So look, I know nothing about tech specs, just not my thing.  But I have been playing with emulation, mostly Gamecube/N64 games.  I have two options.  A laptop with i7, 16 gb ram and iris xe.  The second option is a desktop i5, 8 gb ram with a 1050 TI.  I've tried to understand which is better for gaming, which again is emulation, but I don't get what anything means.  So as just a quick question, which is better?  Not looking for details, just a clean simple answer.  Thank you in advance.  

I do prefer to use the desktop, older computer the family doesn't need.  So if I mess something up, nobody cares.  

The laptop sounds like it has an onboard intel graphics card which will be shit in comparison to the 1050TI.

I would honestly use the desktop.

Loud and clear, thank you my friend.

Another dumb question. Found a laptop with a RTX 3050. Safe assumption that a RTX 3050 will decimate both iris xe and 1050? I assume it won't be close.

The 3050 should be more powerful, yes, though decimate it does not. The advantage is more like 5-30% compared to the 1050 Ti in the desktop PC.

Things are pretty nuanced when it comes to emulation performance.

For the first question I would ask which i7 and which i5? If they're from the last 8 years you should be fine. Dolphin (Wii/GC emulator) recommends 4 cores. Though Wii and Gamecube are old and don't have all that powerful CPUs, emulation requires a lot more CPU performance than the original device, especially single-threaded performance. What that means is that even if your CPU has multiple cores to run logic on, the emulator will heavily rely on 1-2 cores that will dictate your performance.

Regarding the graphics card, the 3050M will be more powerful than the 1050 Ti in a desktop (~ 1.1-5x depending on the scenario). For a bit of additional information, laptop (mobile) and desktop versions of GPUs are different so a 3050 in a desktop will be a fair bit more powerful than a 3050 in a laptop. I'd say any GPU mid-range from 2017 and beyond should be completely fine.

Of course all this also depends on how you want to emulate. If you want to increase the resolution and add additional mods to the games (better textures, etc.) then your hardware requirements would go up from what Dolphin recommends.

The processor, for the desktop, is a i5 8400 6 core.  Good or bad?

That should be plenty. The video below can give you an idea of the level of performance to expect for some games. The 1060 is better than the 1050 Ti but by about 50% and this person seems to be running their games at 4K with additional anti-aliasing and the highest I saw GPU utilization was 60% so you should be mostly good to go. 

Genuine and sincere thank you.  I am going to run with desktop, I can always pop in a newer GPU if I want to run a bit better settings.  I appreciate all the support given tech isn't my thing.    

Question: What consoles do you want to emulate down the line?