Dolphin questions

[robertul]

First of all, I would like to say hello to everybody, as I just registered on this forum, which is great.
My hardware specifications are as follow:
Mainboard: Gigabyte P31-DS3L.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33 GHz.
GPU: Gigabyte GV-NX86T256H Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT, 256 MB of RAM.
Memory: Kingmax 4 GB(2x2048), 800 MHz.


Secondly, the reason I created this thread is because I could not find anywhere some explanations to the questions that I am about to ask. So, let's get to it, right?
I would like you to explain to me a little in the best way possible, does frame limiting make any difference if it is turned on and off for games that run slower on one's machine? Because, yes, I know that for games than run fine at full speed, not limiting the fps allows you to go even higher and run the games faster (for e.g. 100 fps if your hardware allows it to), but for games in particular, than cannot run past 30 fps, which means, they run slow because of your hardware, what is the difference of setting frame limit to off or limiting it to 50 or 60, what effect limit by fps or use fps for limiting on older revisions does on these games that run slow, in particular, WWE '13, because that is the game that I love and I would like to play it at the highest fps possible as my hardware can, of course. I cannot go beyond limiting. Overclocking is not an option for me, as my GPU runs very hot, because this computer is 5 years old and I cannot upgrade anything on it as I doesn't have enough money.
The best dolphin revision for me that I have tested and seemed to work the fastest and, by the way, it doesn't have glitches as the stable 3.0 version has, which is actually very weird, as 3.0 is the most accurate and balanced revision between speed and accuracy as I know, but for me, it is the worst revision because it is slow and it even has glitches, which makes no sense to me. Maybe someone here can explain it, because I may be not having enough knowledge or understanding of things, so, if that is the case, please, I am open to learn. Also, the latest development revisions have proven to be better than 3.0 stable version, but r6505 is the fastest and compatible also, as I never any problems with this version. I have even tried r7564, which is said to be fast and compatible also, as I saw on the thread "Fastest and best revisions" and r6298, which is not compatible and not quite fast and even r6515 is not faster, as I said, I tested many revisions and r6505 seemed to work best and is really fast for me with dsp disabled(audio disabled), of course, because It seems to me that dolphin uses my hardware very much when I enable audio and the fps is not stable, it drops 3-4 fps and then goes higher, but most of the time it stays low, so without audio, the game runs pretty fine. I also use frame skipping because it runs so slow without it.
But, that's it, I have made this post longer than I thought I will, I hope I didn't break any rule by mentioning the game. But, I thought you might ask me what game I am trying to run so, there you go, that's why I answered as many questions as possible, so you would have as much information as needed. I thought of creating this thread on game discussion, but then again, I knew that is not the right section as I would like to know about dolphin, not a particular game.
So thank you very much for your time and I hope you understood as I am not native English so I apologize for my bad English. Have a great time and I await your responses!

Best regards,
Robert Andrei Botezat

[admin89]

Game developer decide each game's framelimit . Ether :
PAL version : 50 or 25FPS max
NTSC version : 60 or 30FPS max

Overclocking is not an option for me, as my GPU runs very hot

You need to overclock your CPU , not GPU
CPU overclocking has no effect on GPU temp unless both of your CPU & GPU use the same heatpile like some barebone PC
You can reapply thermal compound (Arctic MX-4 which cost only 9$) to lower the temp

WWE '13

You should give up on that game . WWE11 / 12 / 13 are very demanding , multi-players also need more CPU power
You must have the best-heavily overclocked CPU like i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz , i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz to run that game full speed (and multi-players of course)
With your current CPU , there is nothing you can do but overclocking to get more speed

[rpglord]

No, there is no difference whatsoever if you keep framelimit on or off when your pc is not capable of running the game fullspeed.
Older revisions are faster, because they are not as accurate as latest revisions.
Also, you should overclock your cpu to atleast 3.0 ghz if you want to play games at decent speed.

[robertul]

Game developer decide each game's framelimit . Ether :
PAL version : 50 or 25FPS max
NTSC version : 60 or 30FPS max

I know, but you didn't answered what is limit by fps option? What it does? Also, one more thing that I noticed is, if I enable EURGB

You need to overclock your CPU , not GPU
CPU overclocking has no effect on GPU temp unless both of your CPU & GPU use the same heatpile like some barebone PC
You can reapply thermal compound (Arctic MX-4 which cost only 9$) to lower the temp

Okay, I will tell you my story. As I said, my computer is 5 years old and it has accumulated dust throughout the years. Unfortunately, I didn't knew I had to clean my computer from 3 to 6 months depending on the environment and until know I have only done it like 3 times. So, I think it's components have started to deteriorate because of the dust that has accumulated, so that is why I am concerned. The GPU runs extremely hot, that is the component that is the hottest, so, even though that I am not overclocking it I am concerned because if I overclock the other component, in this case, the CPU, heat will transfer on all my components including the GPU, so that is why I am concerned. I don't want to burn anything, because then I will have to buy new components and I don't have enough money, so I will not be able to use my computer. I have applied thermal compound to the GPU, I have bought the Noctua NT-H1 like 5 months ago, actually, because the MX-4 was a little bit hard to find on the price that I was looking for in my country, so I bought the Noctua instead. I didn't applied it on the CPU, because I was afraid that I didn't knew to mount the cooler of the CPU back. The cooler that I have now is an arctic cooling, so it is not the stock cooler that came with my CPU and arctic's screws are plastic made and are very sensitive and can break so easily, so this is the main reason that I didn't want to bother with it. Better safe than sorry, you know how the saying goes.

You should give up on that game . WWE11 / 12 / 13 are very demanding , multi-players also need more CPU power
You must have the best-heavily overclocked CPU like i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz , i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz to run that game full speed (and multi-players of course)
With your current CPU , there is nothing you can do but overclocking to get more speed

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No, there is no difference whatsoever if you keep framelimit on or off when your pc is not capable of running the game fullspeed.
Older revisions are faster, because they are not as accurate as latest revisions.
Also, you should overclock your cpu to atleast 3.0 ghz if you want to play games at decent speed.

Okay, got it. Actually, I can play WWE All Stars perfectly fine, it works best on the stable 3.0 with Direct3D 11, as Direct3D 9 has glitches and OpenGL is a little slower. Also, WWE '12 runs very good on exhibition 1 on 1 matches with frame skipping set to 2. WWE Universe Mode is another story, it lags like hell on here, even slower than WWE '13 with multi players. But anyway, I don't play WWE '12 anymore as it's successor it's improved and doesn't have so many annoying bugs that WWE '12 had. There is no way however to overclock my CPU to 3.0 GHz, because it shuts down immediately. Plus, I cannot go higher than 110 MHz of PCI-E frequency when I overclock too much, as this is the limit that it will be stable as someone that works for Gigabyte Technology said in a forum. I tried to lock it on 100 MHz, when I was overclocking my CPU, but when windows was loading it froze. So, I guess I would overclock it as much as I would love to, but, if it will set PCI-E frequency higher than 110 MHz(auto), I am concerned that it will burn and die. I tried using the CPU Intelligence Accelerator 2(C.I.A.2), I tried setting it to cruise, the first option and locked the PCI-E frequency to 105 MHz and it worked fine, the others were set to auto, but when I tried going to the next step and set it to sports, the next option and set PCI-E frequency to 110 MHz, it froze, it didn't worked, so that is the highest option it can go, cruise. You can guide on manually setting the CPU, because C.I.A.2 is pre-set overclocking by the Gigabyte team.
What number should I put it to on CPU Host Clock Control if I want to overclock it to 3.0 GHz as 333 is default for 2.33 GHz? Thank you for your time and I am sorry for those lengthy posts! :-)

[admin89]

Do you have an aftermarket cooler (sth like Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo) & aftermarket thermal compound (Acrtic MX-4) ?
Intel Stock fan is not recommended for overclocking
Edit : Ah , nevermind ... You have aftermarket one

perfectly fine

for you only ...
I tried WW11 on both desktop (E5300 @ 3.6GHz) and laptop . I wouldn't call 50-75% speed as "perfectly fine" if i was you and i'm sure you get worse result than mine

What number should I put it to on CPU Host Clock Control if I want to overclock it to 3.0 GHz as 333 is default for 2.33 GHz? Thank you for your time and I am sorry for those lengthy posts! :-)

Post your bios screen , sth like this

[robertul]

Do you have an aftermarket cooler (sth like Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo) & aftermarket thermal compound (Acrtic MX-4) ?
Intel Stock fan is not recommended for overclocking
Edit : Ah , nevermind ... You have aftermarket one

perfectly fine

for you only ...
I tried WW11 on both desktop (E5300 @ 3.6GHz) and laptop . I wouldn't call 50-75% speed as "perfectly fine" if i was you and i'm sure you get worse result than mine

I didn't mentioned my OS, if you didn't knew, I am running Windows 8 x64. I am sorry for that.

I was actually talking about WWE '12, I didn't tried SVR 2011, though, so I can't speak for it, but WWE '12 runs about 45-50 fps(PAL version), so it is fine for me. I it almost perfect. But, even you can admit it that, theoretically, you can play a game if you have a core i7 980x extreme heavily overclocked as much as possible at 100% speed, but technically it will not stay permanently to 50 fps, because there are other factors that come into play, background processes, the work that your computer is doing at that particular moment etc. So, technically it is not possible to have full speed at any time.
I am playing the game with r6505, I use mostly the default settings that the emulator comes with, so I will tell you what I changed. Under config, on the display tab, I changed full screen resolution to 1280x1024 and I set window size to 1280x1024, on the wii tab, I unchecked Use EuRGB60 Mode (PAL60), this is the most important for me, because if I use EuRGB60 Mode it will lag very much and I will not be able to get full speed no matter what I do. On the plugins tab I chose OpenGL for graphics and Dolphin DSP-HLE for DSP(audio). Okay, so now, let's get to graphics as this is what matters, besides EuRGB60 Mode, oh yeah... I changed Anisotropic Filtering to 1x, EFB Scale to 2x, disabled CPU Access, and set EFB Copy to Texture, of course, you can set Enable FPS under advanced if you want to see your fps, I always want to see my fps, so I check it on any game. Now, on DSP, I disabled audio throttle and set the volume to 100%. So, that's it. If you don't get full speed even with these settings, then something is wrong.

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Post your bios screen , sth like this

I don't know, how can I make a screenshot of my bios settings? Please, tell me, is it the same way as doing it in normal windows mode?

[AnyOldName3]

With a camera.

[robertul]

With a camera.

Yeah, right. Good idea, thanks! :-)

[rpglord]

You dont need to change pci-e you should leave it at auto or 100 mhz, it shouldn't be increased as it can damage your graphic card.
You should change cpu host frequency, for your cpu you need to put it to 429 to get it to run at 3ghz, since your cpu has low multiplier, but it may be too much. Try 400 mhz for starters and see if that is stable.
Also make sure to change memory multiplier so it doesnt run at more then 800 mhz, or that can also cause instability

[robertul]

You dont need to change pci-e you should leave it at auto or 100 mhz, it shouldn't be increased as it can damage your graphic card.
You should change cpu host frequency, for your cpu you need to put it to 429 to get it to run at 3ghz, since your cpu has low multiplier, but it may be too much. Try 400 mhz for starters and see if that is stable.
Also make sure to change memory multiplier so it doesnt run at more then 800 mhz, or that can also cause instability

No, you don't understand, if I set it to 100 MHz and overclock my CPU, it will froze, simple as that, it will lock up my OS, but if I set it to Auto, I am afraid it will go much higher than 100 MHz and it will damage the graphics card.
Okay, I will set CPU host frequency to 400 MHz and memory multiplier lock it up to 800 MHz, as this is the default frequency that my Memory (RAM) is operating. What about performance enhance, might change that from turbo to standard as standard is for stability when overclocking, right?