Looking to upgrade PC for gaming?

[Stu1690]

Hi

I am fairly new to using Launchbox and i have been testing it on my main PC over the last few days. So far i quite like the interface and how easy it is to get setup.

My main questions are that i have two PC's. One that is used as my main computer and another that is primarily used as a Media Centre for all of my backups of Movies, TV Shows and Music using Kodi connected to my main TV.

I have all of my Consoles (PS2,PS3,PS4,Dreamcast,Wii U) setup to my main TV  but i am thinking of de-cluttering my living room and having an all in one option upgrading my Media PC and using Launchbox (Bigbox). Most of these consoles are modded to play roms like my PS2, Dreamcast and Wii U but as i have 70+ PS3 disc games, i will be looking to back them up as well to use on this proposed new all in one setup.

It will probably run anything pre Wii-U and PS3 easily now i would have thought but can anyone let me know what sort of spec of components i would need to upgrade to run Wii U and PS3? 

My Media PC is using WIN 10 64bit but is quite old now and has this spec. Gigabyte 78LMT-USB R2 motherboard. 8gb DDR3 Ram,  AMD Phenom II X4 960T 3.00GHz CPU, Nvidia GeForce GT 520 GPU.

I am expecting to have to upgrade quite a few components like the CPU, GPU and ram and as it is such a long time since i built my PC's i am out of the loop on spec's and such but would like a rough idea on parts to see if it going to be worth the cost tbh. It is nice having all of the original consoles out on show but they are taking up too much space now.

Any recommendations are most welcome.

Cheers Stu

[Lordmonkus]

My advice, don't bother spending money upgrading anything to emulate Wii U or PS3, the emulation quality just isn't good enough yet. I have a PS3 and Wii U as well as a PC capable of running the emulators for those systems and I don't even bother with it because of the lack of quality outside of a very small select few games that play very well like Zelda BotW and Demons Souls. 

Only upgrade the PC if you need to so you can play high end PC games better, that is if you are into PC gaming at all.

Now having said that and you are still wanting to go ahead and upgrade to emulate those systems then you will basically want to buy the top of the line CPU and a very good graphics card though you don't need the best graphics card to emulate them. Emulation is always far more CPU dependent than it is GPU and getting the best CPU you can will give you the best experience possible at a given moment in time.

[Stu1690]

9 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

My advice, don't bother spending money upgrading anything to emulate Wii U or PS3, the emulation quality just isn't good enough yet. I have a PS3 and Wii U as well as a PC capable of running the emulators for those systems and I don't even bother with it because of the lack of quality outside of a very small select few games that play very well like Zelda BotW and Demons Souls. 

Only upgrade the PC if you need to so you can play high end PC games better, that is if you are into PC gaming at all.

Now having said that and you are still wanting to go ahead and upgrade to emulate those systems then you will basically want to buy the top of the line CPU and a very good graphics card though you don't need the best graphics card to emulate them. Emulation is always far more CPU dependent than it is GPU and getting the best CPU you can will give you the best experience possible at a given moment in time.

Ah, that's a bit of a bummer that Wii-U and PS3 don't emulate very well.

I don't game at all on PC so it's looking likely that it won't really be worth me forking out cash if they do not work all that well tbh.

Thank you for the speedy reply though. it has cleared up my questions and saved me wasting my time and money on an unreliable emulation situation.

Cheers Stu

[Lordmonkus]

Some games do emulate very well, Wii U is in much better shape than PS3 but once you step outside the mainstream games it becomes very hit and miss. PS3 though is still very glitchy and has even fewer games that are emulated well.

But yeah i'd still hold on to my money and wait before trying to really emulate those systems, especially if you have those systems and games already, you will have a much better time playing them on the original hardware without worries of glitches and slowdowns. Give it a few more years.