As the thread title asks, would this PC be good enough for the following emulators? N64 : Project64 PS2 : PCSX2 Dreamcast : not sure, yet. GameCube : Dolphin. Wii : Dolphin MAME and a variety of true arcade emulators The PC in question; CPU : Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz overclocked to 3.2GHz Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R RAM : GSkill 4GB DDR2 RAM 1333 MHz Videocard : Undecided. Need to replace it with something that'll have HDMI or DVI output. Can get ATI 280X cards for around 175$ CDN. Power supply : Rosewill 850w PSU. If this isn't sufficient, I'll have no choice but to build an entirely new PC, but I'm trying to cut costs by simply buying a new videocard to complete the PC, if it'll be strong enough. Any and all feedback would be appreciated.
Hmmmm,... really too bad. Oh well,... my HTPC is much more powerful so I'll be switching them up so that my current HTPC becomes my arcade PC and the old PC I mentioned above will become my HTPC. I found an old ATI Radeon X1950 XT videocard which is DXVA-enabled so watching 1080P stuff on my TV should be a cinch. My current HTPC features a quad-core i7 4770K CPU, so that should be more than enough, especially when coupled with 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a 280X videocard, right? Or will there still be some games or emulators that will be off-limits to me?
That should be sufficient for the emulators you mentioned. CPU is more important than the GPU for emulators like PCSX2 and Dolphin, and that CPU is pretty fast. Outside of emulators, you should be able to run most games at decent settings with those specs.
I have a Radeon 3870 and software decoding is much faster for me than DXVA2 (Pentium E5300 (core2 Duo gen) @3500Mhz). But I think MPC became slower.
I can't comment on most of the emulators, but it's bad news about Project 64, I'm afraid. Project 64, or any other current N64 emulator, is less than perfect. Some games run very well, some games won't run at all, and some games have graphical, audio, or timing glitches. N64 emulation isn't too great, and to get different games running properly, you sometimes need to use different plugins and settings, or even use a different emulator. For a good list of what to use per game, see: http://bhemuhelp.co.nf/n64mgcl/N64ConfigList.htm And for more information, see: http://www.emutalk.net/threads/53298-N64-Configuration-List-and-Tutorials http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38013 A lot of people, myself included, still use a real N64 as emulation is so problematic, and I'd really recommend a real N64 + an Everdrive 64* + a Makopad 64**. Then again, you might find that you can emulate evey game you like, with just a little initial emulator configuring. There are currently two N64 emulators being worked on that promise to yield 100% compatibility - CEN64, and MESS, but both of them promise to need really powerful PCs to run at full speed, and both are also still at an early stage, though you can download and try their current versions to see how they run on your PC. * The Everdrive 64 is a flash cartridge for the N64, and it not only allows you to have all N64 games on one cartridge (in effect), but you can also play the homebrew N64 software (i.e. Doom - http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1886.0), modded commercial games (i.e. Goldeneye X, F-Zero X Climax, the English translations of Sin and Punishment, and Wonder Project 2, etc), and unreleased games (40 Winks, etc), and prototypes (Glover 2, O.D.T., Dragon Sword 64, Tamiya Racing 64, etc). And it lets you play games of any region, as long as your TV supports those games. It's software also allows you to copy the contents of a controller pak (the contents are game saves) to the ED64's SD card (and vice versa, so you can store backups of the controller pak on a PC or Mac, and restore them at will), and even has full Gameshark support (though at the moment the Gameshark support doesn't include the ability to select individual cheats (you have to manually edit a text file to select which cheats to activate), or to make your own cheats, though you can type them in from a magazine or the Internet). The Everdrive 64 is *fantastic*, and really transforms the N64! For more information, see: http://micro-64.com/features/everdrive64.shtml ** I'm no fan of the official N64 pad, but the Makopad 64 (the second picture in the first post at: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?53810-Best-3rd-part-accessories-for-any-console) is superb.
That's very interesting to me. Care to elaborate? DXVA was supposed to isolate the decoding exclusively to the GPU as opposed to the CPU, thereby giving the ability to older computers with outdated CPUs to decode and play 1080P video content flawlessly. Thank you so much for that info. I had absolutely no idea! Project 64 always worked great for me, but I admittedly haven't played dozens of games on it so I was most likely lucky to be playing games that run well on it. The reason why I much prefer emulators is due to the fact that the games look so much nicer with the higher resolutions. You can also save wherever you are. Loading times are faster as well, though it's not really an issue with N64 games, usually. Thanks for the info on the Everdrive 64, but in truth, it's never been a platform that I adored. It has a few interesting games including one of my all-time favorites, Mario 64, but it's not a console that I fell in love with and certainly was a huge letdown from a games library standpoint after the SNES. But again, thanks for all that info. It's certainly worth considering. Maybe I'll opt for the Everdrive 64 at some point. Just not right now.
I've run 64-bit Dolphin on a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo E6400 (first-gen 65nm C2D from 2006)/128 MB Nvidia Quadro/6 GB DDR2 RAM setup with Windows XP x64 +DX10. It performed very well running Gamecube games. PCSX2 was 50/50. Your computer has some potential. http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Gigabyte/GA-EP45-UD3R(rev._1.0).html Your can mod your BIOS to support a handful of Xeon 5400s, if need be. Otherwise, you can upgrade to a wealth of more powerful C2D/C2Q processors that are on the cheap side these days. DDR2 is also cheap. Upgrade to 8GB-16GB and you'll be set. Those upgrades combined with a good graphics card and an SSD would make it a fighter. Then if you're up for it, get a USB 3.0 card, a kicker sound card, and multi-boot Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Well, as I said, I'll be using another PC instead and will be using the aforementioned PC as an HTPC. See post #4. Why would I need to multi-boot? No point to it, AFAIK.
Single threaded IPC performance is more important. Get a Core i5-3570k. Overclock it to 4+Ghz. And you will be set.
If a single OS is a container filled with smaller containers, a multi-boot is a container of several containers filled with smaller containers! Is VM multi-booting Zen? It is a small container, yet it contains it's container and it's containers' containers. A computer's personal computer. It is all, despite being one. Now VR is big and everyone desperately wants to be the human equivalent of VM. Going from our much bigger yet more limited container into a much smaller one with, in our case, an infinite amount of possibilities at disposal. I hope people don't get too distracted playing virtual God, quite frankly... I want 3D pencils.
Video content can be encoded with different complexity. I think old DXVA implemetations were good for blu-rays but videos with high encodeing complexity is too much for my 3870.
I run katamari damacy/ffx on my 2ghz P6100; 3GB ram and radeon HD 5470 laptop with full speed So depending on your quality preference, your first setup will probably do ok. But if you want 16AA and quality of that sorts, you will need to use your other pc.
The config for your HTPC is really overkill, this is more a gaming machine. It's a good idea to switch an HTPC don't really need a lot of horse power, you should be ok with your Core 2 Duo
Or how about stop being so cheap and buy yourself a proper hardware (console) that actually run games.
Comments like this are not constructive. The OP asked a legitimate question - answer it or don't bother replying at all. The OP explained the motives - whilst I wouldn't necessarily agree that emulators look better than consoles (and leaving the legality issue aside), it's a fair reason. It could also have been for development purposes, of course. Strat, I've modified your posts slightly. Please use the edit or multi quote buttons if nobody has replied since your last message, especially within a week. And be a bit more patient for a response - don't bump within a week if nobody replies. Thanks!
I have both the UDR3 and the USB3 models of this mobo. They are booth pretty good, I use the UDR3 as a HTPC running a core2duo (I can't remember which one but is the best one you could get). It has 4gb of ddr2 Gskill ram and a 1gb GT220 gpu i use the USB3 (which has DDR3 memory and a few more features) as my main PC running OSX and Windows 7. Currently I have a core2quad 660 fitted overclocked to around 3.2ghz and 4gb of ram, I'm soon to be modding the mobo to take a 771 XEON Quad core X5470 @3.3ghz both these motherboards can take Xeon processors, they are basically the same mobo just have slight variations. The Usb3 is fitted with a Asus GTX 550ti 1gb card @910mghz stock or up too 1.6ghz Oc it runs emulators pretty nicely, although I mainly use it as a media server/editing machine.. Xeon X5470 are about $50 online and it only costs about $5 to mod the motherboard to accept the processor
