Console emulator hardware recommendations.

[Andro77]

I know what the common views of consoles are amongst pc gamers. However I do love retro gaming and was wondering how many of you have played with emulators. I want my lounge pc to be a "complete" gaming centre. I have a g3258 with an r9 270 and 8 gb RAM and the plan is to use it to run steam, pc gaming and maybe something like hyperspin. Anyone have any hardware advise for running N64 onwards as I've heard it can be a bit of a struggle. I'm confident the older stuff should be a breeze. I think I read that a 3ghz cpu is recommended and emulators only use one core anyway. Not interested in the later consoles. Also I am

Aware of the limitations of the G3258 for modern pc games.

Thanks Andrew.

[AlwaysFSX]

@ungreedy

[moderategamer]

you're rig will run all emulators up till Gamecube/wii/PS2 level I have the same chip as you with the asus gtx 750ti and I run dolphin at the 3 times internal resolution at 1080p for both wii and GC games well above 60 fps all games run like butter. Seriously there's no system that has been built in the past decade that can't handle project 64. 

[Scruffy90]

Most of the emulators will be fine (some just havent been worked on in years). I run everything, but Dolphin on my ultrabook running an i5u. You should be ok with the hardware you have now.

[itachipirate]

I know what the common views of consoles are amongst pc gamers. However I do love retro gaming and was wondering how many of you have played with emulators. I want my lounge pc to be a "complete" gaming centre. I have a g3258 with an r9 270 and 8 gb RAM and the plan is to use it to run steam, pc gaming and maybe something like hyperspin. Anyone have any hardware advise for running N64 onwards as I've heard it can be a bit of a struggle. I'm confident the older stuff should be a breeze. I think I read that a 3ghz cpu is recommended and emulators only use one core anyway. Not interested in the later consoles. Also I am

Aware of the limitations of the G3258 for modern pc games.

Thanks Andrew.

You've got a good CPU for it. Emulators in my experience will only utilize 1 or 2 cores because of how hard it is to make an emulator. If you've overclocked your CPU you'll be fine. You should get nearly the same performance in emulation as an i7

[SteveGrabowski]

An overclocked G3258 is a fantastic chip for emulation. PCSX2 ran beautifully on it for me. As for N64, I used to run Project64 fine on an Athlon 64x2 4000+, and a G3258 smashes the hell out of that chip.

[Andro77]

Thanks for the replies. I know you all belong to the pc master race lol, but nostalgia is a powerful thing. Don't know how old some of you are. I'm 37 and remember back when a high end 386 would cost around 2500 to 3500 au$. I think the most popular pc in "my day" was the C64. Consoles made more sense for gaming back then. Not like the pay through the nose shit today to go online...

[moderategamer]

Any of the older emulators are fine, Dolphin Emulator will chew up your hardware and have a load of problems. PJ64 emulator is my favorite for N64. Although I love playing Zelda O.T. best Zelda to date. Dolphin is fun for Super Smash Bros Mele, Metroid Prime titles, Mario Games, and Star Fox games (god I miss those).

 

Dolphin emulator is fine now there's been a tonne of work done on it since it release and the chip he has is perfect for it.