“Strongest” Emulator Device

PrepVet

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I’m waiting on my backed Dreamcade Replay. It is my first experience with any emulators.

It is not strong enough to emulate GameCube etc.

What is the strongest and most capable device that would be able to run “every” retro system emulation out there?

Either a purchased complete device, board to put into a case or diy system to hook up to my hdtvs?

Thanks
 

beigemore

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A PC definitely, but it really depends on what your budget is and what the highest end consoles are that you're wanting to emulate. Like a PS2 with nice upscaling and filters requires way more CPU power than doing Neo Geo -- and some people don't consider PS2 "retro", so it again depends on if that's what you're going for.
 

PrepVet

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A PC definitely, but it really depends on what your budget is and what the highest end consoles are that you're wanting to emulate. Like a PS2 with nice upscaling and filters requires way more CPU power than doing Neo Geo -- and some people don't consider PS2 "retro", so it again depends on if that's what you're going for.
I would want to emulate “everything” up to the PS2 including the GameCube and Dreamcast and Saturn and segaCd 32x etc

Price point is varied. I wouldn’t mind building a cheaper new rig to do it but if there is a good choice for an older used pc to do it I would be good with that.
 

Dr Shroom

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Yeah a PC, where else are you going to emulate the gamecube on? Gamecube/Wii emulation actually is somewhat demanding on the hardware at this point.
 

Ip Man

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non of my pc's were ever able to emulate anything past the n64. i tried to emulate the dreamcast last year and the pc just wasn't having it.
 

Kid Panda

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non of my pc's were ever able to emulate anything past the n64. i tried to emulate the dreamcast last year and the pc just wasn't having it.

Jesus, how old is your PC? I was running Gamecube and PS2 stuff flawlessly at 1080P with an AMD FX8350 and that is one of the most outdated CPUs made.
 

PrepVet

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The question still remains... what PC.

My newish i5 can’t even run chrome without it having a nervous breakdown.

I’ve watched ETA Prime on YouTube that claims to build emulator systems from old $30 systems.
 

Kid Panda

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Like I said earlier, I did it with a FX8350 and that CPU is long in the tooth. I have a 1700 Ryzen now and everything runs like a dream. Also, look at what he is running, not everything runs smooth on those builds. A core2duo will get you to about DC, but after that it's gonna chug on stuff.
 
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titchgamer

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Anything up to PS1 will run smoothly on pretty much any PC that can run XP.

PS1 Ono requires more beef and very much depends what you are running.

Demul for instance is pretty demanding.

The newer you get the bigger CPU and GPU you will need.
But not all emu’s correctly utilise multi cores so your best bet is to look at the requirements for the individual emus you want to run and go from there.

Personally I dont Emulate anything newer than 32bit systems and they all run sound on a Pi.
 

GohanX

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I’ve watched ETA Prime on YouTube that claims to build emulator systems from old $30 systems.

You can, but you won't be emulating anything with 3D in it with something old. You can emulate most stuff up to Playstation well with a calculator these days, but you need some serious (by comparison) CPU/GPU power to do anything more. I used to use an old Dell Optiplex business computer that you can get for $50 all day online and it was fantastic for 2D Mame and any of the 2d consoles, but if you tried to do anything 3D with it you were looking at 1 frame per 5 seconds.
 

titchgamer

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Some games are ridiculous resource hogs!

Time crisis through mame for example.

I can just about play it on my mame cab which is a 3ghz quad core with 8gig ram and 2x 512mb gfx cards in crossfire.

Its glitches occasionally but just about runs on a rig that used to eat Crysis for dinner and want desert on top!
 

Heinz

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Dreamcast emulation is basically perfect now and that goes for AW,Naomi etc as well. PS2 emulation is pretty good but not perfect across all titles. I had a go at a PS3 emulator that is incredibly slow even on 7th gen i7 7700k @ 4.8ghz, 16gb DDR4, GTX1080. It's getting there but PC is still king.
 

PrepVet

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So what would be a minimum spiced PC to run emulation for GameCube, PS2, Saturn etc?
 

ChuChu Flamingo

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I don't think you need that good of a graphics card until you get into late gen stuff like Cemu, Citra, RPCS3 etc. A lot of stuff seems to be heavily cpu bound unless you do crazy stuff like 4k resolution.

Definitely spot on about the quad core though.

Kinda hard to recommend stuff without a budget.
 
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Ip Man

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Jesus, how old is your PC? I was running Gamecube and PS2 stuff flawlessly at 1080P with an AMD FX8350 and that is one of the most outdated CPUs made.

it's a windows seven pro. it's ok, i could fire up mame, genesis and ps1 emulators, so i'm alright.
 

WoodyXP

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Here is the strongest emulator device.

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