I wonder how Dolphin would perform on this machine...

Play? Sure. With good speed? With the current version of Dolpin, no. With future version, maybe. But you'll have to have 64-bit OS. Plus the "future" version, is as stated, not released yet.
For now, you may lay your plans to rest.

Also, those two GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards might be too much for Dolphin. The CPU is limiting Dolphin, not the GPU. So one 8800 GTX would be plenty. Hell, maybe even a 7800 GTX would be enough. The RAM is overkill too. I think 2 GB would be OK.

Yup - everything besides the CPU is most likely major overkill. Even the CPU is to a certain extent, as Dolphin is only going to be running two threads AFAIK. So a dual-core at that speed would be just as well-suited as a quad-core, though neither of them can guarantee decent speed emulation at this point. (We'll have to wait and see how well optimized the next version of Dolphin is before we know that.)

What OS are you running? Because XP only supports 2 or 3 GB of RAM, and since Dolphin is not made for OSX or vista, Im not sure it will use all of your RAM (not that it even needs 2 GB)

Also, 2x 8800GTX is a bit much, The Gamecube's Graphics card is from 2001. It prints low poly stuff at 640x480. The 8800 GTX is meant to handle extremely high poly situations, and print them at extremely high resolutions.

But like Toasty said, if the dolphin were optimized for quad core, 64 bit, and all of the Streaming SIMD Extension sets on your CPU, it would have more of an advantage over a 3Ghz single core CPU with the same amount of cache.

Guru64 said:

Also, those two GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards might be too much for Dolphin. The CPU is limiting Dolphin, not the GPU. So one 8800 GTX would be plenty. Hell, maybe even a 7800 GTX would be enough. The RAM is overkill too. I think 2 GB would be OK.

Click to expand...

6600/1Gb is enough. Any current CPU - not enough.

BTW i still can't understand it. It's not MAME we talking about, GC isn't freakin' expensive arcade machine, it's cheap. If you want to play backups or just don't want to mess with Freeloader disc swap stuff every time you want to play game from different region, XenoGC can do the trick and it's very easy to install, all you need to know is how to hold soldering iron, nothing more.

P.S. In 2012 Dolphin will be as useful as zsnes, PJ64 or ePSXe. We just have to wait and use real GC now