The Author's Experience with Emulation on a PC

The author recently set up their gaming PC to test various emulators and play games from different consoles, including Nintendo GameCube, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 (PS2), PSP, and Nintendo 3DS. The author is pleased with the performance of their system, which they believe is capable of running most games at high speeds.

Nintendo GameCube Emulation

The author starts by testing Nintendo GameCube emulation using Dolphin, a popular emulator for this console. They test Soulcalibur II, which runs smoothly and consistently at 60 frames per second (FPS), with occasional minor drops in FPS that are unlikely to be noticeable. The author notes that the GPU temperature and percentage of CPU usage are within acceptable ranges, indicating stable performance.

The author is satisfied with the results, as they have high expectations for a machine paired with a powerful GPU like an i5 processor and 1050 Ti graphics card. They also test other games on the GameCube, such as Super Smash Bros. Melee, which runs well but with some minor graphical issues.

PS2 Emulation

Next, the author tests PS2 emulation using PCSX2, another popular emulator for this console. Due to technical limitations, they are unable to display FPS in the top-left corner of the screen, but they can verify that the game runs smoothly and at full speed. They also note that some games, such as Ratchet & Clank, exhibit graphical glitches.

To mitigate these issues, the author adjusts the resolution to 1024x1024 for Tekken 5, which runs without significant problems. However, they acknowledge that other PS2 games may not work well with this emulator.

PSP Emulation

The author tests PSP emulation using PPSSPP, a popular open-source emulator for this console. They use a resolution of 4x to take advantage of the original PSP's limited screen size and test God of War: Chains of Olympus. The game runs smoothly, and FPS is displayed in the top-right corner of the screen.

The author notes that they are using the DX11 plugin with PPSSPP, which allows for smooth performance but may not work as expected with certain games.

3DS Emulation

Finally, the author tests 3DS emulation using Citra, a popular emulator for this console. They use a Bluetooth Xbox One controller connected via a $4 dongle to access wireless control functionality. The author notes that some games, such as Pokémon X & Y, run smoothly but occasionally exhibit minor stutters.

The author concludes that Citra is a promising emulator with many working titles and acknowledges its ongoing development. While they have encountered some issues, the overall performance of their system allows for enjoyable gaming experiences on various consoles.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on guys CTA Brian back here again recently I acquired both of these Abdi plexus for free they both have AI 5s one had 4 gigs of RAM one had 6 gigs of ram you can find these on your local Craigslist anywhere from 50 to 150 dollars and I love these opti plexus I've actually been using an op de Plex 990 with an i7 for two years straight I threw a 270 X in it stock power supply never had a problem so the first thing that I have here is the Optiplex 30 20 with an i-5 45 90 it does turbo up to 3.7 gigahertz but the stock clock is set at 3.3 this is a nice machine I really wanted to use this for my emulation build but it turns out that the PCIe x16 slot is at the bottom it's really close to the power supply and the video card that I wanted to use will not fit in here so this one's out of the question because my GPU will not fit but it did come with one stick for gigabyte 1600 megahertz ddr3 RAM I'm gonna be putting that in the other Optiplex swapping out one of the two gig sticks in there so I ended up using the thirty 10 this is the optiplex 30 10 it does have an i-5 but it's an older i-5 it's a third generation Ivy Bridge I 530 450 at 3.1 gigahertz now I know this is an old CPU a lot of people have already upgraded but for me I got these for free and it's a very capable CPU still to this day this I 5 will play games at high settings with the right graphics card and you'll get 60fps 1080p no problem so here's the internals as you can see the PCIe x16 is a little higher than the other Optiplex so I have to use this one I really wanted to use that other one because it does have a better CPU but I'm not going to notice much of a difference at all between the two for the GPU like I mentioned it's a 1050 Ti this is the MSI low-profile GTX 1050 TI 4 gigabyte model now the manufacturer does recommend at least a 300 watt power supply and unfortunately these things came with a low power supply this is a 240 watt power supply but like I mentioned at the beginning I've been using an op de flex 990 for over two years with an r9 270x two gigabytes graphics card in a stock power supply I have ever had any trouble with it at all I'm gonna go ahead and see if this will work the GPU will pull 75 watts and the CPUs tpv is rated at 77 why so that does leave me with a little bit extra on that power supply but a lot of other stuffs going on too I'm pretty sure we're gonna be able to get away with this it could last a week it could last three years so the main reason I wanted to do this was to show you guys that you don't need to spend thousands of dollars just to emulate games this right here is gonna run dolfin ps2 3 vs Dreamcast PSP it'll even do GTA 5 high settings at 60fps now the main thing with picking one of these up cheap is patience check your local Craigslist your let it go your offer up and even your local college auctions I've seen these for as low as $50 and even if you have to spend 100 on one of these with a 500 gigabyte Drive no graphics card and 4 gigabytes of RAM in my opinion it's definitely worth it now it's time to see what this thing can do you can always install Linux on it but it had windows 7 pre-installed and I use the loophole with the windows accessibility to upgrade to Windows 10 I'm gonna be running launchbox I'm gonna test ps2 dolphin ESP and 3ds I just want to show you guys how this performs an emulation now I do plan on doing another video on straight PC games I did test GTA 5 high settings I get over 60 FPS so let's head over to Windows 10 and check this thing out so here we are we have the Intel Core i5 3450 at 3.1 gigahertz it does turbo at 3.3 as for RAM I'm using 8 gigabytes of ddr3 1600 megahertz it's not matched they're two different brands but it performs just fine and as for the GPU 1050 ti4 gigabyte low profile I was gonna run 3d mark on it but there's no point we're using this for emulation so I ran a Geekbench single core 3522 multi-core 10240 I can't say that my iPhone 8 plus does score higher than this in Geekbench but it's a whole different animal that's arm vs. x86 I also ran in a 2-2 benchmark because on this channel I do a lot of hand boxes and Android devices and I always runnin into too for this we scored a four hundred forty thousand six hundred and fifty nine and most of that came from our GPU the 10:54 my emulation front end I'm using the launch box well this is big box the premium version it's so easy to set up and it just works very well so this is something I just whipped up real quick I have ps2 PSP in 64 now in 64 is gonna run perfectly on this machine Nintendo GameCube and Dreamcast Dreamcast and n64 are gonna work fine so I'm not even gonna test them here I'm mainly worried about ps2 PSP and Nintendo GameCube I also want to test out some 3ds I haven't set it up in launch box but I will do a test at the end so we'll just go into Nintendo GameCube real quick and I'm gonna test out Soulcalibur too that's my go to test if Soul Calibur 2 runs at 60fps pretty much anything else is gonna work fine as long as it's compatible with the dolphin emulator the FPS is listed in the top left hand corner along with the GPU temperature the GPU percentage the CPU percentage the RAM and at the bottom we have the FPS so I'm using the dx11 plugin for dolphin and it works fine now I knew this was gonna run it that i-5 paired with the 1050 Ti is perfect for things like this just give it a little more gameplay so you can see 60 FPS were pretty much pegged at 60 those drop down every once in a while but if you're not FPS watching you'll never notice it I'm gonna exit this game it'll bring us right back in the big box I'll back out of here and then we'll test ps2 I'll go with Tekken 5 on ps2 that's kind of my go to test for the PlayStation 2 emulator i am using pcsx2 for the ps2 emulator but it's a little weird because the msi overlay will not work on the DX 9 plug-in that I'm using for the PCs x2 so I can't get the FPS to show up in the top left-hand corner but if you look at this it is full speed I'm sure I could even up the resolution a little bit here for this game it is set at factory settings with the dx9 plugin I want to say it's something like 1024 by 1024 but you could go up I'll just do one more round here there are a few games that don't work well with this ps2 emulator like my personal favorite Ratchet and Clank games they are playable but there's a lot of graphical glitches going on so there's not a lot I wanted to play on ps2 except for a few fighting games like Tekken 5 I'll exit the ps2 emulator we'll go back and try PSP I'm going to be using the ppsspp emulator we're going to be testing God of War Chains of Olympus I do have the ppsspp resolution set at 4x so it's four times the resolution of the original PSP screen we load up this save here FPS is listed in the top right hand corner now I wanted to try the Vulcan plug-in but I have to use the dx11 plugin for this game at least Okin does work in certain games I just can't get it to work directly in God of War so all of those work great let's test out 3ds this whole time I've actually been using a Bluetooth xbox one controller with a little $4.00 dongle off of Amazon it works fine you just plug it in sync up and you got a wireless controller so this is Citra a working 3d simulator there are a lot of games that work and a lot of games that don't work I'm gonna be testing Yoshi's Island or New Yo she's island I do have to turn the sound off but the sound works pretty well I'll leave it on for just a second but I have to turn it off due to copy written music as you can see the FPS is listed in the top left hand corner and where it is steady 60 I did test a few other games like Pokemon X&Y it does work good but every once in a while you'll notice a bad stutter this emulator has come a long way though there are a lot of games that work really well and this is definitely one of them so yeah that's pretty much it for this video guys as you can see this PC works really good for emulation I'm gonna be making another video this week just testing PC games but I wanted to get this out of the way first you don't need to spend a fortune to get some good emulation going I have a hundred and sixty dollars into this just because of the GPU if you were to buy one for 50 and then buy a nice GPU like a 1050 or even the 1030 should work in Dolphin and ps2 you won't have much money into a nice emulation PC and it's gonna work for a long time coming I really appreciate you guys watching if you could hit that like button and subscribe to the channel I got a lot of great stuff coming up in 2018 like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on guys CTA Brian back here again recently I acquired both of these Abdi plexus for free they both have AI 5s one had 4 gigs of RAM one had 6 gigs of ram you can find these on your local Craigslist anywhere from 50 to 150 dollars and I love these opti plexus I've actually been using an op de Plex 990 with an i7 for two years straight I threw a 270 X in it stock power supply never had a problem so the first thing that I have here is the Optiplex 30 20 with an i-5 45 90 it does turbo up to 3.7 gigahertz but the stock clock is set at 3.3 this is a nice machine I really wanted to use this for my emulation build but it turns out that the PCIe x16 slot is at the bottom it's really close to the power supply and the video card that I wanted to use will not fit in here so this one's out of the question because my GPU will not fit but it did come with one stick for gigabyte 1600 megahertz ddr3 RAM I'm gonna be putting that in the other Optiplex swapping out one of the two gig sticks in there so I ended up using the thirty 10 this is the optiplex 30 10 it does have an i-5 but it's an older i-5 it's a third generation Ivy Bridge I 530 450 at 3.1 gigahertz now I know this is an old CPU a lot of people have already upgraded but for me I got these for free and it's a very capable CPU still to this day this I 5 will play games at high settings with the right graphics card and you'll get 60fps 1080p no problem so here's the internals as you can see the PCIe x16 is a little higher than the other Optiplex so I have to use this one I really wanted to use that other one because it does have a better CPU but I'm not going to notice much of a difference at all between the two for the GPU like I mentioned it's a 1050 Ti this is the MSI low-profile GTX 1050 TI 4 gigabyte model now the manufacturer does recommend at least a 300 watt power supply and unfortunately these things came with a low power supply this is a 240 watt power supply but like I mentioned at the beginning I've been using an op de flex 990 for over two years with an r9 270x two gigabytes graphics card in a stock power supply I have ever had any trouble with it at all I'm gonna go ahead and see if this will work the GPU will pull 75 watts and the CPUs tpv is rated at 77 why so that does leave me with a little bit extra on that power supply but a lot of other stuffs going on too I'm pretty sure we're gonna be able to get away with this it could last a week it could last three years so the main reason I wanted to do this was to show you guys that you don't need to spend thousands of dollars just to emulate games this right here is gonna run dolfin ps2 3 vs Dreamcast PSP it'll even do GTA 5 high settings at 60fps now the main thing with picking one of these up cheap is patience check your local Craigslist your let it go your offer up and even your local college auctions I've seen these for as low as $50 and even if you have to spend 100 on one of these with a 500 gigabyte Drive no graphics card and 4 gigabytes of RAM in my opinion it's definitely worth it now it's time to see what this thing can do you can always install Linux on it but it had windows 7 pre-installed and I use the loophole with the windows accessibility to upgrade to Windows 10 I'm gonna be running launchbox I'm gonna test ps2 dolphin ESP and 3ds I just want to show you guys how this performs an emulation now I do plan on doing another video on straight PC games I did test GTA 5 high settings I get over 60 FPS so let's head over to Windows 10 and check this thing out so here we are we have the Intel Core i5 3450 at 3.1 gigahertz it does turbo at 3.3 as for RAM I'm using 8 gigabytes of ddr3 1600 megahertz it's not matched they're two different brands but it performs just fine and as for the GPU 1050 ti4 gigabyte low profile I was gonna run 3d mark on it but there's no point we're using this for emulation so I ran a Geekbench single core 3522 multi-core 10240 I can't say that my iPhone 8 plus does score higher than this in Geekbench but it's a whole different animal that's arm vs. x86 I also ran in a 2-2 benchmark because on this channel I do a lot of hand boxes and Android devices and I always runnin into too for this we scored a four hundred forty thousand six hundred and fifty nine and most of that came from our GPU the 10:54 my emulation front end I'm using the launch box well this is big box the premium version it's so easy to set up and it just works very well so this is something I just whipped up real quick I have ps2 PSP in 64 now in 64 is gonna run perfectly on this machine Nintendo GameCube and Dreamcast Dreamcast and n64 are gonna work fine so I'm not even gonna test them here I'm mainly worried about ps2 PSP and Nintendo GameCube I also want to test out some 3ds I haven't set it up in launch box but I will do a test at the end so we'll just go into Nintendo GameCube real quick and I'm gonna test out Soulcalibur too that's my go to test if Soul Calibur 2 runs at 60fps pretty much anything else is gonna work fine as long as it's compatible with the dolphin emulator the FPS is listed in the top left hand corner along with the GPU temperature the GPU percentage the CPU percentage the RAM and at the bottom we have the FPS so I'm using the dx11 plugin for dolphin and it works fine now I knew this was gonna run it that i-5 paired with the 1050 Ti is perfect for things like this just give it a little more gameplay so you can see 60 FPS were pretty much pegged at 60 those drop down every once in a while but if you're not FPS watching you'll never notice it I'm gonna exit this game it'll bring us right back in the big box I'll back out of here and then we'll test ps2 I'll go with Tekken 5 on ps2 that's kind of my go to test for the PlayStation 2 emulator i am using pcsx2 for the ps2 emulator but it's a little weird because the msi overlay will not work on the DX 9 plug-in that I'm using for the PCs x2 so I can't get the FPS to show up in the top left-hand corner but if you look at this it is full speed I'm sure I could even up the resolution a little bit here for this game it is set at factory settings with the dx9 plugin I want to say it's something like 1024 by 1024 but you could go up I'll just do one more round here there are a few games that don't work well with this ps2 emulator like my personal favorite Ratchet and Clank games they are playable but there's a lot of graphical glitches going on so there's not a lot I wanted to play on ps2 except for a few fighting games like Tekken 5 I'll exit the ps2 emulator we'll go back and try PSP I'm going to be using the ppsspp emulator we're going to be testing God of War Chains of Olympus I do have the ppsspp resolution set at 4x so it's four times the resolution of the original PSP screen we load up this save here FPS is listed in the top right hand corner now I wanted to try the Vulcan plug-in but I have to use the dx11 plugin for this game at least Okin does work in certain games I just can't get it to work directly in God of War so all of those work great let's test out 3ds this whole time I've actually been using a Bluetooth xbox one controller with a little $4.00 dongle off of Amazon it works fine you just plug it in sync up and you got a wireless controller so this is Citra a working 3d simulator there are a lot of games that work and a lot of games that don't work I'm gonna be testing Yoshi's Island or New Yo she's island I do have to turn the sound off but the sound works pretty well I'll leave it on for just a second but I have to turn it off due to copy written music as you can see the FPS is listed in the top left hand corner and where it is steady 60 I did test a few other games like Pokemon X&Y it does work good but every once in a while you'll notice a bad stutter this emulator has come a long way though there are a lot of games that work really well and this is definitely one of them so yeah that's pretty much it for this video guys as you can see this PC works really good for emulation I'm gonna be making another video this week just testing PC games but I wanted to get this out of the way first you don't need to spend a fortune to get some good emulation going I have a hundred and sixty dollars into this just because of the GPU if you were to buy one for 50 and then buy a nice GPU like a 1050 or even the 1030 should work in Dolphin and ps2 you won't have much money into a nice emulation PC and it's gonna work for a long time coming I really appreciate you guys watching if you could hit that like button and subscribe to the channel I got a lot of great stuff coming up in 2018 like always thanks for watching\n"