Guide to use Dolphin emulator to play games on PC

Emulator Dolphin ( Dolphin Emulator ) is one of the simulator helps players can play the game of Nintendo (Wii, Gamecube, ...) on your computer.

Many people will also mistakenly think Dolphin is similar to other emulators. But in fact, the Nox Player , LDPlayer or BlueStacks ... that we are used to using before and Dolphin is completely different. However, how and how? They will play any game format or application, we will analyze it in the following article. 

What is Dolphin Emulator? 

Dolphin is an open source game emulator for the computer. Dolphin is free to users and first appeared in 2003. This software can support users to play games for two Nintendo GameCube and Wii systems. 

It is also for this reason that Dolphin is also known as the Nintendo emulator , which refers to the games that this software can emulate to play. Like the emulator software that can only play mobile games, especially Android games on Window operating system will be called " Android Emulator ".

What operating systems is the Dolphin emulator compatible with?

Thanks to the change from closed source (2003) exclusively for Windows operating systems to open source (2008), now, apart from being released for free, Dolphin Emulator can also work well on all operating systems. computers like: Windows, Linux, macOS and Android.

Dolphin Emulator has great advantages that even Gamecube and Wii can't have. Especially in terms of graphics quality, Dolphin can support gamers playing games with HD, 1080 or even higher quality.

Each of its new versions, Dolphin Emulator add and upgrade to meet the needs of players as well as have the ability to enhance to play well blockbuster games, games with terrible graphics like Dragon Quest X , Star Wars: The Clone Wars ...

Specifically about the operating systems supported by Dolphin: 

• Windows: Windows 7 SP1 or higher 
• Linux and macOS: From 10.10 Yosemite
• Android: From Android 5.0 and up

Requirements for computer configuration with Dolphin

For computer operating system (Windows, MAC, Linux)

• Minimum configuration:
  • Windows 7 64bit or higher operating system or OS X Yosemite 10.10 or higher
  • The CPU has support for SSE2 or 3 GHz and Dual Core
  • 2GB RAM or above
  • Supports Pixel Shader 3.0 and Direct3D 10.0 or OpenGL 3
• Recommended configuration:
  • Windows 7 64bit or higher operating system or OS X Yosemite 10.10 or higher
  • 2GB RAM or above
  • DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.4 or modern Vulkan GPU

For Android operating system:

• Operating system: Android 5.0 and above
• CPU: Snapdragon 835 or equivalent
• RAM: 1GB or more
• GPU: Adreno 540 or equivalent and support OpenGL ES 3.2 + Vulkan

Things to note: 

• A perfect CPU for Dolphin is one with high IPC, high clock speed, and four or more cores.
• With graphics card :
  • Intel: In the same new generation, whether using i5 or i7, will not too affect the performance of this emulator. But pay attention to U and Y series processors
  • AMD: Only Ryzen and above should be used
• The GPU selection for this emulator is pretty straightforward. A very powerful graphics card, lots of pixels will be best. However, it's worth noting whether it supports the latest DirectX and OpenGL? Because compared to traditional PC, Dolphin uses quite a lot of these 2 programs.
  • NVIDIA: This is the best option and it can support Dolphin emulation even with a mid-range NVIDIA 
  • AMD: Like NVIDIA, AMD supports Dolphin quite well, but it tends to favor Direct3D over OpenGL
  • Intel: A discrete graphics card is always recommended, or an Iris Pro Graphics is best

How to download and install Dolphin on your computer

Download.com.vn have detailed instructions on how to download Dolphin and install Dolphin to play the game. You can review in the article " How to download and install Dolphin emulators on the computer ".

What games can be played on the Dolphin Emulator?

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, this "Dolphin" emulator supports players with Nintendo games, so regular game formats will not be used. If you intend to play games with Dolphin, you should find and download the game with the following formats: 

• GCM
• GCZ
• ISO
• CISO
• WBFS
• ELF
• DOL
• WBFS
• WAD

How to use Dolphin to play games

Basically, you will need a game with one of the aforementioned formats. Later: 

Step 1: Start the Dolphin emulator. From the main interface, you left click on the Open icon or double-click on the message line " Dolphin could not find any GameCube / Wii ... " in the middle of the screen. 

Step 2: Basically, both of these actions will open a new Windows window for you. You navigate to the location to save the game file you need to play and select it / Open (or Select ).

Step 3: Wait a moment to sync the game onto the emulator, then you can left-click to select a game (in case there are many games at the same time), then click on the Play icon to start playing. 

ATTENTION: 

Before playing (best to do before launching the game), you also need to pay attention to setting up the play button for Dolphin, because each different game will have different gameplay and keys. 

On how to play in detail, how can I install a game in Dolphin or play a game on Dolphin in detail? Download.com.vn will guide you in another detailed article.