Best emulator for Paper Mario?

[vtnwesley]

Well, I think it partly depends on what kind of emulation you are doing. 16-bit kind of stuff will run on almost anything, integrated or otherwise. PS1 and some N64 emulation has been spotty for me personally. Some budget cards work, some don't, some only sometimes work. $100-200 cards are usually a emulation silver bullet, low risk kind of thing. Like for example, a fanless $120 Geforce 7600GS on newegg. I realize a cheaper card CAN do this or that. I have a Geforce 6200 in a system right now that is used primarily for emulation. It's in use because the better card died. The problem is, while I can still use emulator A, B, and C, I now CAN'T use D, or E. I always recommend avoiding scraping the bottom of the barrel, because it almost always results in fast replacement purchasing. A Geforce 6600/7600 card would promise some product longevity, regardless of your uses. I mention this specifically because we are talking about N64 emulation. It helps to have a little extra oomph, especially since you have enough power to heavily filter your graphics this way.

Any budget card for agp/pcie depending on what you want will do fine for emulation. For other games, however, a card around $100-$200 is to recommend for good performance.

I'm not fully sure what you mean in relation to the integrated chipset on the GV boards. The Intel "GV" motherboards have no AGP or PCIe slot (which is basically what the "V" signifies)... so... Looking before buying a new video card is definitely a good idea. The driver will always say "Intel 915 series" but WHAT 915 chipset for the mobo is important to know. Those 865/915GVs will bite you in the rump everytime. If you have a "GV" intel northbridge, you have no good upgrade path. Just felt pointing it out was a good idea. Most people who buy retail PCs don't realize there is no AGP/PCIe slot on half the Intel based systems.