How much GPU do console emulators need?

[shortylickens]

NES and Snes emulators dont need BIOS files. They sure as hell need ROMS and taking those would be illegal.

Unless you own the cartridge and also have one of those ROM ripper devices. In my whole life I've only met one person with those things.

 

[sweenish]

All the people talking about their "back-in-the-day" emulation need to consider that most of the fast emulators back then were just big hack-jobs, ZSNES and most N64 emulators included. ePSXe was the epitome of a hack-job emulator.

With that said, you still don't need a lot of horsepower to properly emulate systems up to about the N64. I don't know if the GPU plays in N64 emulation or not, but I don't imagine needing a lot. Going to PS2+, though the CPU will have to be much stronger and you'll want a GPU that costs at least $100 (<-- total guess) for basic scaling and whatnot.

Dolphin will eat whatever you can give it, but the results are glorious.

 

[JeffMD]

Sweenish, considering the amount of technical docs that were available, read NONE, there was no chance for any kind of legit solution. Heck I am pretty sure commercial emulators that the consoles today use are based off the same hack jobs. I don't think anyone has gotten the genesis sound chip emulation %100.

 

[sweenish]

You appear to be missing the whole point of my post.

Those hack-job emulators could run on lesser hardware because of how they were built. That was my point.

The NES is now cycle accurate. As is the SNES. And quite a few other old consoles and handhelds. The Genesis page on this wiki isn't layed out the same, so I can't speak to how far along Genesis emulation has come in the last decade. Pretty darn close, from the looks of it, though.

Many of the necessary chips have since been capped, and are well documented by the community.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Ok here is my dilemma... according to nintendo, emulators are considered illegal and a copy write infringement. However thats nintendo spewing dung again like they did to youtube streamers.

Here's my stance and the forums until someone on a higher pay grade steps in.

Emulators themselves are software and no copyright infringement is committed until the actual context of games is taken into play.

So you guys are free to talk about emulators, but leave the games out of it, especially places where u can find the game. I don't care if you own the game and want a hard drive copy, just dont talk about ANY of the games which the emulators can play, and keep it strict to the emulators.

So far you g(uys/als) have been good so i shall let u guys talk about it, but the moment i see games being mentioned i will lay down clint eastwood on you guys with a .44 infraction hand cannon.

PC Gaming Moderator Aigo

Emulators tend to be the product of reverse engineering. According to US law, reverse engineering is 100% legal in a cleanroom setting, IE, absent of any information or schematics that have been obtained illegally.

Example: If an engineer handed a copy of the N64 schematics to a private party without permission of Nintendo, and said private party uses that information to build an emulator, Nintendo would be obligated to act upon that and issue a Cease and Desist, or something to that effect.

In PCSX2, using higher resolution scalings can brutally hammer the memory bandwidth of a GPU. This is due to the nature of the bandwidth-heavy nature of graphics rendering back before real-time shaders were a thing. In particular, the PS2 had a monstrous memory bus to it's eDRAM (48 GB/s) and even with it's target 640x480i resolution, could be thoroughly consumed in heavy overdraw scenarios. Many effects were implemented to take advantage of the PS2's capability to handle overdraw.