Am I Mistaken: Why Can't My Rig Run Anything?

[DolphinBug]

Now, I am not here to dump on the devs; they clearly do great work, and I appreciate everything anyone has contributed to this project. But I am here to seek help, because I really wanna play through some Metroid (still waiting on that Switch release, am I right folks!?)

Here's the back story: sometime between August 2016 and January 2018 I completed a playthrough of Metroid Prime 2 using Dolphin. I suspect I was using one of the last revisions of v4 or possibly the latest release of v5. In any case, I recall my playthrough was flawless. No major technical issues come to mind. constant 60fps, buttery smooth, other than resolution I think I had other enhancements cranked. I also recall playing other titles such as Sonic Colors with no issues. But since at least January 2018 I have had a love hate relationship with Dolphin. I go through phases of wanting to just sit down and play a retro game, download the latest release, and time after time I am met with the same lackluster results: dropped frames, glitched audio, essentially unplayable. I'd have a better experience dragging my Wii/GameCube out of storage. It pains me to say that because I remember Dolphin being so much better.

So, I can't see it while writing this, but as I just joined the forums I assume the specs of my rig will be visible somewhere. If not:

3570K, stock
16GB DDR3
GTX 970
240GB SSD

This is the same rig I was using during my previous playthroughts, though I have twice as much ram now. I can't remember if I was on Win10x64 yet, as it was at most a year old. If I wasn't, I was running Win7Ultimate.

Current issues:

*Used to play Sonic Colors. Can't even get the title screen to play full speed now.
*Metroid Prime 2 constant stutters and frame dips. Was not the case last time I played through it with Dolphin.

That's pretty much as far as I got before deciding to come here and seek guidance. I did try several versions (current beta, 5.0, 4.0.2) and all responded the same way. I've tried tweaking all the parameters, and making sure they are set to default as well. I have tried fresh installs of Windows to no avail. It's been like this for literally years, and after many attempts to fix the issues I am wondering if my recollection of a criminally smooth experience with Dolphin is the problem.

Let me know if I need to provide any logs etc. for troubleshooting., and thank you!

[mstreurman]

First of all you have to keep in mind that Dolphin did become more accurate which usually means slower, but during this time it also became a lot more optimized.

Make sure that your Windows 10 is fully up to date (no more updates available)
And on top of that: Install the latest graphics driver for your GPU from here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/161303/en-us
Then make sure your Windows power settings are configured for "High performance" and the same is true for the Dolphin profile in the nVidia Control panel (if there is no Dolphin profile, add the Dolphin.exe as a new profile)

You do need to run the latest and greatest development version of Dolphin, which you can find here: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/
Then the next step, make sure you are using reasonable settings, a good starting point would be all default (delete the "Dolphin Emulator" folder from "Documents", don't forget to make a back up):

In Graphics:
(General tab)
1. Select DirectX 12 Backend
2. Turn on Asynchronous (Ubershaders) and tick Compile Shaders before starting
(Enhancements tab)
1. Use an Internal resolution of 3x and do not use any Anti-aliasing (yet)
2. You can turn on Anisotropic Filtering to 16x since that doesn't impact FPS at all but gives a nice boost in Graphical Fidelity

In Config:
(Audio tab):
1. Make sure you have selected audio as DSP HLE (fast)
2. Select the WASAPI (exclusive) backend
(Advanced tab)
1. Make sure the selected Emulation engine is the JIT Recompiler
2. Make sure the tick for CPU Clock Override is turned OFF

Now try to run your games, still too slow? first thing you can do is to try and run the games in their native resolution, if that doesn't change anything it probably has to do with your CPU being too slow.
Now me being myself would overclock the CPU to a nice speed and see how it goes but this is on your own risk and CAN break stuff, but if done responsibly you only get BSOD's or crashes, irresponsibly (e.g. increase voltage too high) may cause the death of your CPU, so again: This is fully at your own risk.
If you do not want to do this, you could turn on the CPU Clock Override and UNDERCLOCK the Emulated CPU, making it easier to run games, at the expense of potential game breaking glitches and lost save games/corrupt memory cards. Go down with 5% every time and test, until you find that you can run the game at full speed.

Now if you find that you can run your games at full speed after the initial steps you can start and try to increase your graphical fidelity by increasing the IR to your screens native resolution(it that wasn't 1080p or 3x) and after that increase the Anti-aliasing, where you have to keep in mind that SSAA is basically the same as increasing your IR thus 3x IR + 4x SSAA = 12x IR so don't immediately crank it up to 8x SSAA (even my main machine, a 9900k at 5GHz, 16GB DDR4 @3400MHz and heavily overclocked RTX2080ti doesn't really like 6x IR + 8x SSAA (for that crispy 48x IR)

[RagingFire]

I find it ind of funny that you have a 3570k. I was just reading some old gi conversations and saw this.
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/3804#issuecomment-215928406
That should give you an idea of some of the slowdowns over the years. Improvements in accuracy have cost us some things. I think it's worth it though.