Video Cards?

[Blade556]

I'm trying to build up my Emulation FAQ, so bear with me here.

What kinds of Video Cards are the best for certain types of emulators? What should I look for? What do you recommend as general purpose features?

It doesn't matter if they're old or new, but any help on the subject would be nice <img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>

[JCE3000GT]

I ran almost everything except Zinc, N64 emulation, and Modeler with an nVidia GeForce 2 MX 32MB.

[Freaker]

N64 and PSX emulation worked fine for me with a GeForce 4 MX 64MB.
They also worked nearly always full speed with a GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB.

[Cornellius]

> N64 and PSX emulation worked fine for me with a GeForce 4 MX
> 64MB.
> They also worked nearly always full speed with a GeForce 2
> MX 400 64MB.

Yeah, but CPU helped a lot too.

[Wren]

A GeForce 256 is probably enough for most emulation.

In the distant past, I've played Zelda:OOT on UltraHLE with a K6-2@400MHz and Voodoo 3 3000 (16MB).

-Wren

[JCE3000GT]

> Yeah, but CPU helped a lot too.

I ran PSX emulation nearly full speed and good plugins on an AMD Athlon 700mhz with 320MB of ram with my GeForce2.

[Cornellius]

PSX is 32 bits, N64 is 64 bits. There is a huge difference.

[hcs]

> PSX is 32 bits, N64 is 64 bits. There is a huge difference.

The primary difference is the speed of the processor, though, N64 being 100 MHz and PSX being 33 MHz (IIRC). Other than that they have fairly similar CPUs.

[Cornellius]

What I meant is that N64 emulation takes a more powerfull machine than PSX emulation.

[shawn]

> What I meant is that N64 emulation takes a more powerfull
> machine than PSX emulation.
>
Maybe but I have more trouble running a PSX game on my PC than an N64 game. Of course this could be the fault of the emulator but it could be that PS games have a lot more to them than N64 games do in size. <img src=smilies/cwm11.gif>

[Lillymon]

> What I meant is that N64 emulation takes a more powerfull
> machine than PSX emulation.

The difference isn't as big as you'd expect, and it can depend a lot on the game. Certain PS1 and N64 games are far more demanding than the others. Framebuffer effects in particular can be a real bitch.

[Freaker]

> Yeah, but CPU helped a lot too.

At the time it was a P3 900Mhz, but PSX emulation worked near full speed on a P2 400Mhz in Cool Boarder 3 and 4, and FF9(the only games I had at the time).

[Dark Knight Kain]

> Maybe but I have more trouble running a PSX game on my PC
> than an N64 game. Of course this could be the fault of the
> emulator but it could be that PS games have a lot more to
> them than N64 games do in size.

Same thing here, I can run GoldenEye at a decent speed yet can't get through the intro of FF7 without giving up because it runs so slow.