Nickyb210 Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 Newbi here looking for some advice. I was given my old work computer that I've decided to turn into a retro gaming PC. It is an Optiplex 7010 stats: i7-3770 @3.4 - 16GB ram - 120GB SSD running win 7 pro. My question is will the on board graphics be enough to play on my 75" sony 4K TV? If not, what would you recommend? Highest games I would play would be on PS2 but 95% are nes to n64. I've just started downloading everything for Launchbox but i have a lot of questions. I want to be able to turn on the PC and have this program load up without having to touch my keyboard, I believe launchbox has that capability? Looking into BigBox, is that just a more refined UI than launchbox? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 Intels on board graphics won't really be enough for 4K, I would suggest a dedicated graphics card. You don't need anything fancy at all but something at least semi modern will be needed, something with 1 or 2 gigs of GDDR5 vram will be fine. Even basic 2D sprite based games scaled up to 4K will put a strain on Intels on board graphics chip. Of course if you are willing to spend more that is always better, especially if you are planning on scaling up the internal resolution on the more newer systems like PS2 or N64. An Nvidia card is also highly recommended because of AMDs relatively bad OpenGL drivers which many emulators use. Launchbox / BigBox itself does not have a way to boot straight into it but there are other ways around this. You can go as simple as putting a shortcut in your Start Menus Startup folder or you can go so far as to do a registry edit or a 3rd party app to change your shell. BigBox is the controller driven UI meant for arcade cabinets or HTPCs while Launchbox is the management side of things, this is where you add / remove games and emulators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 5, 2018 Author Share Posted August 5, 2018 8 hours ago, Lordmonkus said: Intels on board graphics won't really be enough for 4K, I would suggest a dedicated graphics card. You don't need anything fancy at all but something at least semi modern will be needed, something with 1 or 2 gigs of GDDR5 vram will be fine. Even basic 2D sprite based games scaled up to 4K will put a strain on Intels on board graphics chip. Of course if you are willing to spend more that is always better, especially if you are planning on scaling up the internal resolution on the more newer systems like PS2 or N64. An Nvidia card is also highly recommended because of AMDs relatively bad OpenGL drivers which many emulators use. Launchbox / BigBox itself does not have a way to boot straight into it but there are other ways around this. You can go as simple as putting a shortcut in your Start Menus Startup folder or you can go so far as to do a registry edit or a 3rd party app to change your shell. BigBox is the controller driven UI meant for arcade cabinets or HTPCs while Launchbox is the management side of things, this is where you add / remove games and emulators. thank you sir, I will see if I can pick up a cheap 16gfx card. I seen the thread on reg key edit and i will take a closer look at that. What just watching ETA primes channel setting up 450 SNES games and he showed the difference between big box and just the normal launch box. Now do i buy the $20 or the $50 haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 I would suggest buying the 20$ license for now and see how you like Launchbox and then just before Christmas if you want to upgrade do it when Jason does his Black Friday sale, you will have a lifetime license for 40$. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 5, 2018 Author Share Posted August 5, 2018 Thanks, i just bought the license, will be spending quite a bit of time on youtube. So far i have snes and n64 all set up. About 1,000 games between them and only have 40gb of ssd left.... shouldve bought a bigger one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 5, 2018 Author Share Posted August 5, 2018 15 hours ago, Lordmonkus said: Intels on board graphics won't really be enough for 4K, I would suggest a dedicated graphics card. You don't need anything fancy at all but something at least semi modern will be needed, something with 1 or 2 gigs of GDDR5 vram will be fine. Even basic 2D sprite based games scaled up to 4K will put a strain on Intels on board graphics chip. Of course if you are willing to spend more that is always better, especially if you are planning on scaling up the internal resolution on the more newer systems like PS2 or N64. An Nvidia card is also highly recommended because of AMDs relatively bad OpenGL drivers which many emulators use. Launchbox / BigBox itself does not have a way to boot straight into it but there are other ways around this. You can go as simple as putting a shortcut in your Start Menus Startup folder or you can go so far as to do a registry edit or a 3rd party app to change your shell. BigBox is the controller driven UI meant for arcade cabinets or HTPCs while Launchbox is the management side of things, this is where you add / remove games and emulators. The computer came with a VisionTek Radeon 5570 SFF 1GB DDR3 4M VHDCI but its a vhdci out that splits to 3 dvi... would it be worth it to keep this and use a dvi to hdmi or just sell it and buy something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 DDR3 is very slow for video ram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 6, 2018 Author Share Posted August 6, 2018 I'm going to go with a GT 1030 if i can find one for cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon57 Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 10 hours ago, Nickyb210 said: I'm going to go with a GT 1030 if i can find one for cheap. Make sure you get a 1030 w/DDR5 ram, not the new ones with DDR4. The performance between the two is quite dramatic and the price between them should be very small. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 6, 2018 Author Share Posted August 6, 2018 22 minutes ago, dragon57 said: Make sure you get a 1030 w/DDR5 ram, not the new ones with DDR4. The performance between the two is quite dramatic and the price between them should be very small. I have someone locally that will sell me a sealed refurb ddr5 version for $60... think its worth it? I would mainly be playing n64 games Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon57 Posted August 6, 2018 Share Posted August 6, 2018 Yeah, that is a pretty good price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voicesinthedark Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 On 8/5/2018 at 3:51 PM, Nickyb210 said: Thanks, i just bought the license, will be spending quite a bit of time on youtube. So far i have snes and n64 all set up. About 1,000 games between them and only have 40gb of ssd left.... shouldve bought a bigger one! I'm going to make a suggestion that may or may not get me murdered on here. Keep the 120gb ssd just for your operating system, anti-virus, winrar or other rar/zip program, and other basic system stuff like that. This will leave you with plenty of ssd space and you can easily create a restore image of it. Then since their cheap pick up two 2tb hdd drives, one for launchbox and all of the games and one to use as a backup drive or if you manage to run out of space on the first 2TB drive. This way the system can easily be backup and/or restored and if the worst happens you won't have to spend all that time getting all of your games, images, etc. all over again. I personally went so far in my setup as to set up a custom file structure for launchbox, games, emulation, saves, and cheat codes just to make it even more resistant to errors. D:\Emulation D:\Emulation\Launchbox D:\Emulation\ConsoleOrSystemName (Emulator, Saves, Cheat codes subfolders) D:\Emulation\Images\ConsoleOrSystemName (could be changed to media folder name with video, box art, etc. subfolders) These are just an example of how I set mine up. I know you're probably asking why since launchbox has all of that inside its own folder system, but early on when I first got launchbox, etc. I ran into an error that actually required me to do a fresh install of launchbox and I had to redo everything from scratch, whereas now if I ever have another problem like that I can simply point launchbox to where the files are located. anyways just my suggestion, take it or leave it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voicesinthedark Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 1 minute ago, DOS76 said: Don't make me go Roger Rabbit on your ass and get out the DIP!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 7, 2018 Author Share Posted August 7, 2018 7 hours ago, voicesinthedark said: I'm going to make a suggestion that may or may not get me murdered on here. Keep the 120gb ssd just for your operating system, anti-virus, winrar or other rar/zip program, and other basic system stuff like that. This will leave you with plenty of ssd space and you can easily create a restore image of it. Then since their cheap pick up two 2tb hdd drives, one for launchbox and all of the games and one to use as a backup drive or if you manage to run out of space on the first 2TB drive. This way the system can easily be backup and/or restored and if the worst happens you won't have to spend all that time getting all of your games, images, etc. all over again. I personally went so far in my setup as to set up a custom file structure for launchbox, games, emulation, saves, and cheat codes just to make it even more resistant to errors. D:\Emulation D:\Emulation\Launchbox D:\Emulation\ConsoleOrSystemName (Emulator, Saves, Cheat codes subfolders) D:\Emulation\Images\ConsoleOrSystemName (could be changed to media folder name with video, box art, etc. subfolders) These are just an example of how I set mine up. I know you're probably asking why since launchbox has all of that inside its own folder system, but early on when I first got launchbox, etc. I ran into an error that actually required me to do a fresh install of launchbox and I had to redo everything from scratch, whereas now if I ever have another problem like that I can simply point launchbox to where the files are located. anyways just my suggestion, take it or leave it. Your trying to make me go down that rabbit hole, huh??? Trying to spend the least amount of money on this, but having another HDD for backup would be smart. I have 2K games on it now and havent really started ps1/ps2 emulators yet, but I dont think I would be picking to many of those games up since I'm mostly interested in N64/SNES. I say that now but now that you put that idea in my head, I'll prob be shelling out a few more bucks. This is my setup so far, sorry for the crappy picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Kant Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 what a monster subwooooooooover nice one 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 7, 2018 Author Share Posted August 7, 2018 9 minutes ago, Chris Kant said: what a monster subwooooooooover nice one Theres another one on the other side Twin ported 18" woofers powered by a 6K W amp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Kant Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 really nice. I only have a small Subwoover but for the bass feeling I have two bass shakers in my sitting area ? for the bassy feeling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickyb210 Posted August 7, 2018 Author Share Posted August 7, 2018 37 minutes ago, Chris Kant said: really nice. I only have a small Subwoover but for the bass feeling I have two bass shakers in my sitting area ? for the bassy feeling Yea, I've been looking into those, Either those or go with a nearfield sub setup behind the couch for the tactile feel. Not sure which way I want to go just yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voicesinthedark Posted August 7, 2018 Share Posted August 7, 2018 7 hours ago, Nickyb210 said: Your trying to make me go down that rabbit hole, huh??? Trying to spend the least amount of money on this, but having another HDD for backup would be smart. I have 2K games on it now and havent really started ps1/ps2 emulators yet, but I dont think I would be picking to many of those games up since I'm mostly interested in N64/SNES. I say that now but now that you put that idea in my head, I'll prob be shelling out a few more bucks. This is my setup so far, sorry for the crappy picture. That's a nice setup you've got going there. And you already started down the rabbit hole the second you started getting into emulation. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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