Computer Upgrade for Emulating?

Hey Guys,

When I run an emulator on my PC, no matter what it is, if I disable sound it runs better and smoother. Even sometimes when I do so it is still somewhat choppy and cut scenes are horrible etc...

Would it help to upgrade the video/sound card or get more memory?

here are my specs:
System:
* AMD Turion-64 ML-32 (1.8GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
* 512MB 333MHz DDR SDRAM (1x512MB 200-pin SODIMM)
* 100GB 4200RPM HD
* 17-inch Ultra Brightview WXGA+ screen
* 128MB ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory
* DVD+/-RW/R & CW-RW Combo w/Double Layer Support
* Windows XP Home
* Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN


I am assuming getting more RAM is the solution but any insight you can provide is much appreciated.

Cheers,

bdog

Is that a laptop?

Looks like it at any rate.. However, all more RAM will do is speed up Windows in general..

Also.. you haven't said what emulators you use in particular.. "Any emulator" is way too broad a scope.. Its a decent system except for the lacking RAM, if you are emulating 2D stuff, etc.. Emulating 3D stuff on a laptop that has a less than top of the line 3D accelerator, CPU, and a good deal of RAM (mucho bux) is probably not gonna be worth it.. And even then it depends on the plugins you use. Even desktops have trouble with 3D console emulation.

bdogthehog said:

Hey Guys,

When I run an emulator on my PC, no matter what it is, if I disable sound it runs better and smoother. Even sometimes when I do so it is still somewhat choppy and cut scenes are horrible etc...

Would it help to upgrade the video/sound card or get more memory?

here are my specs:
System:
* AMD Turion-64 ML-32 (1.8GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
* 512MB 333MHz DDR SDRAM (1x512MB 200-pin SODIMM)
* 100GB 4200RPM HD
* 17-inch Ultra Brightview WXGA+ screen
* 128MB ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory
* DVD+/-RW/R & CW-RW Combo w/Double Layer Support
* Windows XP Home
* Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN


I am assuming getting more RAM is the solution but any insight you can provide is much appreciated.

Cheers,

bdog

Click to expand...

The processor should be ok for most stuff up to and including PS1 and N64 emulation. You don't mention which OS the computer is running, I'm guessing XP. Adding at least another 512Mb of Ram would probably resolve most of your framerate problems. If you happen to have Vista on there you want a minimum of 2Gb Ram.

Its also worth making sure all your system and graphics drivers and Direct X are up to date, out of date drivers can make a massive difference to system performance.
As Zach said that looks like a Laptop, if so check if your Graphics card/chip shares the main system memory, check your free HD space and make sure the Windows page file (virtual memory) has plenty of breathing room (its often a good idea to create a specific partition on the disk for this). Also check what on-board sound chip its using and again check if its sharing any system resources.

The XPRESS chipset/GPU combos definitely jack system memory, but even then, N64/PS1 and lower emulation should work fine. I'd suspect some sort of malware hogging all the resources and causing lag.