Question partaining to emulators

Plasmio

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I've recently attempted to play a Gamecube emulator. It ran fine except for the fact that it wasn't at 100% speed. My current specs are quite low, as I'm in the process of acquiring parts for my first gaming-capable build. My current computer's specs are Athlon II X4 (3.4Ghz), 4GB RAM, and some low end Nvidia integrated graphics. My next build will be Phenom II X4 (3.4 stock, hoping to OC to at least 3.8), 8GB RAM, and a GTX 660. Will this be able to run a Gamecube emulator at full speed? I would never have expected something that runs such old games to need such powerful hardware. I assumed that my current PC would be enough.
 
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What is difficult is that they are building a virtual console. And they have to reverse engineer it. And they have to do so without knowing or fully knowing the original coding the system is in. And this is why some games play fine and some do not. Its a lot more difficult then just trying to copy that code as you may think it is. And many games using different coding that the system reads and writes. So they are not just reverse engineering the systems coding but also trying to copy the coding the game reads to run it.

It is quite complicated and its some thing i also do not fully understand 100%. But i think that can explain to you some what the problems they run into. As an example of the ps2 emulator you could get it to play final...

zolton33

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If i were to upgrade like you i would go with the FX 6300 or the 8350. either of those should handle it no problem. Both give the intel i3 and i5's a good run for the money are relatively cheap and are a lot newer and better. And the gamecube while old is not as old as you would think especially considering it is only 11 years ago. The playstation 2 emulator does a lot worse as even with the top of the line video card and cpu and max ram it will still run slow and stuttery on some games. It comes down to the emulators not being 100% done and not so much about hardware.
 

ShindoSensei

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Yeah, the 660 itself can run modern games pretty well. The CPU should be enough (unfortunately i know NOTHING about AMD....) but yeah it will run game cube, ps2, xbox, and dreamcast emulators pretty well, and it'll run dolphin well as well! happy gaming! :D
 

Plasmio

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I've known that emulators aren't complete for a while, but I've never understood why. I would have thought that it would be a simple task to virtualize old systems on modern computers? Every emulator I've had experience with, whether it be on PSP, Android, Windows, etc, always had at least a FEW issues running the games (besides Gameboy). Maybe it's just me being uneducated on how difficult it is to get a game to think it's attached to a system, but I'm not sure what makes it so difficult.
 

ShindoSensei

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I get about 120 fps on most ps2 games. The ps2 emulator are not only well built but they were easy to build. Dolphin runs about 90 to 100 fps for me. The only emulator atm that will take some work are current gen ones.
 

Plasmio

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It's not the FPS that's the problem, it's the speed at which games run. For example, my games will run at 30FPS with my current desktop, but not at 100% speed.
 

ShindoSensei

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I see. Have you enabled frame skip? Putting it at 1 may increase some speed.
 

zolton33

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What is difficult is that they are building a virtual console. And they have to reverse engineer it. And they have to do so without knowing or fully knowing the original coding the system is in. And this is why some games play fine and some do not. Its a lot more difficult then just trying to copy that code as you may think it is. And many games using different coding that the system reads and writes. So they are not just reverse engineering the systems coding but also trying to copy the coding the game reads to run it.

It is quite complicated and its some thing i also do not fully understand 100%. But i think that can explain to you some what the problems they run into. As an example of the ps2 emulator you could get it to play final fantasy 10 but then it would not play True crimes streets of la (just an example). And those systems were also well above other technology of the time as well. So multiple reasons why it can have troubles. And many reasons why its difficult to make an emultor of the newer systems let alone get them to be compatible with 100% of the games.
 
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