Dolphin only uses about 24% of my computer's resources?

BtheDestroyer · 08-04-2015, 08:14 AM #1

I'll max out at 40-50 VPS (20 at really intensive sections) on some games even though Dolphin's only using about 1/4th of what's available.

http://puu.sh/jocmt/0b668f99b9.jpg (I use two monitors that are different models, that's why the screenshot's weirdly shaped)

Dolphin Settings::

System::

Display 1::

Display 2::

**NKF98** · 08-04-2015, 08:16 AM #2

what do you mean by "computer resources"? CPU resources? GPU resources? RAM resources?

BtheDestroyer

(08-04-2015, 08:16 AM)NKF98 Wrote: what do you mean by "computer resources"? CPU resources? GPU resources? RAM resources?

CPU. RAM I wouldn't expect it to use much considering it is a Wii/GC emulator and those were notorious for not having much in the way of RAM. Not sure how to monitor GPU resources at runtime though, so if you know how to I'd love to get the benchmark of how much of my GPU's power is being used.

Aleron Ives · 08-04-2015, 08:47 AM #4

Dolphin uses one CPU core to emulate the GC/Wii CPU and one CPU core to emulate the GC/Wii GPU. If you have four cores, Dolphin will never appear to use more than 50% of your available CPU resources, since two of the cores aren't used. The GC/Wii are not multicore systems, so Dolphin's emulation can't scale to an infinite number of cores to improve performance. New PC games are designed with threading in mind, so they are often able to use more than two cores.

***OatmealDome*** · (This post was last modified: 08-04-2015, 08:51 AM by OatmealDome.)

Have you tried exclusive fullscreen instead of just maximizing the window? The GPU may be bottlenecking your performance because it's an integrated one. The Mario Galaxy series is also very performance intensive compared to other games.

BtheDestroyer

(08-04-2015, 08:47 AM)Aleron Ives Wrote: Dolphin uses one CPU core to emulate the GC/Wii CPU and one CPU core to emulate the GC/Wii GPU. If you have four cores, Dolphin will never appear to use more than 50% of your available CPU resources, since two of the cores aren't used. The GC/Wii are not multicore systems, so Dolphin's emulation can't scale to an infinite number of cores to improve performance. New PC games are designed with threading in mind, so they are often able to use more than two cores.

That's why I'm confused because on a quad-core CPU, wouldn't that use 50% rather than only 25%?
Edit: Managed to get up to 30% usage (see quoted post below) but I refuse to believe I'm getting 100% use out of 1 core and 5% out of another and creating a bottleneck.

(08-04-2015, 08:48 AM)OatmealDome Wrote: Have you tried exclusive fullscreen instead of just maximizing the window? The GPU may be bottlenecking your performance because it's an integrated one. The Mario Galaxy series is also very performance intensive compared to other games.

I'll try it tomorrow and give some results Wink

Edit: That definitely improved the results. Averaging ~58 FPS/VPS now with the occasional dip to 48-50. There's still the issue that I'm getting about 30% CPU usage, although the current VPS rate isn't bad, I'd love some constant 100% rates if possible.

TurboK · (This post was last modified: 08-04-2015, 04:38 PM by TurboK.)

I have i5 4670S and Intel HD 4600, which should give about the same result as your 4570.
SMG2 is very heavy for GPU, and Intel HD can barely handle it. I have tried upping the IR to 1,5x several times during the last year, since Dolphin and Intel HD drivers have gotten both better and faster, but I still get a lot of slowdowns if I use anything else than IR 1x.

That being said, IR 1x runs smoothly even with vsync on, and I'd say your settings are pretty much the same as my settings. I tested the beginning of SMG2, and Dolphin uses 35% of my (quad-core) CPU recources at that point where Bowser holds the princess. FPS is stable 60, even with a maximized window. So I don't know what's wrong with your setup, but I suppose you should be getting more out of your CPU and iGPU.

EDIT: Wait, so you have two monitors? I have not tested myself, but I think the absolute number of pixels to render is one of the things Intel HD is short of, so try disconnecting the other display (or use exclusive fullscreen as suggested), does this help with the FPS?

BtheDestroyer · 08-04-2015, 05:54 PM #8

(08-04-2015, 04:23 PM)TurboK Wrote: I have i5 4670S and Intel HD 4600, which should give about the same result as your 4570.
SMG2 is very heavy for GPU, and Intel HD can barely handle it. I have tried upping the IR to 1,5x several times during the last year, since Dolphin and Intel HD drivers have gotten both better and faster, but I still get a lot of slowdowns if I use anything else than IR 1x.

That being said, IR 1x runs smoothly even with vsync on, and I'd say your settings are pretty much the same as my settings. I tested the beginning of SMG2, and Dolphin uses 35% of my (quad-core) CPU recources at that point where Bowser holds the princess. FPS is stable 60, even with a maximized window. So I don't know what's wrong with your setup, but I suppose you should be getting more out of your CPU and iGPU.

EDIT: Wait, so you have two monitors? I have not tested myself, but I think the absolute number of pixels to render is one of the things Intel HD is short of, so try disconnecting the other display (or use exclusive fullscreen as suggested), does this help with the FPS?

After tweaking some stuff, I managed to get it stable at 58 VPS/FPS at 2x IR so horray! Thanks to everyone for the help, I really appreciate it! Big Grin

**Fiora** · 08-04-2015, 11:56 PM #9

Dolphin won't use 2 full threads of CPU unless both threads are fully loaded; on a game that is mostly CPU-bound, the GPU thread will be doing very little (for example).