Which CPU for PCSX2 emulator?

I really wished Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return To Arms would work on PCSX2 i had so many hours of fun with friends on the PS2 with those games, Hack n Slash, thousands of items weapons to combine etc, very much like titans quest on the pc, but better imo.

 

for pcsx2/dolphin, is the upgrade to the 2720qm over the 2630qm worth it?

 

Probably not. CPU usage is never over 25% at any given time, and this is using the desktop widget/gadget thingy that's built into Windows7. Also using resource monitor, the spikes never go that high. You're prolly safe with the base cpu

 

2630qm is perfect for PCSX2. And depending on the game I guarantee you'll be hitting 100% sometimes.

Try playing starwars battlefront 2... or X-Men Legends 2.

 

Both are very good games btw Good choices All I've played so far is MvC2 and Raiden III which are both by far, not very hardware intensive/demanding, and run at 60fps all the time.

 

2630qm good?

 

Should be fine. 2720qm is for futureproofing I guess.

 

If you'd like to try one of my builds:
MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

That's SSE4.2 optimized so don't bother unless you have an i3 or newer CPU.

Many games run on my computer full speed but some of them need well over 1GB of VRAM and there's simply no CPU powerful enough for others.

 

I never really understood "builds". What are the differences? Cuz can't we just fiddle with the settings inside the emulator config to make things run better? Isn't that the same thing? Please advise.

 

PCSX2 is an open source project so it gets multiple updates a day. The current beta build provided by pcsx2 is about 400 revisions behind mine. What that means is

a) Don't use your old save files with my build, savestates and memory cards were rewritten at some point.
b) Mine are gonna be faster.
c) Mine are going to give fewer glitches.

The builds I've compiled basically have 400 revisions on the pcsx2 website's build.

Also, to be clear, I'm not a developer. I do very little to tweak it before compiling it.

 

@Hungry Man

The download is password protected.

 

is it?

lol password is uhh "luelinks"

no quotes

 

Keep in mind that it's SSE4.2 optimized. Don't bother trying to run it without those instruction sets.

 

It'll work on 2720qm, right?

 

Yes. Any i3/5/7 or higher will have the instructions.

 

so you are Thaaat Hungry Man.

ha. hey

 

Granted it's the newest architecture and can turbo past 3.0ghz with 2 active cores I think your i7 should give you excellent frame rates in most games.

 

Oh snap.

I was wondering if that would set off any alarms.

 

alarms? What's an alarm?

(I don't care. I was just wondering if you were the same guy on LL)

 

I am >_>

also lol we have p much the same computer, if this were a week ago it would be the same HDD too

 

heheh, pretty much

 

That isn`t because of the speed. It is because Dolphin use 1 or sometimes 2 cores because it is not coded to use all 4 cores on a quad core. Faster CPU means better speed although i suspect most games to run at 100% with the base CPU. But i am still looking for people with user experience with Super Mario Galaxy. That game raped my i7 720QM bigtime and i had around 40 FPS i remember. 60 FPS is full speed

 

I've played SMG in Dolphin. It's a very demanding game. I don't think I was able to get very decent framerates.

 

Ok. Would be great if you could see what kind of frames you get on average. I remember with SMG 1 on the base where you can go to the observatory etc i would get frames all the way down to 30 FPS. When playing the levels i got everything from 35-45 FPS. Demanding for shure

 

I no longer have dolphin or the iso. I also did it about a year ago and Dolphin has changed a lot since then.

Were you using an SSE4 optimized SVN revision?

 

That was too bad.

Yeah i used the SSE4 compiled versions. And i spent hours of testing to find the right tweaks for it to run as smoothly as possible.
But i have seen from the google developers homepage of Dolphin that they have come a long way since i used Dolphin last time. Who knows, maybe they have managed to squeezed more out of it since then.

 

Honestly, they're moving AWAY from performance, which is disappointing. They're looking for proper emulation, which means accuracy over performance.

 

That kinda sucks.

 

Yeah it's a shame but the general community seems to agree with the decision. Oh well.

 

Are 'WWE Raw v/s Smackdown' series of games very cpu intensive if played using the PCSX2 emulator?
I'm planning to get new laptop with i7-2630QM. Will that processor be good enough?

Also what type of GPU's are best for emulating PS2 games on PC? Class 1 notebook GPU's (notebookcheck.net)?

 

Can ya'll list a list of good revisions of the emulator? Also provide links too? I'm just using the default download on the dolphin home page right now, which seems to work for the games I play (SSBM, FzeroGX, Ikaruga, Donkey Kong Wii, SSBB, MarioKart DD), with the exception of (Mario Kart Wii and NSMB wii) which both can drop to as low as 35-40 when on full screen.

Please advise. TYIA!

 

Dolphin - Windows Live
choose 64bit if you have a 64bit OS. These aren't optimized but it's not a big deal.

You need to mess with the settings to get it just right but default ones might be decent for some games.

 

Some games are CPU intensive and some are GPU intensive... and some are both.

The ATI 5650 is pretty much as low as you can go. Integrated will work for VERY few games if any.

I'd recommend at least 1GB of GDDR5 memory. That would be ideal.

As for a CPU the 2630 is perfect

 

Thanks. The GPU on that laptop is AMD Radeon 6770M 1 GB GDDR5. So is that perfect?

 

There is almost new revisions every single day. This guy compiles new one few times each month so he is probably the fastest one.
Dolphin SVN Builds - Xtemulation Forums

Never used any of his builds before though. I used this guy`s versions. Doesn`t look he is nearly as updated as he were before
SteveO's Website!
There you can pick the SSE instructions that fit your type of CPU so it is optimal.

And at last here is the google source code page where developers put in their new builds for Dolphin. There you can see which have the best ratings and which one who got only bad ratings so that you can pick the best one from any of the above links.
Changes - dolphin-emu - Dolphin, a Gamecube / Wii / Triforce Emulator - Google Project Hosting

 

If you want he latest PCSX2 Builds you can get them here: EmuCR.

Though latest doesn't mean its the fastest, but I believe it has more fixes and such which can be read here: PCSX2 Google Source List

Also take note that using these builds will not have any support from the pcsx2 team, only official builds are supported. Use at your own risk.

 

Regardless of new builds for these emulators, like nikolai090 said newest doesn't mean fastest, but it could be a bit more optimized. These Emulators are running a system inside a system, so its very hardware intensive. Not only that but its trying to act like the cpu and gpu on both your real cpu and gpu so there are some bugs trying to translate one system into the others language. This is generally why games run slowly even though your system set up blows wii and ps2 out of the water. Every update is making that translation stage a little bit better everytime and will eventually lead to near perfect emulation.

 

Newest almost always means fastest/best. For example... in the last few days a LOT of games have been fixed, including Silent Hill 2.

 

Yup. That'll handle almost every game perfectly.

As for a cpu, I'd recommend any dual core i series or higher with at least 2.8ghz dual core speeds.

SB is great and will give you better results clock for clock.

 

Hey the 2630QM has base speed of only 2.0 Ghz but it turbo boosts upto 2.9 GHz. So does that mean that while playing PS2 games using PCSX2 the processor will be mostly running at 2.9 GHz? Does that have any bad effect on processor life?

 

Yeah that's fine. It will turbo boost in dual core mode to a somwhere around 2.6 or 2.8ghz and it should be good.

 

I notice it usually boosts to around 2.6 Ghz on mine during PS2, GC and DS emulation. It won't have any bad effects on the processors life since it was designed for exactly that. As long as the temperatures are within safe limits and thermal paste application has been done correctly, there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. My CPU temps are cooler at idle (35C) and load (75C) than my previous gen i7 820qm and the QX9300. If you aren't already aware, you can use this to monitor all temps.

Also the 2630QM is an extremely powerful CPU, that 2.0 Ghz base is not to be taken lightly since performance is not only measured by the clock rate.

 

With PCSX2 performance really is mostly about clock rate and dedicated L2 cache and bandwidth.

 

That's kind of an oversimplification. AMD CPUs have a huge L2 cache and high clocks and they underperform in pcsx2 & dolphin.

 

Hey which is better? PCSX2 or Dolphin? Never heard of the latter!

 

Dolphin is for Gamecube/Wii and PCSX2 is for playstation 2.

Botsu, the reason AMD doesn't perform as well is because of instruction sets. They also don't have any larger L2 caches than Intel.

 

Ohhh. I thought Dolphin was another PS2 emulator. So does it emulate Wii well?

 

Yes.

If you have a Core 2 Duo 3.2Ghz and a desktop 9800GT (or AMD equivalent), you could emulate the majority of games in a beautiful HD.

But don't forget to mess around with the settings, speed hacks, (a lot of) revisions...

 

Dolphin is great. It has much more support than PCSX2. Where PCSX2 has 3-4 consistent developers Dolphin has dozens.

 

Does the Wii have good games like the PS2 (I doubt)? If there are similar games on both platforms, the Wii version will run better on the PC with Dolphin I guess.