a GPU needs to be average how are the chances that the newest intel chip will suffice combined with lets say a Core i3 CPU (I don't have money to waste so I'm aiming at the cheapest machine possible that will run Dolphin at decent speeds. I'm not interested in an overkill gaming notebook)?

I would really love to know how well Dolphin runs with other people's intel graphics notebooks.

 

[Rydian]

You'll want at least an i5, since we're talking the mobile forms, which are weaker than the desktop forms.