discussion the unofficial 'talking about building MiniPC emulator boxes' thread

[Marzipan]

@Shadowarez, you were the most vocal commenter when I mentioned the retro handhelds I'm getting, so I'll drag you into this conversation.

while I drool at the thought of the Radeon RX 8050s / 8060s iGPU, they're probably going to be WAY out of budget for me...so, realistically I'm probably going to end up grabbing a box with a Ryzen CPU that has the 780M cause they're going to get a lot more affordable soon, like the Ryzen 5000 boxes did. the performance of the RDNA3.5 based 880M and 890M on Strix Point is a bit underwhelming, so unlikely to be worth the price premium they'll have.

anyhow... I'm going to adopt a wait n see pattern and make a move one the SteamOS public candidate comes out.

 

[Shadowarez]

Yeah I'm keeping my eye out for that for now I'll tinker with the Bazzite like everyone seems to be using. This time I'll keep it dedicated to just this purpose lol

Ryzen AI 395 coming to mini pc's

 

[djbrad]

I used my amd 5700g a lot for emulation, and it was just enough for switch titles, except for the heavy ones, like Zelda Tears of the kingdom (hard to keep 30fps).

All others consoles, up to ps2, no problems.

The new ryzen cpus should be incredible. For a silent mini pc, without adding any gpu, it should be a rockstar.

I was very impressed with my Thinkpad T14s Gen 3, who got a 780m gpu on the amd 6850u cpu. It shines in games, emulation is not a problem too.

Even intel with their new igpu would be nice. What a great time to build a powerful minpc.

About that Retrohandhelds, I may have missed that topic (or is it the anbernic one?).

I got a Miyoo mini and then later a Miyoo Mini plus. I always bring it on the road.

 

[Bond007]

Yeah I'm keeping my eye out for that for now I'll tinker with the Bazzite like everyone seems to be using. This time I'll keep it dedicated to just this purpose lol

Ryzen AI 395 coming to mini pc's

I used my amd 5700g a lot for emulation, and it was just enough for switch titles, except for the heavy ones, like Zelda Tears of the kingdom (hard to keep 30fps).

All others consoles, up to ps2, no problems.

The new ryzen cpus should be incredible. For a silent mini pc, without adding any gpu, it should be a rockstar.

I was very impressed with my Thinkpad T14s Gen 3, who got a 780m gpu on the amd 6850u cpu. It shines in games, emulation is not a problem too.

Even intel with their new igpu would be nice. What a great time to build a powerful minpc.

About that Retrohandhelds, I may have missed that topic (or is it the anbernic one?).

I got a Miyoo mini and then later a Miyoo Mini plus. I always bring it on the road.

I'll just leave this here. Very similar to 4060 in this sample case (EDIT: apparently its 4060 mobile average in the chart)

AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU Benched in 3DMark, Leak Suggests Impressive iGPU Performance

Late last month, an AMD "How to Sell" Ryzen AI MAX series guide appeared online—contents provided an early preview of the Radeon 8060S iGPU's prowess in 1080p gaming environments. Team Red seemed to have some swagger in their step; they claimed that their forthcoming "RDNA 3.5" integrated...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Shadowarez]

this new mini i could turn into a slick Steam Machine on Go so long as its not priced like a full blown $2000+ system lol though that 128gb ddr 5 sounds tempting.

 

[CMetaphor]

Yep, I'll be watching and waiting for this build too. Like I've said elsewhere it'll all depend on whether they make 395 APUs into a regular ITX form factor, and how much it'll cost. Till then, my next best option is sadly only an 8700G, which is still more than enough for emulation... but I really want the 395 horsepower in a tiny box in my living room to play almost everything natively and then just rj45 stream the games it can't handle from my main gamer PC. In other words, the more heavy lifting it can do by itself, the better.

Anyone seen any leaks or announcements on 395 products being released soon? I don't watch tech news as much or as closely as I should ATM

 

[Shadowarez]

Seen a few Labtops penned for this but I'd nice to see if minus forum makes a Board with one Or framework.

 

[Marzipan]

I used my amd 5700g a lot for emulation, and it was just enough for switch titles, except for the heavy ones, like Zelda Tears of the kingdom (hard to keep 30fps).

All others consoles, up to ps2, no problems.

The new ryzen cpus should be incredible. For a silent mini pc, without adding any gpu, it should be a rockstar.

I was very impressed with my Thinkpad T14s Gen 3, who got a 780m gpu on the amd 6850u cpu. It shines in games, emulation is not a problem too.

Even intel with their new igpu would be nice. What a great time to build a powerful minpc.

About that Retrohandhelds, I may have missed that topic (or is it the anbernic one?).

I got a Miyoo mini and then later a Miyoo Mini plus. I always bring it on the road.

check out the Recent Purchases thread...I listed the 3 retro handhelds I bought this week.

Data Frog SF2000, PowKiddy RGB20SX and an Anbernic Cube (non-XX)...plus I got a GameSir X2s extendable controller for my Velvet 5G. B)

 

[Izerous]

It really comes down to how new of stuff you want to emulate. The pi4 is surprisingly capable (with issues I noted about n64 elsewhere) when it comes to retro emulation. If your aiming for newer (say early 2000s consoles and such, probably the Wii too) the 6500T mini pcs I split up would handle quite a bit more.

If your looking for full SteamOS + Emulation and hoping for good modern game support then I think the AMD APUs you guys are mentioning is the right direction. The SteamDeck is actually pretty good at emulation even newer stuff, and it can play new things through steam.

 

[Caldezar]

Curious if a SteamOS build could have EmuDeck installed on it? I don't see why not, and that's an absolutely flawless system on my Steam Deck.