A small guide to various Dolphin Emulator builds [GC/WII]

[SE7EN]

Dolphin, the only current emulator that can run retail Wii and gameCube games at full speed, also a Triforce emulator, but very low compatibility for that system (I believe it is 1 game). It was, until the launch of the Wii U, the only emulator to be able to run a current-generation console game at 100% speed (Wii games). Anyways, there are quite a few different versions of this emulator, and some differences that set them apart. There is, unfortunately, not a clear 'winner' of which one is the best, as they all run different games at different speeds, but by testing the games YOU play the most in a few of them, you can pick the one that fits you best. In the past year, the official site has done some moving around, so I am going to make a small bookmark post here, so people can find the current location of the various builds.

1. Official Dolphin build. This one is the most stable edition, and the most supported by the Dolphin Team.
currently at 3.0, this is the one you can find on our Emulators Download Section, alongside the older revision, 2.0.

Dolphin Official Site

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http://dolphin-emu.org/download/

2. Nightly revisions. These are made by the same team, but contain updates/fixes of the main revision (Official Build) These are moderately supported by the Dolphin Forums, but usually you will end up being pointed at an earlier revision, as the fixes for one game can have undesired affects in another. These revisions are GENERALLY faster for your FPS, but not for every game. These can be found on the

Dolphin Official Site

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http://dolphin-emu.org/download/

3. Unofficial builds. These are special revisions to the source code made by talented members of the Dolphin Forums. they often have special speed fixes and enhancements not found in the Official Builds, or are specially optimized for various hardware (OpenMP, ICC-optimized for example). These are not supported by the Official Dolphin Team, but generally the author will help you out if it is problem lying within their build only. Picking one of these builds correctly may result in speedups of up to 20% on a particular game, may have no affect at all, or picking one not optimized for your computer system may actually lower performance. I will list some with links to them, and give a small bit of information about them, but more details can be found at the links.
*note: most of the thread's names (on the Official Dolphin Forums) are updated when a new revision is released, therefor a direct link to the exact thread would not be practical, as it would be dead when the author updates revisions. Instead I have linked to the author's thread listing, but they are stickied, so they will be easy to find at the top of the list. I have also included, where applicable, a link to the author's site where they can also be found.

A. ExtremeDude's. Windows only, usually most current build. A good all-around build, usually faster than the official revisions, but does not utilize OpenMP, so may not be the fastest Unofficial Build.

Dolphin Forum Link

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http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/search.php?action=results&sid=4f50739248aeacec425778c401744b3f

ExtremeDude's site

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https://sites.google.com/site/ryancollinsdolphinbuilds/home

B. Vlad's. Windows only, this build has builds for either Intel or AMD processors, ICC and OpenMP optimized. Usually a few revisions behind ExtremeDude's, these are pretty fast builds in most cases, a clear winner if you favor speed over the fixes in the newer revisions. He has also made a GUI for various settings that are left out of official revisions if you need it.

Dolphin Forums Link

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http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/search.php?action=results&sid=33bcafaed9349dfae41865ce52c61caf

Vlad's site

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http://www.vlad.rs/

C. Lectrode's. Windows only.These used to be the most sought after builds, generally the fastest and most compatible, but some various situations (like sometimes not having a computer) means that his revisions aren't always updated often.

Dolphin Forums link

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http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/search.php?action=results&sid=a8b51499663f48c124e79c8540cdabbe

Lectrode's site

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http://electrodexs.net/

D. DefenderX. Windows and OSX, ICC and OpenMP optimized. These used to also have a lot of attention, noted for being the fastest builds you could get. A situation arose and a part of the official revision was not included in his build, which led many to allege that he was using previous Dolphin revisions with speedfixes and rebranding them as the newest one so his would appear to be the fastest. Anyways, they do have some very nice speedfixes, but most can be found in the newer revisions of other's work, but I will link it in case someone would like to try them out, or are looking for an Unofficial OSX build. There are no new revisions to his builds, and the Official Dolphin Forum's thread was locked a while back, at his request, as others made the claim he was using old revisions and passing them off as current.

Dolphin Forum link

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http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-defenderx-icc-openmp-dolphin-builds-windows-os-x-discontinued-unofficial