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Forums - PC - PC Build for Emulators.

sc94597 on 21 March 2015
HoloDust said:
sc94597 said:
HoloDust said:
Decent build, but go with i5 - last time I was checking, both of those emulators can use up to 3 cores, possibly more in latest versions.

In Dolphin the only setting which utilizes 3 cores is if you enable the DSP on an exclusive thread. Most developers said they'd need to do a lot of work to implement more features which would take advantage of multi-threading (the Wii's CPU was single-core/single-threaded.) They're asked quite frequently with people who have mobile i7's. Considering it would cost at least $150 more for an overclockable i5, for no performance gain (i5's and G3258 at the same clock speed perform similarly) it would make no sense unless he wanted to play future PC releases. 

PCSX2 has some hacks which use more cores, but again the marginal price/marginal performance is way too high, and one can easily play most PS2 games at 1080p on a G3258 with 4 x AA. 

Actually, OpenMP Texture Decoder uses available cores, if there's any.

But given that you figured it out all by yourself, not sure what was the purpose of your thread, tbh - yes, that CPU is adequate. i5 is just better.

Open MP is experimental still and has glitches. It makes no sense to spend $140 more for a CPU if you get literally the same speed with an i5/G3258 in the same application. The reason why I made this thread was to show people a build that specifically is not designed for future gaming, but is plenty upgradeable for future games, yet can still play emulators and current games now. 



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Eddie_Raja on 21 March 2015
sc94597 said:
Eddie_Raja said:
I highly reccommend getting an Athlon x4 750k or an FX-6300 over that Pentium. Modern games no longer work anymore with dual cores and I guarantee you will want to play a modern game with a set-up that strong at some point.

Neither of the processors are as great at Dolphin (even when overclocked) though. I'm unsure how they perform for PCSX2. My friend is not a PC gamer other than he likes MMORPGs. But if he does become a PC gamer it literally is an upgrade away to an i5k, and he can emulate games just as well. Currently, the only game which doesn't work on an G3258 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, and the upcoming beta patch has fixed that. Future games likely won't work though. 


If he wants a emulator box then I don't get why he is getting a 270X and 8GB of ram.  Get 4GB and a 260X and save that dough.  Pick what you really want.



Prediction for console Lifetime sales:

Wii:100-120 million, PS3:80-110 million, 360:70-100 million

[Prediction Made 11/5/2009]

3DS: 65m, PSV: 22m, Wii U: 18-22m, PS4: 80-120m, X1: 35-55m

I gauruntee the PS5 comes out after only 5-6 years after the launch of the PS4.

[Prediction Made 6/18/2014]

sc94597 on 21 March 2015
Eddie_Raja said:
sc94597 said:

Neither of the processors are as great at Dolphin (even when overclocked) though. I'm unsure how they perform for PCSX2. My friend is not a PC gamer other than he likes MMORPGs. But if he does become a PC gamer it literally is an upgrade away to an i5k, and he can emulate games just as well. Currently, the only game which doesn't work on an G3258 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, and the upcoming beta patch has fixed that. Future games likely won't work though. 


If he wants a emulator box then I don't get why he is getting a 270X and 8GB of ram.  Get 4GB and a 260X and save that dough.  Pick what you really want.

Texture packs and pixel lighting can be intensive. And I made the build upgradeable, in the instance he does want to play future games. I could've went with an r9 270 or an r7 260x, but the largest difference in price would've been $70 and considering the performance difference between an r7 260x and an r9 270x, I thought it was worth $70. 



Eddie_Raja on 21 March 2015
sc94597 said:
Eddie_Raja said:


If he wants a emulator box then I don't get why he is getting a 270X and 8GB of ram.  Get 4GB and a 260X and save that dough.  Pick what you really want.

Texture packs and pixel lighting can be intensive. And I made the build upgradeable, in the instance he does want to play future games. I could've went with an r9 270 or an r7 260x, but the largest difference in price would've been $70 and considering the performance difference between an r7 260x and an r9 270x, I thought it was worth $70. 

LOL then dont get a POS pentium if AT ALL HE WANTS FUTURE GAMES!



Prediction for console Lifetime sales:

Wii:100-120 million, PS3:80-110 million, 360:70-100 million

[Prediction Made 11/5/2009]

3DS: 65m, PSV: 22m, Wii U: 18-22m, PS4: 80-120m, X1: 35-55m

I gauruntee the PS5 comes out after only 5-6 years after the launch of the PS4.

[Prediction Made 6/18/2014]

darkknightkryta on 21 March 2015

Depends, I wouldn't trust the hardware rendering in PCSX 2 to be honest. Gabest had to take emulated effects out of the HW plugin. The extreme is Okami, but there's more missing than people think. I've actually noticed missing effects in Final Fantasy XII. The lighting in Devil May Cry 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3's gone. Software plugin actually benefits from multiple cores (Except Street Fighter Alpha collection, that needs one thread or else you'll get frame rate issues).



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sc94597 on 21 March 2015
Eddie_Raja said:
sc94597 said:

Texture packs and pixel lighting can be intensive. And I made the build upgradeable, in the instance he does want to play future games. I could've went with an r9 270 or an r7 260x, but the largest difference in price would've been $70 and considering the performance difference between an r7 260x and an r9 270x, I thought it was worth $70. 

LOL then dont get a POS pentium if AT ALL HE WANTS FUTURE GAMES!

Is your reading comprehension really that bad or are you intentionally ignoring information? He wants a PC that can run Dolphin/PCSX2 maxed. He does not want to spend more than $600 ( so an i5k is out of the picture right now.) An FX 6300 will not max Dolphin. Furthermore, an FX 6300 is on an aging chipset which is not future proof. In the less than likely case that he wants to play certain future games which do not support dual cores, all he has to do is upgrade said G3258 to a Haswell I5k or i7k. That is by far a more future-proof solution than going with an archaic chipset. It will also show more performance in both the short-term (when he wants to play emulators) and the long term. So right now he can play the games he wants to play (emulators) and in the future he can upgrade easily to play the games he wants to play. 



HollyGamer on 21 March 2015
sc94597 said:

A friend of mine wanted me to make a build for him that would allow him to play Dolphin and PCSX2 at full speed 1080p. He was getting a new PC anyway for web-browsing, school, and as a media device, but he asked if it were possible to build something under $600 that would play Dolphin/PCSX2 in addition to some low-level games (LoL and MMORPG's mostly.) I'll share it here for those who are interested. 

The total cost without the OS, Keyboard, Mouse, and Optical Drive (if you want to include one) is $482.91 after rebates (which add up to $55.00.) 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/83P399

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/83P399/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($62.99 @ NCIX US) 

Motherboard: ASRock Z97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($74.99 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($59.99 @ Micro Center) 

Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($69.98 @ NCIX US) 

Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card  ($143.98 @ Newegg) 

Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($35.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ NCIX US) 

Total: $482.91

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-21 16:20 EDT-0400

He can always upgrade his CPU to an i5 Haswell or Broadwell, in the future. The motherboard should overclock his Pentium G3258 by 30% with a click of a button, making it one of the best CPU's for Dolphin/PCSX2 and the CPU won't bottleneck the games he wants to play. His GPU is also capable of playing almost all intensive games if he wants to at good resolutions, although for future games he might want to upgrade his CPU, as they become more multi-threaded. Everything fits fine, although the card is cutting it close to fit without removing some HDD slots. He prioritized a smaller case, so I went with a Micro ATX board. He specifically mentioned that he's not intrested in an SSD (currently) if it's going to cost $100 more, so I opted out of that.  We get free operating systems at our college, so all he needs to do is buy a keyboard, and mouse and he's good to go. 

Try to use 4 core for emulator, emulator always heavy on CPU and hyper treading.

out of topic is there any new news when PS3  or Xbox 360 emulator ready for consumer.



fatslob-:O on 21 March 2015
HollyGamer said:

Try to use 4 core for emulator, emulator always heavy on CPU and hyper treading.

out of topic is there any new news when PS3  or Xbox 360 emulator ready for consumer.

Hyper threading is useless and the other 7th gen emulators are slow and not have a whole lot of compatibility ...



ReimTime on 21 March 2015

Good build. Kinda off topic but what kind of monitor does he have? Doesn't really matter but I like reading about other people's setups :p



#1 Amb-ass-ador

Eddie_Raja on 21 March 2015
sc94597 said:
Eddie_Raja said:

LOL then dont get a POS pentium if AT ALL HE WANTS FUTURE GAMES!

Is your reading comprehension really that bad or are you intentionally ignoring information? He wants a PC that can run Dolphin/PCSX2 maxed. He does not want to spend more than $600 ( so an i5k is out of the picture right now.) An FX 6300 will not max Dolphin. Furthermore, an FX 6300 is on an aging chipset which is not future proof. In the less than likely case that he wants to play certain future games which do not support dual cores, all he has to do is upgrade said G3258 to a Haswell I5k or i7k. That is by far a more future-proof solution than going with an archaic chipset. It will also show more performance in both the short-term (when he wants to play emulators) and the long term. So right now he can play the games he wants to play (emulators) and in the future he can upgrade easily to play the games he wants to play. 

Get an FX-6300 because it is half the price of the i5 and if threaded correctly it performs just as well.  YES, the FX-6300 will run emulators a LITTLE slower, but it will run modern games WAY WAY better.



Prediction for console Lifetime sales:

Wii:100-120 million, PS3:80-110 million, 360:70-100 million

[Prediction Made 11/5/2009]

3DS: 65m, PSV: 22m, Wii U: 18-22m, PS4: 80-120m, X1: 35-55m

I gauruntee the PS5 comes out after only 5-6 years after the launch of the PS4.

[Prediction Made 6/18/2014]