What minimum specs should i aim for with PS2 and N64 emulation?

[megaphoenix]

hopefully this is the right subforum for this question. But i have several handhelds already for emulation of the older (weaker) systems that work well enough, but none can handle PS2 or N64 games.

what im considering is getting a cheap bland laptop to play those games, but im not sure how recommended that is as different games have different levels of compatibility and so on.

for example, i found a cheap laptop with onboard graphics, 1.5GHZ cpu and 4gb of ram. are we at a point with technology that this would suffice? or would there be a higher recommended spec level to not have to deal with slowdown issues (unrelated to general compatibility) with, for example, PJ64 and PCSX2?

 

[AxlSt00pid]

That laptop is enough to play (almost) every N64 game out there, but it needs more resources to play PS2 games

 

[zlaco123]

Just buy ps2,its cheap af

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

So which is the best N64 emulator?

 

[DarthDub]

"Cheap" and Gaming Laptop don't go in the same sentence. It'd probably be cheaper to build a desktop PC.

 

[Axido]

"Cheap" and Gaming Laptop don't go in the same sentence. It'd probably be cheaper to build a desktop PC.

That portability, though.
PS2 emulation shouldn't be that much of a problem for most games. I've seen a Microsoft Surface Pro with an i5 and 4GB of RAM play PS2 games decently at full speed (frameskipping could have been enabled, though).
If you don't mind minor framedrops, you won't need a dedicated GPU, but an actual Core i CPU. Otherwise a really cheap solution is not really an option.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

We need way more information here than just "1.5ghz cpu". Give us a link or the full spec list of the laptops you're looking to get, as otherwise we couldn't tell you jack. Most non-Ryzen AMD laptop CPUs will be garbage for PS2 (since they're nearly all APUs, which are garbage), as they have extremely low IPC, and most mobile Celeron/Pentium CPUs will struggle with a majority of PS2 games so if either of those are your choices, don't bother.

At best, for PS2 emulation, you'll want either a Ryzen-based laptop (unlikely to be cheap, since they're basically a couple months old at best) or an i3/i5/i7 based laptop. You can find a lot of older 4th/5th gen i3/i5/i7 laptops for relatively cheapish these days (I picked up a laptop with a 4th gen i3 for only $150), which would be your best case scenario for PS2 emulation if you don't want to spend a lot of money.

N64 should be playable with most any laptop made in the last 10 years or so.

 

[the_randomizer]

So which is the best N64 emulator?

It's complicated, but any emulator that supports plugins like Azimer's Audio 0.70 and GlideN64 should suffice. They're the only plugins that support LLE Audio (Gauntlet Legends) and LLE graphics for games like Rogue Squadron.

 

[Hungry Friend]

Unless something's changed recently you still need a fairly good CPU to run games like Shadow of the Colossus or hell, even Tekken Tag(likely due to the filter Namco applied to the game to reduce the jaggies in versions outside of Japan). Most shit should run alright with a modest PC but if you want to run SOTC at 1080p your average laptop ain't gonna cut it. PCSX2 can be awfully finicky & It's much more CPU than GPU dependent.

I do not know the exact requirements for the more demanding games hence why I'm not being that specific.

Side Note: Demul is THE most annoyingly wonky emulator on the planet. I'm running a 4790K(stock turbo speeds, so between 4.2-4.4ghh), 16gb RAM and a GTX 10606gb and I STILL can't get VF4 Final Tuned to run right. Speed is fine but graphical glitches out the ass, and it seems to be a problem with Nvidia GPUs as a whole. AMD cards seem to run it just fine.

 

[laudern]

If you are serious, just buy a phat ps2 and do the freeboot with a HDD. And for the n64, get any n64 console and buy an everdrive 64 cart. If you are ultra serious about n64, get the hdmi conversion kit. That would be the absolute best n64 set up.

I'm considering the hdmi conversion kit, but the price is putting me off. $350 to send in the console for it to be modded and returned.