I have a couple of questions about AMD cards. Since I am getting an r9 290. 1. I play alot of emulated console games but I know I wont have problems with any of the classic systems such as Nes,Snes,Genesis,GB,GBC, and GBA. And modern like Nintendo DS and PSP. Will I have any problems with emulating N64,PS1,PS2, and Game Cube? 2. Will I have any issues with any games I play with DosBox or ScummVm? This my 2nd AMD card since owning a crappy 9600 se for a very short time. And I dont want any surprises. I mainly owned Nvidia cards with a fx 5700ultra and a geforce 6800, a gts 250, and now a 560 ti. 3. are the drivers cumbersome like causing crashes? I had my nvidia drivers crash on me a few times.
Questions 1 and 2, I have no idea about as I don't run emulators. Question 3 though, is rather difficult to answer exactly. As with any other piece of hardware, everyone's experience will vary to some extent. Personally, I've had no major issues with AMD or NVidia's drivers. If you're the "install and use it" type, you shouldn't have any major issues. If you're the "install and tweak" type, good luck. I've found the easiest way to avoid issues, is to avoid all the BS "tweaks"....
You will probably run into major performance issues when trying many 3D-games via emulators, as well as graphical glitches. I tried many emulators, most 3D-games perform really bad (especially everything PS2). Not sure if it's because of OpenGL, ATi, or method of emulation, but I've seen nVidia systems handle these cases better. Some games are completely fine though, and 2D-games are almost always fine. Been a while since I tried and I have a different card than you have. Maybe certain drivers will fix the performance or help with the glitches. Not sure what you find acceptable, but be prepared for disappointment.
Ok thanks I probably will have to tweak my PS1 and PS2 N64 emulators to work with the card which shouldn't be too difficult I just have to use Direct X stuff with those. Ok thats good to hear.
I do a lot of emulation with more modern emulators and don't have any real problems. Newer builds of the likes of PCSX2, Dolphin and PPSSPP run flawlessly for the most part. There's the odd game that might have issues, but that's not so much down to my hardware as it is the emulation software and the game in question being problematic. All in all it's pretty rare, and frankly the emulations we're talking about here tend to be more CPU dependent anyway. Most emulators will require a little playing with in order to find a sweet spot, but AMD is no worse than Nv in this category in my experience.
No problem. Honestly mate, if someone is having major problems running modern emulators while using hardware on par with mine or better, the issue is likely with them rather than anything else.
I've run Dolphin, ePSXe, and nullDC without any issues. I don't play them a lot mind you, just for a few old games.
Yes, the problem is with me. I'm too demanding. I guess it depends what games you try to emulate and what you find acceptable. I can run most modern games properly and nearly all last gen games at a full 60fps. I have 80 different PC games installed at the moment, ranging from Crysis 2 to Two Worls II to Grid Racedriver to Civilization V and they all run like they are supposed to, often even slightly faster when compared to benchmarks and others. There's no stability issues ever, no temp issues, no odd occurences or crashes. I have more than 30 different driver DLL versions to test with, and try them all on every game to get the best results. Same goes for emulators. Yet many 3D-games give me problems with emulation running on both older and later versions, no matter what I try. I can't get the Metroid Prime series to run good (acceptable to others maybe, but broken to me). I can't get a solid 60 fps on Tekken 4 (PS2), Dead or Alive 2 (DC) or most other 3D-fightgames. Mind you, I find anything sub 60fps on 3D-emulation broken. I find a missing frame broken. I find an audio skip broken. Maybe I'm demanding, but I think these emulated games (especially fighting games, probably my favorite genre) should run at least as well on PC as they do on their original platform, otherwise I consider it broken. I'm pretty sure I could find plenty of examples that don't run correctly on your system either. However, if you don't mind a skip here and there, a slight pop or crackle in your audio every once in a while, a dropped frame every now and then or sub 60fps on many titles, then you probably won't find much reason to complain. Dead or Alive 2 wasn't a problem a while back when my brother still had an nVidia card, but now he has almost the same system as me and the same issues with emulation.
Emulators are more CPU intensive than GPU, as long as you have a decent CPU (4670K should do the trick), you will be fine!
I wasn't getting at you specifically mate, and my system is a fair bit quicker than yours. Modern emulators are CPU intensive, that's where the stress comes from. I could be running this exact same system with a 260 or 750 and get similar performance in most PCSX2 and Dolphin games, despite my GPU being considerably stronger. I get the performance I do because I'm running a modern I5 at 4.4ghz. You're perfectly right, not all games will run at a solid 60FPS, but the majority will. Newer builds of the emulators I mentioned in my earlier post are absolutely fantastic, Dolphin is especially good. Even if you do run into problems with the odd game, chances are you'll find a build catered to it. I found one for Xenoblade Chronicles, and run it without a problem with consistent frames while using the community texture pack (as well as the 360 button pack, which is a must). As you said, it's been awhile since you used those emulators. I'd recommend having a play around with them. They've came a long way in the past 6-12 months.
Yes, I guess in many cases it will help just overpowering the emulation of the game with raw and excessive CPU-force. The OP has a Q6600 according to his sheet, which will slow down a couple of games, but the upcoming 4790K should do just fine in those cases. Yes, I almost felt slightly insulted, but it's cool, thanks for clearing it up. They indeed are CPU intensive and your processor should give about 160-180% of the calculation power that mine gives. With those specs, many cases of sub 60fps that I experience could be avoided.
Not a problem, glad to clear it up. It definitely wasn't my intent to insult. Emulation is actually one of the main reasons I opted for this I5 when I bought it, I would have quite possibly went for a cheaper build otherwise.
If you like emulation, prefer an nvidia card, not an ATI card. While the ATI card is ok for most emulator, some have strange bug on it (like textures flickering) : NullDC : code.google.com/p/nulldc/issues/detail?id=316&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priorit y%20Milestone%20Owner%20Summary%20emu&start=100 Demul : code.google.com/p/nulldc/issues/detail?id=47 PPSSPP : forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=4383 While i don't regreat getting my r9 280x card (damn this thing can run BF4 maxed out i'm impressed ;D), i'm very annoyed about this, since i play a lot of emulated game. Edit : for exemple, on my card i57.tinypic.com/wuo74y.png i58.tinypic.com/2ihttv8.png
Thanks for the info I will try to work around these bugs if possible. Also I dont do dreamcast emulation but PSP I am doing that.
