Retro Focused (Dreamcast and older) Machine Help

[sraffer2]

Been doing a ton of research lately, but can't find any definitive answers. I'm wanting to focus on only emulating pre/includding Dreamcast and looking for spec recommendations. This is mostly for two reason; 1) I have a friend who works with computer regularly and may have bits and pieces laying around 2) I have a ton of amazon gift cards laying around and would be content buying a referb/used pre-built. I really just want to focus on retro, so no need for PS2, gamecube, wii etc and really including Dreamcast as I know they run some arcade ports (Blitz) better than MAME. So if you have any reccomendations I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

[onilink55]

According to a Wikipedia article about NullDC (one of the more popular Dreamcast emulators, these are the minimum specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon XP/64/Turion at 2 GHz or Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6 GHz or equivalent

Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti or ATi Radeon 8500

RAM: 512 MB

Operating system: Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NullDC

However, it may be a good idea to look up other Dreamcast emulators as well in case you use a combination. Furthermore, if you are planning on emulating PS1 or N64 you may want to check their specs. I wouldn't just assume that Dreamcast takes more CPU just because it's newer (maybe it does but be on the safe side and double check). Most of the time you can type "Emulator Name Minimum Specifications" into Google and find what your looking for.

[Awakened]

I'd recommend Demul instead since has a lot less graphical problems that nullDC (glitched sprites in CVS2, for example), but it's pretty CPU hungry even running at native res. I'm not sure what the min spec is exactly; if you Google translate their official page's FAQ:

Q: What hardware do I need to emulate?

A: The steeper the better. If you have a processor Athlon, Celeron or Pentium MMX, you do not shine . If you have a built-in Intel video, can not count on much . If you have a steep configuration, then multiply it by two to play Naomi 2. Some processors (Athlon XP in particular) do not have SSE2 support, and can not be used to run the current version of the emulator.

I would think my i5 2500 3.3ghz quad core plus GTX 570 "shines", but I do get the occasional sound hiccup. That happens less with vsync off. I think that's a byproduct of the sound stretching feature they added, which I hope will be optional in the future.

[sraffer2]

So after browsing around I found some good deals on two Gateway SX2110G models A and B (using newegg for easy spec look up). That being said I have two questions hopefully you all could help me out with. 1) Would either of these machines fit my needs as posted above? and 2) Which would be preferred, the slightly higher processor speed or additional RAM? Once again each are priced the same.