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GenerallyMost emulators tend to be CPU-dependent in general, emulation mostly runs off meaning that their performance is greatly affected by the CPU's speed. While The GPU on the GPU assists other hand, mostly serves as a graphics enhancer by allowing for higher resolutions, anti-aliasing, etc. If your CPU isn't fast enough, you will most likely be not able to emulate a system at full speed. At the very least, a Core i5-2500K or a Ryzen 3 1300X or better is recommended for high-end emulation (e.g. [[PlayStation 2|PS2]], [[Wii]]). This page will explain and state other possible choices to take, provided that the above choices are not feasible.

Whenever a CPU has a high clock speed (Pentium 4 HT 672 @ 3.8 GHz), it does not always necessarily mean that it is powerful.<ref>http://www.computer-hardware-explained.com/megahertz-myth.html</ref> A very This is usually a common misconception , that stems from lack of detailed information on how a CPU works. However, it is true that a higher CPU clock speed guarantees improved emulation performance, which doesn't always apply (see Alpha, NetBurst and Bulldozer). Although While it is true that a high clock speed is one of the main factors for good CPU performance, it is not always the sole determining factor. For example, a Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4GHz will nearly always outperform a Pentium D 940 @ 3.2GHz. <ref>http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2097</ref> Even though the Pentium D 940 is clocked significantly higher, the Core 2 Duo E6600 is faster due to the reduced amount of pipeline stages and a wider execution unit. This improves the amount of instructions it can output per cycle, which means better performance at a lower clock speed. In other words, the particular architecture of the CPU itself matters more than the clock speed.

AMD's Bulldozer-derived CPUs also follows the aforementioned Pentium 4 (NetBurst) example, which has the same issue that the NetBurst-derived CPUs suffer from. They also similarly share the same high clock speed traits, which might cause confusion and misleading performance conclusions. Because of this, it is therefore recommended to completely avoid Bulldozer at all costs. The single-threaded performance of Bulldozer is somewhat faster or onslower when compared to an equally-par of an equivalent clocked Phenom II or a Core 2, <ref>https://www.overclock.net/photopost/data/1501987/b/b1/b16fb0b4_ScreenShot005.jpeg</ref> though the multi-threaded performance of Bulldozer far exceeds the fastest Phenom II or Core 2 offerings. <ref>https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Phenom-II-X6-1100T-vs-AMD-FX-9590/2004vs1812</ref> The real problem here is Bulldozer's under-average single-threaded performance that will not help in high-end emulation that uses 4 or less cores, and the fact that Bulldozer has a shared FPU between 2 cores. What this means, is that a FX-4350 would have 2 FPUs (1 FPU per 2 cores), and a FX-9590 would have 4 FPUs (1 FPU per 2 cores x 4). This leads will lead to weaker performance in floating-point heavy calculations, and this is another reason why it is not recommended. If you are still not convinced, have a look at the benchmarks.<ref>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ0UzJyTFAxbzZhYWtGcGwySlRFa1E#gid=1></ref><ref>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ0UzJyTFAxbzZhYWtGcGwySlRFa1E#gid=0</ref><ref>http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-CPU-Benchmark-designed-for-PCSX2-based-on-FFX-2?page=107</ref><ref>https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-new-dolphin-cpu-benchmark-no-game-required?page=15</ref><ref>https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-new-dolphin-cpu-benchmark-no-game-required?page=15</ref><ref>http://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=1&hl=pl&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.pl&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://pclab.pl//art55934.html</ref><ref>http://wccftech.com/ultimate-cpu-gpu-floating-point-performance-battle-amd-intel/</ref><ref>http://www.anandtech.com/show/7711/floating-point-peak-performance-of-kaveri-and-other-recent-amd-and-intel-chips</ref><ref>http://vr-zone.com/articles/ivy-bridge-e-i7-4960x-vs-amd-fx-9590-battle-2013-flagships/54295.html/2</ref><ref>http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159619-5ghz-showdown-overclocked-5ghz-amd-haswell-ivy-bridge/2</ref>

As of Ryzen (Summit Ridge), AMD CPUs have similar single-threaded performance when compared to Intel CPUs<ref>https://i0.wp.com/www.solidsmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AMD-Threadripper-single-thread-competition.png?ssl=1</ref>, though still not exactly close to an equivalent Intel CPU of the same era. Summit Ridge is slightly slower than an equivalent Kaby Lake in single-threaded applications, but it remains a good choice for emulation. ===Emulation on a non-x86 CPU===CPUs that are not x86-based, or are not ARM-based <small>(phones can run emulators with varying degrees of success)</small>, are very likely to not be good enough for emulation in general. Certain emulators have been ported or programmed for some CPUs that are not ARM or x86-based, but those are very old and are possibly no longer in active development. IBM PowerPC CPUs for example, had emulators ported for it. However, these are rather outdated emulators and are not recommended for emulation. Some specific CPU architectures like the SPARC, MIPS, Itanium, Alpha, and PA-RISC, are heavily discouraged for emulation. This is due to the lack of support for them; although the MIPS architecture may be capable of running a few emulators native to them. Some of them may be capable of running x86 emulators, but that depends on their software or hardware code-translation capabilities, in which the Itanium does have (but it's very weak). Emulators that are native to them are extremely hard to find, or non-existent. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid these CPUs in any way possible.

*GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 256 SDR or ATI Radeon 7000 or 3dfx Voodoo3 1000 or Intel Extreme Graphics or Matrox Millenium Millennium G400 or better