There is a stable release (1.4.0), as well as a development branch (1.5.0) which is now three years of progress ahead of the stable. For some reason, people seem to forget development builds exist. Both are linked on the site, and development builds are compiled and hosted by Orphis for convenience, hence why we all link directly to it here (including my signature).
Your cpu may be capable for pc games but emulation work in a different way.
For most 3d games,pcsx2 need single threaded performance rating score of 1600 and your cpu gives you 1510
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu...re&id=1780
My 6700hq laptop score is little above 1800 and I can get higher fps and my i7-4771 pc score is little over 2200 which gives me even higher fps in pcsx2
It really depends which games he wants to play though.