So I started to play Xenoblade about two months ago. The current version of Dolphin was 4.0-8010 back then. I ran the game on 4x internal resolution, with v-sync on and the HD texture pack installed, and it never had any FPS issues. It stayed stable on 30-31FPS during every moment of the 60hrs I put in it. I even made a testing report on the wiki, and added the texture flickering issue I encountered to the list.
Last week I decided that it's time to clean up my PC. I formatted my drives, reinstalled Windows, made all the updates, and wanted to continue with Xenoblade Chronicles.
The issue that's appearing now, is that randomly the FPS drop down to 25-28. With randomly I mean, that there's no sense to it. It can happen anytime, and they do not recover. Meaning that they remain unstable after the first drop. No matter what I do, or what happens in the game, they stay at the reduced rate, when it ran fine at max speed just moments ago.
For example: If it happens during a fight, they don't go up to max again after the fight, they stay at the unstable rate.
Eight of ten times this happens during battles, but it also happens just running around, and at least one time, while looking at the map.
This issue is resolved upon restarting the emulator(or just the game.) So I can save while the issue is there, restart Dolphin and voilà - it's gone. But now it's only a matter of time before it happens again. Sometimes after 2 minutes, sometimes after 45 minutes. But there are areas/fights where it is more likely to happen in my opinion.
Some pointers/things I tried to do:
And here I am at my wits' end. I have no idea what's causing this, and I'm running the same version of Dolphin I used to, with the same settings(even though I tried all kinds of combinations to get rid of the problem.) And it's driving me crazy. I'm sorry that my first post is whining about problems, rather than contributing. I just hope that one of you wizards came across this issue before, and knows what's causing this. Current settings below.
Last week I decided that it's time to clean up my PC. I formatted my drives, reinstalled Windows, made all the updates, and wanted to continue with Xenoblade Chronicles.
The issue that's appearing now, is that randomly the FPS drop down to 25-28. With randomly I mean, that there's no sense to it. It can happen anytime, and they do not recover. Meaning that they remain unstable after the first drop. No matter what I do, or what happens in the game, they stay at the reduced rate, when it ran fine at max speed just moments ago.
For example: If it happens during a fight, they don't go up to max again after the fight, they stay at the unstable rate.
Eight of ten times this happens during battles, but it also happens just running around, and at least one time, while looking at the map.
This issue is resolved upon restarting the emulator(or just the game.) So I can save while the issue is there, restart Dolphin and voilà - it's gone. But now it's only a matter of time before it happens again. Sometimes after 2 minutes, sometimes after 45 minutes. But there are areas/fights where it is more likely to happen in my opinion.
Some pointers/things I tried to do:
- Doesn't matter if I'm running on 4x or native resolution. Doesn't matter if:
- V-sync on or off
- HD pack on or off
- Prefetch custom textures turned on or off
- Frame limit on auto or set to 60 doesn't make a difference(I can even increase it and the game runs stable in "fast forward" mode, until the problem occurs of course.)
- Tried both, the latest dev build of Dolphin and the version I used before(4.0-8010)
- Running Dolphin as administrator and giving the process higher priority.
- Tried older Catalyst drivers(most likely the one used before.)
- Monitored Dolphin's and Windows' GPU/CPU usage. There are no changes when the issue occurs.
- Checked task manager for new processes demanding power.
And here I am at my wits' end. I have no idea what's causing this, and I'm running the same version of Dolphin I used to, with the same settings(even though I tried all kinds of combinations to get rid of the problem.) And it's driving me crazy. I'm sorry that my first post is whining about problems, rather than contributing. I just hope that one of you wizards came across this issue before, and knows what's causing this. Current settings below.
