Dolphin runs slowly

[Xiloscent]

I've messed around with some settings, and in some areas of some games everything runs nice smooth and at the right speed, but when it gets to a really action filled area, it tend to slow way down, like i could count the frames, I've tried the frame skipping idle skipping and all that but it doesn't seem to change much, is it dolphin or is it me? my specs are in my sig.

[Goof245]

What game are you playing? Sounds like it could be dolphin, I get similar slowdowns with Metroid Prime 1 in large rooms.

[Xiloscent]

i was just using mario party 4 as a base, its a pretty small game so i figured it'd run alright, but the problem goes to others too like starfox assault, i tried starfox adventures but it wouldn't even run, it'd just lock up either during the loading or right after. megaman X command mission also had a major slowdown during fights and navigating dungeons. the fps readout says 30 fps on most areas but it goes down to about 17fps on most anygame where its got to process chunks of data that are random variables it seems. (like the dice on mario party while the number is still randomly changing, i could actually write down the numbers on the dice as fast as its displaying them, and all minigames lag a bit.) also some movie sequences don't match up to the audio perfectly, but thats mostly jsut mario party being a mario game, and its not off by much just noticable.

edit: also as an update, starfox assault seems to lock up on the first level when oikonny flees to fortuna, not sure why, but playing hrough again it ran at an avg. 26 fps for ingame play, and the intro movie about as slow.
good news though, i didn't miss a single target