PC Build - Help

[Shoniv]

?‍♂️ I'm new to emulation and I can't get certain games to work properly.

*(You can skip this part) I'm also in my early twenties and between a lot of possible paths so I decided to go with With game designing as it's the only thing I'm passionate about. I want to learn from the greats and considering I never even finished a Zelda game, this is my chance to do something about it. I'm currently learning to draw so I can get accepted to a video game development course where I live.*

I need help building a PC capable of running all games on any emulator without any frame drops.

I tried to play ratchet and clank 3 on a i5-6500 and  MSI GTX 1070 8GB on PCSX2 and still had significant frame and emulation speed drops.

I had also tried Citra (both Nightly and Canary) in order to run Majora's Mask 3D and it struggled keeping stable fps.

So, I'm looking for a PC that is just enough for my demands, it is meant to be no more than an emulating machine, but I would also need it to have room for a modern graphic card, possibly RTX 2060, Just in case it'll be needed for the game design course I'm planning to take.

I'd say my budget is around 800$ but I hope to hear that this much isn't needed.

Thank you all, and feel free to add me on Facebook (Shoni Vilchik with an absurd pic colored a yellow shade).

 

 

 

[Lordmonkus]

There is usually no simple answer to your question other than "buy the most expensive and powerful CPU you can afford and build around that".

Emulation, especially of newer systems is very demanding on the CPU. Also with emulating newer systems the emulation uses many speed hacks because current hardware is not capable of emulating those systems on a "low level" and in turn this can cause very noticeable issues in how well games are emulated. PCSX2 and Citra are 2 such examples of emulators that while they work and many games are in a playable state there are many games that will have some issues. You should check the emulators compatibility charts for individual games. PCSX2 is an emulator where often games require their own specific settings to iron out some kinks.

Now having said all that your system should be fine for those systems you mentioned, an i5-6500 is fairly powerful for emulation and you would have to spend quite a bit of money to get a noticeable improvement on performance. I would also add that going from a GTX 1070 to an RTX 2060 would be a waste of money and not an upgrade at all.

[Shoniv]

It's not my PC, I just checked the emulation on it.

Also I had a tried every different setting I could find, and used any specific guide I could also find. It appears to be my processor speed that's holding me back, considering I read of old pentiums that reach 4.3 GHZ and supposedly perform better emulations

[Lordmonkus]

There are some Pentium CPUs that have very high clock speeds and works with some emulators but those CPUs are either single core / thread CPUs and are not very suitable for modern multi threaded applications.

[Shoniv]

I see

So is there any cpu to compete with it that is also modern?

[Lordmonkus]

There are but they are going to cost you to get a significant upgrade over what you already have. You can look into what chips your motherboard supports and upgrade the CPU alone because if you have to upgrade your MB and Ram your upgrade costs are going to be high.