What kind of PC setup do I need for GC and PS2 emulation?

I'm not just talking "squeaks by with a few framerate drops here and there", i'm talking consistently smooth emulation (or as good as it can get) while also using screencap software. I plan to upload videos of games from those consoles (and older consoles) being hacked right on the spot, and with my current laptop, i can barely get by with running Animal Crossing as it is, and I have random framerate issues even with that. add in screencapture software, and the framerate goes through the floor.

so yeah, what's a good setup?

Well depends on your budget and how much are you willing to spend on a new PC. Mostly you need a dedicated Gpu and a 4 core , 4 threads CPU.
Tell me your budget and will try my best to find you the best parts for your money.

just like write Max its depends of your money however you can buy raspberry pi and by video output take signal to your pc im mean catch video output to screencapture device something like that :http://www.ebay.com/gds/Top-10-Video...4826014/g.html you will take video output as composite or s -video or hdmi then you dont need pc :portal:
but if you really need PC amd phenom x4,8gb ram,8GB video card
or i7/i5,16 or 32 GB of ram, video cards in sli/crossfire
but also this : intel core quad,8gb ram,4gb video card

Ryzen (Ryzen 5 1400x or better; Ryzen 3 will not do!), 8gb of ddr4-3000MHz Ram + any AMD RX-series GPU will do quite well, too.

Not really looking to put too much of a cap on the budget. For most modern games, I have a PS4, but there's many games that I want to play that need a competent PC. Using a laptop right now, so I'll need everything except a mouse. Don't need speakers either, I got some nice headphones (paid $70 for them).

I seen a PC from Dell for $600, but it didn't look like it would work for the kinds of games I'm wanting to run. And if what I'm reading here is any indication, what I want to run aside from the Emulators needs about the same kind of power you're all suggesting.

So I figure i'm gonna have to pay about $1,000 at least, and that doesn't include the monitor and keyboard. I don't want to limit it. The price is gonna be huge either way, so it's not really an issue. Just a matter of taking the time to get the cash.

You don't need to go too crazy on the hardware like some people have mentioned. Configuring the emulator properly and actually having some understanding of how the emulators work is helpful.

For both emulators, Dolphin and Pcsx2 here are some points to remember:

They are generally quite dependent on the CPU. Keep in mind they only support upto 3 cores. Sure a Quad or above may be helpful but that's only because they may help running other system processes. A modern I5 would be fine. Intel is generally better for both over Amd. A single powerful Intel or 2 core over some 6 or 8 core nonsense from Amd would still be the same or even better. It's not always the clock speed or amount of cores but the micro architecture of the chip. Quality over quantity basically. There are even a few games in order to run properly need in the options of dolphin to be set to a single core too.

Ram isn't as huge a deal 8gb or hell even 4gb would still be fine.

Neither emulator supports sli/xfire so no point there really. A decent dedicated card is still handy. Ati or Nvidia doesn't matter. There are a few games that do take advantage of a decent gpu though and fully utilize it like FF12. Like stated above an Amd rx series or Nvidia equivelant will do nicely.

Games. There will always be problem games. Although compatibility has really improved over the last couple years for both emulators some games simply don't work or have issues. As the emulators get worked on this should improve. Some are more easily run over others too of course, like comparing Wind Waker to Twilight Princess - WW will run easier and so on.

Also hiking a game real high enhancement wise like increasing the resolution and AA etc will require more and more resources too of course.

So yeah just a few points to keep in mind. And whoever mentioned a Raspberry Pi should have their head examined.

You would need a step up from my rig to get all the lumps out of certain trouble games.

I have a quad core 2.6 Ghz CPU and a 750 Ti Geforce (Gigabyte Windforce) and that setup runs many a game nicely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zaladane

And whoever mentioned a Raspberry Pi should have their head examined.

---

Wishful thinking even if the Pi is a amazing little piece of hardware. :wacko:

I'm running an AMD A8-3870 APU 4cores@3GHz with 8GB RAM. Before my GPU derped I had a GTX 460v2. Built about 6 years ago. I ran Super Mario Bros Wii pretty well, except certain areas would kill the framerate, like a ghost house area with a falling floor and 20+ ghosts dropped to 4-6 FPS. Running current hardware of similar spec's I would expect to get smooth performance in those areas.

That said, if you plan on making videos or streaming, you will definitely want a dedicated video capture card. Basically like a GPU but made specifically for video capture and encoding in real time. Run this with a standard GPU, but as stated above the CPU is more important for running emulators. You can also set affinity through the task manager, if your emulator will only use 3 cores then you should set your video capture software to use the other cores.

Also experiment with your paging file and Readyboost. Some games can run better with no paging file or a very large paging file. The reason is that paging files essentially double the amount of READ/WRITE off of the HDD, which can cripple performance. If you have enough RAM or Readyboost space you can get better performance without a paging file, but certain very large operations can require a paging file if they exceed your RAM size. Paging file won't be as bad of a performance hit if you have an SSD, since those have access times that blow an HDD away.

BTW, which power settings are you using on your laptop? Energy Saving settings can reduce the power to your CPU which effectively reduces the GHz rating.

I'm using a semi-old GeForce GTX and an i7, and I can run damn near any game at full speed with very little trouble. I've made backups of practically every PS2 game I own, and I've tested pretty much all of those in PCSX2. The few that have given me problems were solved with a little bit of tinkering with the settings. I recommend setting up separate builds for difficult to work with games so that you don't need to keep changing the settings every time you switch to something different.