Emulation Gaming Good laptop for strong emulation and work?

[Louis Miles]

Hello all,

I'm looking for a good laptop that will run programs like Blender and Maya well, but is also powerful enough to run emulators like Dolphin, Cemu, and possibly Yuzu smoothly. Unfortunately I am not very familiar with the different PC specs and find extremely different opinions on the internet. I have been on many websites that highly recommend laptops, but then has bad reviews on YouTube. Another problem is that the price/performance ratios also look pretty messed up to me.

Blender and Maya don't have to be extremely super fast now (e.g. very fast rendering). Just to a reasonable degree that you can create and animate reasonably complex models.
Important for me is that the emulation for Wii, Wii U and more is fast, so that I can play games in HD smoothly. 4K resolution is not that important to me.
The most important thing for me is that the game Super Mario Galaxy 2 runs smoothly in HD resolution on the Dolphin emulator.


The problem for me is simply that I never know for sure how well especially the emulators work. A Wii U emulator could still be slower on a PC that can play the actual PC games smoothly.


From one video I got that the laptop with the long name "GIGABYTE G5 GD-51DE123SD" is a powerful PC and even has a good price of 750 €, but I can't find any test videos on the Dolphin Emulator and Co.

I was also thinking about buying a Steam Deck, as it seems to be quite a bargain for the price and performance and even has a touchscreen, but it is unfortunately not really designed for Windows programs. Blender is available in the Steam Store, but I use a whole range of Windows-only programs.

What is important for me is that the emulators run great, like Dolphin Emulator smoothly in HD resolution.


So I wanted to ask if anyone has experience and knowledge about this and could help me.



Thanks in advance!

 

[sombrerosonic]

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/lapt...rand&msclkid=9366fdc4d4eb1a2e05829e5c0896d97c

This laptop comes to mind NTM its 600 bucks for a good Wii U playabilty

 

[FriendlyPolygon]

I can recommend looking at some MSI Nitro 5 model laptops. There are plenty of available configurations, all of them are decent.
I strongly not recommend Steam Deck for work, it's not designed for that at all. Better look at GPD Win MAX micro-laptops (2021 model can manage Yuzu on medium(normal) GPU accuracy , newer one will do it a little better)

 

[Hayato213]

Windows Handheld PC if you want to play emulation on the go, but those aren't cheap, and it doesn't satisficed your condition of usage for work.

 

[linuxares]

Run Maya and Blender smoothly? Then you want a lot of memory and cpu power even. A powerful GPU if you gonna render as well...
So sadly you won't find a good mix cheap for a laptop if so.
I guess check with XMG and see if they got any good deals. They tend to have more powerful hardware and better prices sometimes.

Sadly I lack info what you need to do with the laptop to even half recommend anything.
Also to add to the confusion. A lot of laptop manufactours can have a different SKU for example Media Markt or Saturn. Because Media Markt might want different parts to sell it. Yaaaay....

 

[Louis Miles]

Thanks for your help!

Run Maya and Blender smoothly? Then you want a lot of memory and cpu power even. A powerful GPU if you gonna render as well...
So sadly you won't find a good mix cheap for a laptop if so.
I guess check with XMG and see if they got any good deals. They tend to have more powerful hardware and better prices sometimes.

Sadly I lack info what you need to do with the laptop to even half recommend anything.
Also to add to the confusion. A lot of laptop manufactours can have a different SKU for example Media Markt or Saturn. Because Media Markt might want different parts to sell it. Yaaaay....

Oho yes sorry, have now updated the main thread with more info on this.

Blender and Maya don't have to be extremely super fast now (e.g. very fast rendering). Just to a reasonable degree that you can create and animate reasonably complex models.
Important for me is that the emulation for Wii, Wii U and Co. is fast, so that I can play games in HD smoothly. 4K resolution is not that important to me.

The most important thing for me is that the game Super Mario Galaxy 2 runs smoothly in HD resolution on the Dolphin emulator. The emulation for the game seems to fluctuate in many gameplay test videos on different PCs, which is why I have such a hard time finding a suitable laptop.

 

[ChanseyIsTheBest]

The decision you have to make now is if you want a computer with integrated graphics or one with discrete graphics. These days you can get HD Wii emulation off iGPUs but I'm not sure about Wii U. If you're doing 3D modelling stuff it sounds like you need a laptop with a dGPU.

 

[linuxares]

Ironically it's a Macbook you really talk about if you gonna use Blender and Maya.
Else a Asus G15.

If you wanna go on the cheap, check out the Lenovo Legion 5.