The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I write about this subject a lot. What's most important for modern PCSX2/Dolphin emulation is processing power;
not the GPU/Video-Card.
The main reason for this is that you're trying to emulate the various (for example) graphic/processor/sound engines & then, run them in parallel. This takes a lot of processing power.
The thing is; is that PCSX2, Dolphin, and most of the "high-end" emulators rely heavily on
processing power, they're particularly designed for dual-core systems, with little to no plans for quad-core support (PCSX2) You'll be able to run games that make use of speedhacks fairly easily, but realistically you'd have better luck with an i7-620m, i7-640m, i7-920XM or i7-940XM. (The XM more for the unlocked multiplier).
The recommended specifications for PCSX2 is a 3.2 Ghz dual core. But to be fair, recommended specifications and playable specifications per game are two very different concepts. Moving on; things like Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII & Kingdom Hearts should be fairly playable; but only with a fair amount of speed-hacks & at a lower resolution.
To sum things up; Performance = Processor. Resolution = Graphics Card. Ultimately, though; on a laptop you won't want to push the resolution all that much because it'll end up sacrificing FPS/Performance; which varies widely depending on the game.
You have to define "worth it" - then look at the compatibility guides as well as what you consider playable; figure out which speed-hacks you're fine with; whether you want to run sound or not; things like that.
From what I've read in the past month or two on the PCSX2 forum is that they new version has support for quad core, and several people have noted that they have played games with their i7 quad-core laptops. Due to my laziness, I have Kingdom Hearts and PCSX2 both sitting in my Games folder but I have yet to try it out, even though I was the one who was spazzing out about the same issue and finding out everything I could in the couple of weeks before receiving my laptop, but after receiving it I havent had the chance to actually try it out. I was thinking of trying to get a PS3 controller so I could play all my games properly, maybe thats what I was waiting for.....
I'll check it out sometime this week hopefully and get back to you on the results
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
