is an e8400 enough for Dolphin & PCSX2?

[severus]

I saw a pretty good deal on eBay for an e8400 with an IP35-E and 8 gigs of ram for under $50. I know these can be overclocked to around 4ghz~ It's roughly Pentium & i3 performance if I'm not mistaken

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe close to a Haswell Celeron, non-overclocked, but can't really hold a candle to a Skylake i3.

 

[Torn Mind]

No. Absolutely not. My university used to have them. Even for browsing, once you get 20 tabs, it gets "tedious". Not to mention, Intel mobo graphics are hot garbage and your video watching experience will be painful without a 5450 or comparable.

They are compareable to a G550 Celeron. Maybe slightly faster and a more zip due to cache, but those emulators will bog down. Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance gets about 30 fps with such a level of CPU. You want to be unbridled? You buy the latest i5 and procure parts for overclocking. If on a budget, you look at older i5 K CPUs and overclock them.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

An E8400 would handle Dolphin and PCSX2 pretty well especially once overclocked. There's only a few games that would need considerably more CPU power. Make sure you get a decent graphics card.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Double post

 

[MajinCry]

Uh. Dolphin and PCSX2 want them some nice CPU grunt. Tenkaichi 3 struggles on my Phenom II, and that's a fairly un-intensive fighter. The Last Story just crushes it, and I don't think a Core 2 Duo is gonna have that much better a time.

Supposedly, what you want is a Haswell CPU. That architecture has a ~30% speed increase in emulation over Ivybridge, fer some reason. And there are a couple of games that don't do well with hardware rendering, such as Champions Of Norrath for PCSX2; have to go full on software rendering to get that game to play.

Though, it might suffice for Gamecube games, what with the Gamecube having half the grunt of a Wii, which should mean there's less stress on the ol' proccy.


I guess a Haswell Pentium is the way to go for budget emulatin'.

 

[Torn Mind]

An E8400 would handle Dolphin and PCSX2 pretty well especially once overclocked. There's only a few games that would need considerably more CPU power. Make sure you get a decent graphics card.

Until he stumbles into a game that cannot run well with such hardware.

The following is a link to a discussion on Super Mario Galaxy.
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-intel-e8400-2gb-ram-nvidia-gt220-win-7-32bit-dolphin-4-0

Both your CPU and GPU are too weak for SMG and those youtube video ain't valid anymore . Latest Dolphin is more demanding than older version due to accuracy . If you not run the game at full speed , you will have lag
New SMBros has nothing to do with SMG , NSMB is a light-weight game ,SMG is a demanding game
To run SMG full speed , you need at least i3 4130 @ 3.4GHz + EVGA GTX 750 ( Recommend: i5 4670k @ 4.2GHz + GTX 750 TI)[/quote}

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Until he stumbles into a game that cannot run well with such hardware.

The following is a link to a discussion on Super Mario Galaxy.
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-intel-e8400-2gb-ram-nvidia-gt220-win-7-32bit-dolphin-4-0

As I said there are a few games that need more CPU power than the Core 2 can offer however many popular games like Melee run fine.

 

[dogen1]

Strongly game dependent. A core 2 duo will handle lightweight games fine and when overclocked should handle average-ish games. Don't expect stuff like mario galaxy, last story, shadow of the colossus, zone of the enders 2, etc.

 

[severus]

No. Absolutely not. My university used to have them. Even for browsing, once you get 20 tabs, it gets "tedious". Not to mention, Intel mobo graphics are hot garbage and your video watching experience will be painful without a 5450 or comparable.

They are compareable to a G550 Celeron. Maybe slightly faster and a more zip due to cache, but those emulators will bog down. Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance gets about 30 fps with such a level of CPU. You want to be unbridled? You buy the latest i5 and procure parts for overclocking. If on a budget, you look at older i5 K CPUs and overclock them.

I planned on throwing in a card, maybe an 8800gt since they're single slot . The IP35-E doesn't have onboard graphics. I remember having it back in the day. My current machine is actually an i5 2500k overclocked, however I just want a simple rig that I didn't invest a ton of money in, and can throw in a backpack to carry to a friends house rather than having to carry multiple oldschool video game systems. I was thinking of building a newer Pentium ITX system, but I figured if I could run games from Genesis, SNES, PS2 and a couple of Wii games

 

[VirtualLarry]

You want a rig that you can "throw in a backpack", and you're looking at using an IP35-E, a full-sized ATX motherboard???

Are you feeling OK? Or are you built like Goliath, and you can sling a full ATX computer tower on your back like nothing?

Seriously, if you want a backpackable rig, investigate a Skylake ITX rig, or STX rig. The ASRock Deskmini 110W STX, and an i3-6100, and a cheap Intel 600p PCI-E M.2 SSD is a good place to start.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10404/asrock-deskmini-110-ministx-pc-review

Edit: PS. I own one of these, and can vouch for them, they really rock! Small, efficient, high-performance (as long as you don't want a dGPU), and relatively low-cost.

 

[severus]

You want a rig that you can "throw in a backpack", and you're looking at using an IP35-E, a full-sized ATX motherboard???

Are you feeling OK? Or are you built like Goliath, and you can sling a full ATX computer tower on your back like nothing?

Seriously, if you want a backpackable rig, investigate a Skylake ITX rig, or STX rig. The ASRock Deskmini 110W STX, and an i3-6100, and a cheap Intel 600p PCI-E M.2 SSD is a good place to start.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10404/asrock-deskmini-110-ministx-pc-review

Edit: PS. I own one of these, and can vouch for them, they really rock! Small, efficient, high-performance (as long as you don't want a dGPU), and relatively low-cost.

Well I am in fairly amazing shape, however I was planning on building one of those slim profile cases people use for HTPC's that aren't much bigger than an xbox 360. I live roughly 10 mins from a Microcenter so I can get a great Intel or AMD bundle deal, but since all this machine is going to be used for is emulators and maybe CS:GO, I'm not sure I want to invest more than $100-150 in it.

 

[Torn Mind]

Aright, since your already have a primary box, my advice is different now.

If you know the games are light enough, then sure, you certainly can get on by with your proposed setup.

You can try simulating a slower cpu by downclocking the i5 until performance is no longer good enough.

You have a particular slimline case in mind? A lot of the them only accomodate microATX boards. Full sized ATX cases do exist, but they are quite a bit more rare. Certainly, if Microcenter has one, you will want to see if it fits into your bag in an acceptable manner.

 

[severus]

Stopped by Microcenter today. They had a lot of G3258's in stock and I think that's the perfect chip. They didn't have any mITX motherboards in my price range though (<50$) so I didn't jump on the chip. I picked out the Cooler Master case I'll be using too. I think I'm gonna throw a WTB ad in the for sale section for a socket 1150 mITX board around $50 and see what happens. Add 8-16gb of ram and an old 500gb SATA HDD and it's as decent machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Newegg proper has the ASRock H81-ITX board for like $55+ship, and the ECS H81 ITX board for like $45+ship on their ebay site.

I have some refurbished Asus H81 ITX boards, but those list for like $83.

 

[severus]

I threw an ad up. I'd ideally like to get my hands on a Biostar board. I really like their bios. It's the easiest I've used since ABIT. Gonna scour eBay and the for sale section.

 

[dogen1]

Uh. Dolphin and PCSX2 want them some nice CPU grunt. Tenkaichi 3 struggles on my Phenom II, and that's a fairly un-intensive fighter. The Last Story just crushes it, and I don't think a Core 2 Duo is gonna have that much better a time.

Supposedly, what you want is a Haswell CPU. That architecture has a ~30% speed increase in emulation over Ivybridge, fer some reason. And there are a couple of games that don't do well with hardware rendering, such as Champions Of Norrath for PCSX2; have to go full on software rendering to get that game to play.

That's not true anymore, the issues with snowblind games(baldur's gate, norrath, etc) were fixed months ago.

 

[severus]

I'm doing a bit of reading and it seems like the Athlon x4 880k might be on par with the g3258 in most cases, especially in other multi threaded apps. I was planning on running a Linux based OS. I'm not sure if I can use PCSX2 and Dolphin with SteamOS or not. If I do run SteamOS on this box, I'd like to be able to play some newer titles, not on high or anything, but smoothly. From what I've seen, games like GTA 5 and Civ 5, the 880k trumps even a highly overclocked g3258. They're relatively similarly priced setups.. I'm starting to debate things.

 

[dogen1]

I'm doing a bit of reading and it seems like the Athlon x4 880k might be on par with the g3258 in most cases, especially in other multi threaded apps. I was planning on running a Linux based OS. I'm not sure if I can use PCSX2 and Dolphin with SteamOS or not. If I do run SteamOS on this box, I'd like to be able to play some newer titles, not on high or anything, but smoothly. From what I've seen, games like GTA 5 and Civ 5, the 880k trumps even a highly overclocked g3258. They're relatively similarly priced setups.. I'm starting to debate things.

I think your choice will depend on how much you care about emulator performance.
A g3258 will be way better. Clock for clock, it's at least 50% faster.