I haven't found yet a game that runs smoothly, probably my PC is too outdatated, I've got one of the early intel core duo CPU @2.4Ghz, an Nvidia 8800GT, 4GB ram DDR2 and Win7 (I think the CPU is the bottle-neck). Still I can run 90% of PC games on 720p resolution with medium to high settings @ a good frame rate. Atm I'm happy playing on the Wii using component. Also I'm a frame rate whore, I prefer SD with a perfect frame rate, rather than HD with unstable frame rate.

I'll try using this if my copy of Xenoblade ever arrives.

Just a friendly reminder: this discussion is fine, but please don't post any links to the emulator or any ROMs that it can play, and do not request these links, as that violates the forum rules. Discussion of piracy (if you can call it that) is okay, but not direct links to it.

Dolphin is a great way to play through your Gamecube games collection if you own a big TV and a fast PC.

I'm waiting for the next iMac refresh right now and I'm really looking forward to play my Gamecube and Wii games in HD.

@ Disolitude: Is a 2.8 GhZ i5 (or whatever they gonna put into this thing) enough to emulate games in 720p at full speed? I know Dolphin only uses two cores but apparently the latest Intel CPU's need lower clock speeds to get the same results. Is that true?

For some reason the newest builds won't work for me...sort of.
I have problems with controls, I can assign whatever keys and buttons I want, but once I get in-game, I can only get past the warning screen in Wii games (leave adequate room for blah blah blah) and then nothing works (except alt+ f4 or alt-tab), for some reason GC games work.
Didn't have any problems with older builds and I use the same configuration everywhere.
Also, sub 3.0 builds (like 7612) have problems as well. In Rune Factory Frontier I can get past the intro and navigate in starting menu, but once I get into Load Game screen, the game stops, giving me info that I should connect nunchuk or classic controller (again, never had that problem before).
I wonder if I'm alone with this.

Quick question:
I know optimizing Dolphin's configuration for each game in terms of build, API and other various settings can be an arduous process and is not yet perfectly understood at this time. However, does the latest version of dolphin at least support saving separate configuration files for each game, so that the emulator can configure itself automatically when I boot the game up?
If so, can Dolphin switch the version of its different files according to the demands of each configuration file?

It should be... Sandybridge Core i's (and pretty much most) Core i's are more effective per mhz than their C2D and C2Q predecessors.

Sadly I dont see a way to save a configuration. It really should have it as getting the right setup and good frame rate takes some tweaking. But then when you always want to tweak some more to see if you can make it even better, and you screw it up... :)

Good to know. Thanks Emulators are only worth it if you can play the games at a good speed.

It's a shame that the emulator itself is very taxing on the CPU. My laptop I7-2630QM 2.0 GHZ doesn't seem to handle the emulator quite well, though I can get playable FPSs for every game (the lowest I've went has been 30 FPS with SMG 2)