Intel NUC 8i5BEK

Daragon

Hello,

I'd like to get a maximum from the Retropie - I want to play some Wii, PSP and PS2 games on it. Currently I'm using an Odroid XU4 that plays PS1 pretty well and some Dreamcast's games. It struggles little bit with Dreamcast, but never mind. I have not tried Dolphin emulator, yet. I think it is not necessary to test it.

Because of "low" performance I want to buy something more powerful with a small form-factor that can stand Wii/PSP games pretty well. I suppose those consoles are the most demanding in Retropie.

My first tip was Odroid H2+, but I really do not like the case.

Then I found Intel NUC 8i5BEK which has very powerfull CPU and good iGPU in my opinion. There is Intel I5 8259U CPU with 4 cores (2.3GHz base frequency 3.8GHz at Turbo) and Intel Iris Plus Graphic 655 iGPU (it has good rating).

I was surprised by the performance on this video:

Playing at 40-50FPS is enough for me. I want to buy it, but before this I want to hear some advices from you.

My question is - will this NUC be good for GameCbue, Wii and PSP emulation? From dolphin page it should. What about PS2?

Thank you

mikeb

I have the i7 version of that NUC and I’m extremely pleased with it for the emulators. Dolphin emulator for GameCube and Wii work virtually flawlessly. The older console emulators have worked great. Very occasional video lag, but sporadic and very seldom - playing a long-playing adventure game like Twilight Princess maybe a handful of times and for sub-second timeframes.

George Spiggott

@daragon I have the tall version (Intel NUC 8i5BEH) which is identical apart from having an additional SATA port. All three systems run well. I've got some good results out of Wii U and PS3 emulation as well.

Feel free to ask me questions about specific games and I'll check.

wmarcio

I have a Dell 3020m Intel core i5 4590t with Intel hd graphics 4600 and I can play at 720p and 60fps all GameCube games without any problems, I haven't tested PS2 and Wii because they don't interest me.

Daragon

@mikeb said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

I have the i7 version of that NUC and I’m extremely pleased with it for the emulators. Dolphin emulator for GameCube and Wii work virtually flawlessly. The older console emulators have worked great. Very occasional video lag, but sporadic and very seldom - playing a long-playing adventure game like Twilight Princess maybe a handful of times and for sub-second timeframes.

May I ask you what NUC model do you have? I'd like to found out all specifications of it. Thank you!

@george-spiggott said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

@daragon I have the tall version (Intel NUC 8i5BEH) which is identical apart from having an additional SATA port. All three systems run well. I've got some good results out of Wii U and PS3 emulation as well.

Feel free to ask me questions about specific games and I'll check.

I'm glad to hear that you have that NUC and it is working great! Do you have also some Windows games in Retropie?

I can't list all of the games, but as the most I'd like to play on:
-GameCube are: NFS series, Frogger, Mario Kart, Crash Nitro Cart, Rayman 3, etc...
-PSP are: Sonic series, GTA series, Ace Combat, Midnight club, etc...
-Wii are: Angry birds, Crash, Super Mario Bros, Rayman, Worms, etc...

From Wii I think I chose not very demanding games and it should work from your description. From @wmarcio comment I think emulating of GameCube will be also without problems. Could you tell me if PSP GTAs will work if you have them? And also what about PS2? Did you test it? Thank you!

@wmarcio said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

I have a Dell 3020m Intel core i5 4590t with Intel hd graphics 4600 and I can play at 720p and 60fps all GameCube games without any problems, I haven't tested PS2 and Wii because they don't interest me.

Nice, the NUC what I am talking about should be more powerful, so GameCube question is already solved. Thank you!

A Former User

This post is deleted!

George Spiggott

@daragon I don't have all of those games but I'll go through the ones I have.

Gamecube/Wii. I use the standalone Dolphin app. It is/was significantly faster than the Retroarch core. I just tried to test using the Retroarch core but I can't find it on the list. Anyhow the only Gamecube/Wii game that gives me trouble at 1080p is Rogue Squadron III (it is largely unplayable at any resolution I tried and is infamous for being hard to emulate). This definitely applies to Mario Kart (Double Dash), Crash Nitro Cart and Rayman 3.

PSP: Using the Retroarch PSP core I can run most things at 1080p. I only have GTA from your list but God of War: Chains of Olympus (a difficult game to emulate) runs solidly at near 60FPS.

PS2: Again I'm using the standalone app (1.7.0) until the Retorarch core appears. I can run most games at 2x resolution and some at 3x. Some harder to emulate games like Shadow of the Colossus are limited to 1x.

I don't have any kind of Retropie front end running just the Retroarch app, which I find clunky, so i will be looking into setting that up soon. Does anyone know if there is a plan to bring RPCS3 to Retroarch? Unlike CEMU RPCS3 is open source AFAIK.

I have also got Xbox running onCXBX but it is very slow at the moment.

Daragon

@George-Spiggott Thank you for your detailed description!

I see, I'd like to create the emulationstation very user friendly - as much as possible. Just boot it up choose game with gamepad and play... Because of that I'd like to boot all games within Retropie front end if that will be possible. You're telling that dolphin app is faster than Retroarch core and do not have Retropie front end - is there a way how to put the dolphin app to Retropie and use Retroarch for other consoles, too? Does slow Retroarch core have an impact on overall performance of the game? I do not need exact description, but just to know if this NUC will be a good option for me.

So, in my opinion Wii and PSP emulating won't do any problem. Maybe the GameCube will be problematic for some games, but it can be solved by finding the game for another console I suppose. What about GameCube's Prince of Persia series and Super Monkey Ball?

I know it will be better as my current Odroid XU4, but it's hard to tell the improvement in percentage, because emulation surprises me. You can have very powerful system, but if it is hard to emulate the game, it won't run...

George Spiggott

@daragon said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

...Because of that I'd like to boot all games within Retropie front end if that will be possible. You're telling that dolphin app is faster than Retroarch core and do not have Retropie front end - is there a way how to put the dolphin app to Retropie and use Retroarch for other consoles, too? Does slow Retroarch core have an impact on overall performance of the game? I do not need exact description, but just to know if this NUC will be a good option for me.

Without access to the Retroarch Dolphin core I'm not sure. If I find how to access it I will update. I too am looking for a Retropie front end. I'll let you know how that goes.

[edit] Found it, It seems it has been down for some time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/iga83w/gamecubewii_dolphin_core_for_190/

It is due to be added to the new server soon along with PCSX2

In the mean time this core isn't able to access my collection because it is stored in .RVZ format. So until the Dolphin core gets an update I'll continue using the separate app. Having tested Soul Calibur II as an .ISO on it I found it ran well in 1080p with only a few hiccups that I'm sure I could solve with some minor changes to the settings.

YFZdude

@daragon said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

Because of that I'd like to boot all games within Retropie front end if that will be possible.

Just to clarify, you can use the standalone dolphin emulator and still launch it from within Emulation Station after selecting a game from the list and use a hotkey to exit back into ES when you are done playing. This way you are still taking advantage of the RetroPie / Emulation Station front end.

Daragon

@George-Spiggott Thank you! I've already bought a NUC and will leave some comments here for another who want the same as me. One offtopic question - what RAM and SSD/HDD do you use? I have Samsung Evo 970 500GB M.2 SSD and hopefully, it'll be compatible (I saw some videos on YT and it should be).

@yfzdude said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

Just to clarify, you can use the standalone dolphin emulator and still launch it from within Emulation Station after selecting a game from the list...

Thanks, that's what I wanted to hear. I will have to do some research how to do that, because dolphin is not listed in Retropie packages, but that's another topic...

mitu

@daragon said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

dolphin is not listed in Retropie packages, but that's another topic...

Actually, it is included - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/GameCube/ - though it's not listed for non-supported platforms (i.e. ARM).

YFZdude

@daragon said in Intel NUC 8i5BEK:

Thanks, that's what I wanted to hear. I will have to do some research how to do that, because dolphin is not listed in Retropie packages, but that's another topic...

The package lists vary depending on the platform on which you have installed RetroPie. I'm not familiar with RetroPie on the NUC line, but it is definitely on the list somewhere for x86 builds. I think it was in experimental.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly but based on the github page it may be for 64-bit OS only.
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/dolphin.sh

It says

rp_module_id="dolphin"
rp_module_desc="Gamecube/Wii emulator Dolphin"
...
...
rp_module_section="exp"
rp_module_flags="!all 64bit"

Daragon

@mitu @YFZdude

Yup, that should be the problem. I couldn't find it on my Odroid XU4, so I thought it needs to be installed somehow from terminal, but now I know, thank you.

George Spiggott

@daragon I have the exact same SSD and one stick of 16GB of 2400Mhz RAM. I also have a 2.5"/7mm 2TB HDD installed.

Daragon

Hello, so I finally installed Retropie on my NUC, also installed dolphin emulator from Retropie packages and everything seems to work like a charm. The only one problem is, that the input is from a keyboard.

I tried to map my controller (8Bitdo SF30 Pro) in dolphin-emu GUI. The controller is working here, I can start games from this GUI and play all of the games. The problem is that the controller that I set up still does not work in Retropie - Retropie has a keyboard as an input. After closing emulation station and opening a dolphin-emu located in opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin I can see my configuration there and I can play the games. Also graphical settings are applied only in dolphin emu, but not in Retropie.

Am I missing something? It is still the same emulator. It does not make a sense to me...

Thanks

George Spiggott

@daragon Am I right in thinking you are using the standalone Dolphin emulator in EmulationStation?

I found a copy of the Dolphin Libretro core and I'm not having any issues with controls. It won't load .GZ games but it runs my test .ISO, Soul Claibur 2, just fine. I've also found an early version of the PCSX2 Libretro core and that works reasonably well also.

Have you overcome EmulationStation showing both discs for Gamecube games? If you have please share.

Dolphin: https://github.com/hunterk/libretro_builds
PCSX2: https://github.com/aliaspider/pcsx2/releases/tag/v0.1-libretro

YFZdude

@daragon
If you setup your controller while using dolphin, then RetroPie won't have that information. You need to setup the controller in RetroPie. If it doesn't prompt you, you can press START to access the menu and look for Configure Input in the menu.

The disconnect is because the dolphin package listed in the RetroPie setup is a standalone emulator and not the libretro/RetroArch version. Only the lr- emulators can pull controller configs and settings from RetroPie.

Daragon

@George-Spiggott @YFZdude
Just to be clear...

Yes, I am using the dolphin standalone emulator. I downloaded it through package management in Retropie->Retropie Setup->Manage Packages->exp->dolphin. My Retropie is installed on Ubuntu 20. When I start Retropie app/EmulationStation I can see Wii and GameCube games in the list. My controller is working in every console except of Wii and GC. When I start a Wii/GC game and press A button I can choose two emulators -> dolphin or dolphin-gui. In dolphin option the input is from a keyboard and in dolphin-gui option nothing works.

From searching in Retropie Docs I found out that it needs to be mapped individually in dolphin-emu GUI. I opened a terminal and started the ./dolphin-emu. A dolphin app appeared and I changed a controller from keyboard to 8Bitdo. I mapped all the buttons and started a game from standalone dolphin emulator not Retropie (I press the play button, select the game and it started). Voala, the dolphin recognizes my new input and everything works fine.

Unfortunatelly this input is still not working in Retropie. I can play games only with keyboard.

I do not know what to do, because it is the same dolphin emulator and it should work I suppose.

EDIT: Also any graphics or audio configuration does not apply in Retropie. Only in dolphin from terminal. It is still the same emulator, isn't it?

YFZdude

@daragon
Ah I see. So if you launch the standalone it works but when launching from within RetroPie it doesn't.

Odd, I pretty much did the same as you to configure the controllers when I set mine up on my Lubuntu 20.04 build on my old PC. The only thing I do differently is I have changed the emulator choice from runcommand to be the dolphin-gui since that is the only way I could get it to use the hotkey for exiting the emulator and returning to RetroPie.

When I launched the standalone GUI to map controls, I didn't launch a game from there but I can't see how that would break the controller config. It sounds like there is some trouble saving the controller config where RetroPie expects to find it. It should be launching the same standalone emulator so this isn't making sense to me.

EDIT: Maybe you can check out the guide at https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/guides/configuring-controllers/ and see if there is anything that stands out as something that may have been missed. It does appear there are multiple screens for picking the controls and which controller gets used.