Emulate Format Changes - What does it do? And why is so terrible slow sometimes?

[anonym9191]

Hi,

I recently came upon your great project.
I have a Wii and various games for it and for now I tried two of them - will try more - (after dumping them) through this emulator
and not only did the first one run faster than on the Wii itself, it also looks WAY BETTER.


However, in the beginning "Emulate Format Changes" was active and at the beginning of the first game I didn't notice any problems, until after the intro and first part of the game, where I had a huge slowdown to under 10fps.
I disabled this option and it went back to nearly full 100% speed.

For the second game (DKCR) I tried it again with "Emulate Format Changes" and it was terrible slow from the first moment with that active. Without it, it seems to run quite well, still not as good (speed-wise) as the other game, sometimes there are small slowdowns but for the most part.

So I wonder: What does "Emulate Format Changes" do and why is it so slow (not all the time but for me it seems to be quite often).

Btw. I am using D3D9 mode (and the 64Bit version) and used revision 7128.

Btw.2: Is the LG GH20NS15 (I don't own it, used my Wii for dumping but would like to know) also capable of dumping Gamecube games?

[NaturalViolence]

Some reading for you: http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread.php?tid=14996

[anonym9191]

Thanks.

I kinda missed that thread

What I still don't get is why it is so slow when it is active for some games.
It doesn't sound like it should take that much time.

Is there any improvement done in this field because although it seems rather important (at least for some games), it is basically useless if it is that slow

Also: Does this depend more on the CPU or the GPU - regarding performance?
I just upgraded my CPU to a 6 core, so I guess the issue is more the GPU?

[Runo]

Also, Dolphin doesnt give a crap if to your core number as long as you have at least 2. 3 cores helps a bit too, more than that the only thing that really matters is CPU clock.

[ExtremeDude2]

Btw.2: Is the LG GH20NS15 (I don't own it, used my Wii for dumping but would like to know) also capable of dumping Gamecube games?

Yes

[NaturalViolence]

What I still don't get is why it is so slow when it is active for some games.
It doesn't sound like it should take that much time.

Then read it again. Performance hit was explained.

[anonym9191]

Maybe I should re-phrase that last part.
What I don't understand why it is on by default.
As there seem to be quite a lot of games where it isn't necessary but brings a huge performance advantage.


Also: Are there any ideas to do this something that is kinda equivalent to this option but faster, e.g. only do it for format changes that are required - of course, the problem would be who and how to create a corresponding "database".

[neobrain]

Default settings should be as accurate as possible, which is why EFB to RAM is enabled by default, too.
(tbh with that logic we should enable real XFB as well by default...)

[NaturalViolence]

Maybe I should re-phrase that last part.
What I don't understand why it is on by default.
As there seem to be quite a lot of games where it isn't necessary but brings a huge performance advantage.

Because developers don't care about performance