Brawl Running Slow

[omniloquent]

Just started using Dolphin for the first time today. I really only want it to run Brawl but I'm getting low FPS (generally 50-75% at the LOWEST settings). My specs should be more than sufficient to run at 60 FPS and I have seen Youtube videos of people with my exact specs running Brawl at 100% with higher graphic settings than I have configured. I'm also pretty sure that overheating is not the issue. When I run high-end PC games I can clearly hear my fan kick it into high gear, but when emulating with Dolphin, this doesn't happen. Could that be a clue into the issue?

Specs:

Alienware m14xr2
Operating System: Windows 7 x64
Processor/CPU: Intel i7-3610QM @ 2.30GHz
Video Card/GPU: nVidia Geforce GT 650M
Memory/RAM: 8 GB
Dolphin Revision Currently Using: 4.0.2

Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

[Explosive Llama]

I don't really know much about Dolphin but you have extremely similar specs to me and I play only Brawl on my laptop.

Same CPU, 630M, Toshiba Satellite P850, and same RAM but that doesn't really matter.

I play Brawl on WiFi at 50FPS 100% speed (PAL version) in game, and the only time I get lagg is when loading stages up and different parts of the same for a couple of seconds. Audio skipping can be frequent for me but since we have pretty much the same specs, there's definitely something that you need to change.

Could you post your graphics config as screenshots, and I will be able to compare them to mine and hopefully see any problems. To make sure overheating isn't happening, I'd recommend reading this and using throttlestop while using dolphin.

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

Also, get the prio application which changes your task manager. What this does is allows you to save your CPU priority settings for applications on task manager. I run Dolphin with high CPU priority with nothing in the background to avoid overheating, hopefully you'll be able to do the same. http://www.prnwatch.com/prio/

And also, your dolphin version can affect your performance. Can you check your graphics config for backend and tell me if it looks like this?

[omniloquent]

Hey Llama!

Thanks a ton for your very thorough reply!

I followed everything you said and did exactly as every post said but the performance is still about the same. Attached is a screenshot of my graphic configs. I'm running Dolphin 4.0.2, the latest stable version. I also tried 3.5 and the latest dev version and they all give me about the same performance.

[Heavy01]

Do not use open GL, use D39.

[kinkinkijkin]

OGL is faster and of higher quality. It might be a little slower on NVidia GPUs, but it still stands that it's much higher quality.

Attach CPU and audio configs.

[JMC47]

If you're getting about the same performance regardless of dev build or settings, it's probably an issue with power management. With my laptop, if it's in high performance mode, I get far better performance with some settings than others. But if I'm in power saving mode, it doesn't matter what I set, the framerate is going to be very low. Considering I play Brawl on my older laptop fine (2670QM) I'm assuming this has to be some kind of power management or internal resolution/GPU being maxed out issue.

[Heavy01]

(05-19-2014, 07:07 AM)kinkinkijkin Wrote: OGL is faster and of higher quality. It might be a little slower on NVidia GPUs, but it still stands that it's much higher quality.

Attach CPU and audio configs.

I just tested on a rev similar to his and ogl performs noticeable worse than d9.

[JMC47]

It varies per computer and graphics card, unfortunately; so it's very hard to tell which backend is going to be faster for which computer. OGL is going to be more accurate, but in a game like Brawl, the only thing D3D9/11 screws up is the challenge menu, which shouldn't get in your way. I have to recommend using whichever backend is fastest for you in this game.

For instance, on my Core i5 3570K, GTX 760, OGL is fastest, as well as my Core i7 2760QM, GTX 560m. But on my Radeon 5850 in the first computer, D3D9 is fastest by far.

[kinkinkijkin]

On my Radeon HD 5770, OGL with recent revisions is far faster, far better-looking, and a bit more accurate.

I'd recommend using a recent dev revision, since they are quite a bit faster than 4.0.2 stable.

[Explosive Llama]

I completely forgot about this thread, sorry.

Newer versions of Dolphin have a different backend system, I'm not tech savvy but for me, these versions are much faster.

You get to choose between just Direct3D, Open GL and Software Renderer. I use Direct3D myself, even with a Nvidia GPU, it just plays Brawl faster for me.

I use version 4.0-1403 and get 100% speed on Brawl in game. Give that a go. There was a change to backends or something a while ago, I only have a vague memory but developer versions use this change, so give that a try.