Dolphin running Wii games [mostly] slow, but RAM/CPU usage is low...

[shekelmyrrh]

Posted about this a while ago, but I thought I'd update since recently while running a Wii game (FE: Radiant Dawn) I had a random period of about 30 seconds where it ran perfectly at 100% before slowing down to 70-80% again. I immediately went looking for some other program using lots of CPU or memory, but couldn't find anything (and Dolphin wasn't using much of either). Since then, a couple of times it has run 100% when I first start the computer, but slowed down after a minute or two. What the heck could be starting up that's causing this?? I tried creating a new user account and running Dolphin on that without anything else installed and same deal. Also got desperate enough to try to get a clean install of Windows 10, but of course getting the 'there was a problem resetting' error.

I have an ASUS gaming computer with a 2.6 GHZ processor and a GeForce GTX 960M with 4GB vRAM, though I know the problem isn't with either of those since it USED to run all Wii games perfectly and apparently still has the capability to do so. Just looking for suggestions as to what to check that could be slowing it down... Thanks in advance!

[Craftyawesome]

If I had to guess the power plan for CPU and/or GPU is not on high performance.

[shekelmyrrh]

(07-31-2017, 09:03 PM)Craftyawesome Wrote: If I had to guess the power plan for CPU and/or GPU is not on high performance.

Tried prioritizing performance for both, as far as I know how, and no change... would that have the characteristic of only slowing down the program after a minute or so of the computer being on? I would think it would just always be slow if that were the case.

[shekelmyrrh]

OK, I'm an idiot for not trying this earlier, but I tried a clean boot and sure enough, 100% and barely a hiccup after 15 minutes. I guess now it's a matter of narrowing it down... ugh. But at least I know the problem's somewhere in that pile of startup operations.

[mstreurman]

(07-31-2017, 09:36 PM)shekelmyrrh Wrote: OK, I'm an idiot for not trying this earlier, but I tried a clean boot and sure enough, 100% and barely a hiccup after 15 minutes. I guess now it's a matter of narrowing it down... ugh. But at least I know the problem's somewhere in that pile of startup operations.

Have you checked your thermals? the 960M is a laptop card, thus it might be that either your CPU or your GPU is throttling (or both) because of too much heat. Try using HWinfo and posting the max temps of CPU and GPU here after playing in Dolphin for a while.

[shekelmyrrh]

(08-01-2017, 06:10 AM)mstreurman Wrote:    
Have you checked your thermals? the 960M is a laptop card, thus it might be that either your CPU or your GPU is throttling (or both) because of too much heat. Try using HWinfo and posting the max temps of CPU and GPU here after playing in Dolphin for a while.

Erm... I installed and ran HWinfo and I confess I can't figure out which of a bajillion numbers are temperatures. (Attaching a screenshot.) But I have a pretty good external fan, and Dolphin runs about the same with or without it.

[shekelmyrrh]

Oops, didn't mean to put the screenshot in the quote...