PS2 and Wii emulation

I want to be able to emulate Playstation 2, Wii, and older consoles perfectly on a laptop. I am more concerned about PS2 emulation, Wii is just an afterthought. I use PCSX2 for PS2 emulation and Dolphin for Wii/Gamecube emulation.

My current laptop is a 1.5 years old Acer Aspire 5742G with the following specs:
- Intel i5-460m CPU
- 4GB DDR3 RAM
- 640GB 5400RPM hard drive
- NVIDIA GeForce GT-420M graphics

I am able to emulate Playstation 2 with PCSX2 with varying results. I set the screen resolution to native PS2 resolution with no anti-aliasing. Recommended speedhacks were enabled.

Final Fantasy X was playable to full completion but ran at ~80% speed most of the time and occasionally at full speed at less demanding scenes. There were a lot of demanding scenes that ran at ~50% speed such as Aeon summoning scenes. Alien Hominid for Playstation 2 ran consistently at an unplayable slow speed of ~30% of full speed. This is surprising since Alien Hominid is a 2D game. Ico for Playstation 2 ran at ~60% most of the time and ~75% speed even at very simple scenes. I would consider it playable but not fast enough to be enjoyable like FFX.

Wii and Gamecube did not run very well. Super Smash Bros Brawl and Melee runs at ~95% speed on simple maps with two players. Speed drops by ~10% for every player that is added to the game. Complex maps with 4 players run at about half of full speed. Alien Hominid for Gamecube runs better than PS2 version but is only somewhat playable at 75% speed.

Right now I am strongly considering the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 with Intel i7-2620m and NVIDIA 560ti eGPU for my emulation needs but I would like some advice on how it might perform first.

- Is emulation a more CPU or GPU intensive task?
- Will an eGPU bandwidth be bottlenecked too much to be useful for emulation?
- Does anyone have any experience with PS2 and Wii emulation on laptops? Please give advice.

 

you need as much CPU power as possible. Your GPU is probably overkill already. Not all games are going to run well no matter what you do. PCSX2 is the only working ps2 emulator for the PC, and it's still definitely a work in progress, though many games do run well.

 

In that case how will the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 with Intel i7-2620m and NVIDIA 560ti eGPU perform? Is PS2 emulation texture heavy enough to seriously degrade in performance due to eGPU bandwidth bottleneck? This might sound crazy but if GPU really doesn't matter I might as well do away with with an eGPU and use the Intel HD3000 integrated graphics.

 

My own Clevo P170HMx with a Intel i7 2720QM & AMD Radeon HD 6970m works with Dolphin just fine, but the optimal solution would be to get a i7 2920XM and overclock since i dont have enough raw power to emulate and record with Fraps. D;

Just check out my lame YouTube to check my Wii and Gamecube videos.
SgtDEagleson1337's Channel - YouTube

 

eGPU would be better than no GPU, but the bandwidth limits may cause performance issues, it's hard to say without trying.

What is the intel i5 you are currently using? I'm almost thinking you already have enough hardware currently, and you aren't going to get much improvement from switching. If you're getting 50% speed in some scenes, you're not going to be able to double performance by changing hardware.

You might need to continue to do research and tinker with PCSX2 settings.

 

I am using Intel i5-460m. Its the first generation i5 and not Sandy bridge.

Its hard to say anything about hardware performance without trying which is why I'm posting here in hopes that someone has tried it.

I've messed with a lot of PCSX2 plugins, speedhacks and settings and have tweaked it to the best possible performance while maintaining stability. This is the limits of my hardware.

 

okay, I read your original post wrong. I thought you had an nvidia 460 mobile GPU.

Recommended processors are:

Core 2 duo / core i3 3.2ghz+
core i5/i7 2.66ghz+
athlon ii / phenom ii (x2, x3, or x4) 3.4ghz+

AMD Graphics: mobility 4850+, 5750+, 6600M+ (GDDR5 version)
Nvidia Graphics: 9800M+, 260M+, 360M+, 555M+

Obviously anything better is fine. This is about the best you can do hardware wise for PCSX2 performance. Your graphics card could use improvement, you still need the fastest CPU you can find, and the core count needs to be at least 2. More doesn't help. I think you're on the right path. See if anyone else has experience with eGPU, or look at something with a fast sandy bridge i5 or i7 and a 560M is great.

No matter what type of hardware investment you make, you're still going to be basically in the same position, where it's not going to run full speed in many situations. The fastest hardware around is enough to get PCSX2 running at "reasonably playable" speed for most games. Not full speed.

 

With a sandybridge Quad Core and the latest PCSX2 SVN builds, you should see good performance gains in many titles. The multicore support really makes a difference and is the only reason why I can now play GOW at full speed with the laptop in my spec. Quad Core support has not made it to an official build yet but it is a major breakthrough.

 

I didn't know that had made it into any builds. If that's the case, get a fast quad core.

Another reasonable choice would be to wait. Your i5 is a dual core but supports 4 simultaneous threads. Performance will improve as the software gets updates.

 

You will need a very high clock speed in order to emulate the consoles specified. The higher the clock speed, the better your results will be.

That said, if money is no real obstacle (nor is portability), you should wait for the Clevo P270WM next month. That would destroy console emulation.

 

Automated SVN builds here.

 

Since the development direction seems to be going quad core, get a quad core. You still need a fast quad core. Can't compromise clock speed for more cores.

 

I will try the new SVN builds and report back. My dual core i5-460m has 4 threads so it might be able to gain a speed boost from the new build.

EDIT:
I have enabled the new multithreaded speedhack in the latest SVN version and did not notice much improvement if any. There is still a major stutter between cutscenes which shows that PS2 loads textures on the fly which means that an eGPU would be detrimental to performance due to low bandwidth.

 

I am guessing your GPU is limiting the performance in your ps2 emulation, I used to play ff-x on my G50vt with an overclocked x9100 and 9800M gs, and I got far better results than you described here, I don't even recall any slow down in game play, ff-x2 runs perfectly well too, except it only lags in some cutscenes, which is common problem on everyone's machine.

PS2/wii emulation is very CPU intensive, but that doesn't mean you don't need an adequate graphic card, since your i5-460M isn't much behind an overclocked x9100, I assume it's the weak 420M to blame.

 

That's a pretty big leap. I still wouldn't go for an eGPU because it's expensive for the performance you get and somewhat impractical.