Best quality/compability for my PC spec

[mireka]

Currently using

i7 2600K
4gb ram @ 1600mhz
radeon hd5870

Should I turn on "emulate format changes" and all those fancy stuff?
Also what's XFB even?

Pic related it's my current settings.

[NaturalViolence]

Use DSP LLE recompiler for audio and xaudio2 for the backend. Use d3d9 for the video backend not d3d11.

Leave everything off in the advanced tab (except overlay fps if you want to see your framerate), including openCL.

Turn on V-sync, load native mipmaps, efb scaled copy, pixel depth, enable cpu access, and copy.

Turn off widescreen hack, pixel lighting, force bi/trilinear filtering, enable format changes.

Set anisotropic filtering to 16x, anti-aliasing to none, and scale to integral.

The efb copy and accurate texture cache settings depend on the game. For most games you can leave accurate texture cache off and set efb copy to texture, which is faster. Some games will need efb to ram, some will need accurate texture cache, and some will need both. If a game needs accurate texture cache set it to fast. If you need to use efb to ram you can use the enable cache option to speed it up but it will only work if you're using accurate texture cache so only use it with games that need both efb to ram and accurate texture cache.

Their are some games that need xfb and/or emulate format changes but very very few so you can usually leave those alone. XFB may reduce performance and will reduce image quality for sure. Real xfb will reduce image quality/performance a lot more than virtual xfb will but it's more accurate so therefore it's more likely to work properly with games. Emulate format changes will cause significant drops in performance and visual glitches in some games.

[mireka]

DSP LLE recompiler and interpreter makes audio out of sync (sound come about a second later than video) when I was using D3D11, will try D3D9.

[jonnyboyC]

personally i would leave openCL on, since dolphin is far more cpu intensive then GPU, your 5870 won't even begin to sweet so any additional cpu cycles you can free up the better. I would also say that pixel lighting widescreen hack, and pixel depth are more of your preference. Pixel lightening for me doesn't break anything and on your gpu won't be a problem, widescreen hack is also nice on widescreen monitors but since it's a hack and cause problems sometimes, and i know pixel depth, can mess up some games, but also fixs others

If you are using dx 9 then leave AA off, because i believe it's still broken and will put a giant hit on your gpu, the workforce, dx 11 effect works but from my experience it also bring along alot of glitchs

[mireka]

Thanks for the input

But anybody care to elaborate what these actually do?
- Widescreen hack
Since most games come in widescreen anyways what's the point of this?
- Pixel Lightning/Pixel Depth

[NaturalViolence]

personally i would leave openCL on, since dolphin is far more cpu intensive then GPU, your 5870 won't even begin to sweet so any additional cpu cycles you can free up the better.

Despite that fact that you will never notice the difference between it on/off since it only affects texture decoding turning off the openCL texture decoders is faster on all video cards except nvidia 400/500 series cards since the C texture decoders are now sse optimized. Their is literally no point in using this option anymore.

I would also say that pixel lighting widescreen hack, and pixel depth are more of your preference. Pixel lightening for me doesn't break anything and on your gpu won't be a problem, widescreen hack is also nice on widescreen monitors but since it's a hack and cause problems sometimes, and i know pixel depth, can mess up some games, but also fixs others

Pixel depth is accurate behavior. Pixel lighting and widescreen hacks are not, they're "enhancements". Pixel depth should work perfectly in d3d9 (not cause any problems) with any game, I don't know about openGL/d3d11 though.

If you are using dx 9 then leave AA off, because i believe it's still broken and will put a giant hit on your gpu,

Indeed. 4xSSAA is broken, 9xSSAA still works (barely).

the workforce, dx 11 effect works but from my experience it also bring along alot of glitchs

What?

But anybody care to elaborate what these actually do?
- Widescreen hack

Changes the FOV (field of view) calculations for the game so that you can run the game in 16:9 aspect ratio without stretching. Since the game is designed for the FOV being at a certain value this may (and usually does) cause glitches along the horizontal edges of the image.

Since most games come in widescreen anyways what's the point of this?

Not true. Most gamecube games don't support 16:9 natively, and some wii games may not.

- Pixel Lightning/Pixel Depth

They do exactly what they say. Pixel lighting does lighting (pixel shading) per-pixel instead of per-vertex. This is extremely stressful on the gpu since their are a lot more pixels being rendered in each frame than vertexs. Pixel depth does depth calculations per-pixel instead of per-vertex, once again it's more stressful on the gpu for the same reason. Pixel depth may fix flickering textures in some games but most games don't need it. Pixel lighting makes shadows look slightly better in games with high amounts of bloom lighting.

[mireka]

>Despite that fact that you will never notice the difference between it on/off since it only affects texture decoding turning off the openCL texture decoders is faster on all video cards except nvidia 400/500 series cards since the C texture decoders are now sse optimized. Their is literally no point in using this option anymore.

Why only nvidia 400/500 series?
I thought nvidia has their own version of opencl which is cuda.

[NaturalViolence]

I thought nvidia has their own version of opencl which is cuda.

No. They are two totally different frameworks. I don't feel like elaborating right now so just read these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

As for why only 400/500 series cards. Mainly do to concurrent kernel execution, but their are other hardware optimizations as well: http://insidehpc.com/2009/09/30/nvidia-n...computing/

In terms of general purpose computing on the gpu, nvidia > ati, no debate what so ever.

[ExtremeDude2]

Since most games come in widescreen anyways what's the point of this?

Not true. Most gamecube games don't support 16:9 natively, and some wii games may not.

some n64 games support 16:9 natively, just FYI