can this computer run a ps2 emulator?

[ephesians_613]

It's a Dell work station running on windows XP it's pretty old but hardly ever been used and almost brand new. Wondering if it can run a ps2 emulator?

All the info

Microsoft Windows XP
Proffesional
Version 2002
Service pack 2

Dell Optiplex GX620
Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4CPU 3.20GHz
3.19 GHZ, 1.00GB of RAM

[skullpoker]

http://pcsx2.net/getting-started.html

Minimum (most games will be unplayable slow)

Windows/Linux OS
CPU: Any that supports SSE2 (Pentium 4 and up, Athlon64 and up)
GPU: Any that supports Pixel Shader model 2.0, except Nvidia FX series (broken SM2.0, too slow anyway)
512MB RAM (note Vista needs at least 2GB to run reliably)


Recommended

Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) with the latest DirectX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2 GHz or better OR i3/i5/i7 @ 2,8 GHz or better OR AMD Phenom II @ 3,2 GHz or better
GPU: 8800gt or better (for Direct3D10 support)
RAM: 1GB on Linux/Windows XP, 2GB or more on Vista / Windows 7


Your processor is absolute bottom, your RAM is at Recommended, and no GPU listed.
So without a very good graphics card, you are probably going to get very slow performance on your computer.

[tronworld]

afraid ps2 emulation rather sucks on pc.i have a quad core 3.9ghz with 8gb ram and it still runs very sluggish.
weird though,gamecube and wii run like a dream.

[ephesians_613]

Ok thanks guys, so would I have no problem running
GameCube, Wii, ds on this computer?

How about a ps1 emulator? Am I looking at the same problems?

[Zorlon]

GC & Wii have had a lot more done to the emulation (It's been worked on for a lot longer, partly why older builds have a lower system requirement to newer builds) and are possibly easier to code/emulate

XBOX has not even got a fully working emulator for it

PS2 is still in development and so far still pushes the system though the hacks do help even though some can make it unstable for some games depending on what is enabled and the game played.

Dreamcast even though it is an older system is still not that perfect and even runs slower that GC/Wii (and or requires a higher end PC than GC Wii emulation)

Just going by the age of a system or even how powerful the system was is not something to go by as to how well it will emulate there are so many factors to take in

How complex the machine is to start with
tech documentation availability
know how on coding
most use simulation as well as emulation

Take GBA emulation, this came out very very quick but tech docs had been leaked before the console even hit the shelves and it wasn't that complex to emulate though early emulation was a little slow it was playable from the first GBA rom dump

Saturn emulation, came out very very late for a long time we only had a hacked up version of an official emulator from Sega that wasn't that good to start with even though it was originally packed with a game those games did not have very good emulation and did have issues so the hacked version (GiriGiri it was called) only ran so much and usually with graphical and sound issues throughout, the first good to great ones are recently made emulators such as SSF and Yabause

Dreamcast emulation is another one that took a very long time to arrive went through several stages by different devs to finally give us something worth while in the form of Demul and NullDC, both are higher end compared with GC/Wii for system requirements even though the target console died off bbefore the GC was even released

PSX even though emulating started years ago is still not perfect there are still troublesome games and glitches via emulation that are yet to be resolved in any emulator of the PSone/PSX/PS1/Playstation whatever you want to call it

[ephesians_613]

Hey thanks for all the info. I'm still wondering though will my computer be able to handle a ps1, GC or Wii emulator? Or should I stick to using it as a classic gaming pc like SNES, NES, GBA, Sega Genesis?

Also correct me if I'm wrong but I should have no issues running an N64 emulator?

[Zorlon]

You should be ok for the other systems

Only one worthy of note is GC/Wii the rest go without saying too much that your system is fine for those

GC/Wii you may want to use older builds at times depending on the game and how well your PC handles those also take a lot of notes from the official compat list and setup guides
Also note there are some problem games with only part solutions or yet to be resolved issues

N64 emulation is fine for your system specs but N64 emulation has it's own issues for certain games and has issues with a small number of games with only so much you can do from a users point on view to fix those, for example Resident Evil 2 with have some form of errors no matter what you do though it is playable I guess so do expect some problematic games

[skullpoker]

GC/Wii can both be emulated from Dolphin. They had the same hardware with a new controller, as I understand it. I had problems with New Super Mario Wii not loading save states that I fixed by changing Config options related to drawing poly's, though now I cannot see blue coins. There is also some slowdown on crowded screens(falling elevator full of Boos) on my

AMD A8-3870 APU, 4 cores @3GHz
8192MB RAM
GeForce GTX 460 v2 w/ 4049 MB

PS1 emulation should work fine for you.