Enable Dual Core + Dump Frames = Disaster

[Tornado9797]

So I can finally record and playback SUPER SMASH BROS. Melee at 1080p60 properly,



...as long as Enable Dual Core is set to off.

Unfortunately, leaving that setting off produces framerate drop when trying to play online. Nobody wants to complete a game with me because my fps is not a consistent 60. I can play against them with Enable Dual Core on just fine, 60 fps and all, but then I can't record the match properly. Trying to dump frames with Enable Dual Core on results in the playback gaining 20 lag frames per second, making the finished product extremely choppy.

I don't think there's any way for me to further boost my frames without turning on Enable Dual Core, but I really want to record the matches I have over NetPlay. I have lowered all graphical settings to the very lowest, and the problem still persists.

I guess what I'm asking for here is a future version of dolphin that allows Dual Core play to dump frames properly.

Computer specs if needed:
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Model: 20EQS1QT00
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ COY @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro M1000M
Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB (7.87 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor
OS: Windows 10 Pro
Internal Res: 1080p
Cores: 4

Using Dolphin 5.0-106.

[Craftyawesome]

Any chance an OC or something is causing two cores to run? That could kill performance.

[JMC47]

Dualcore lets the GPU/CPU threads run unsynchronized; what'd you expect to happen

You're never going to be able to record on dualcore in Dolphin simply because of how it works. We have a modified dualcore mode called "Fake-Completion" which is used for dualcore netplay. You can record frames on that, but performance is 10-20% lower and not all games run (it was designed for Melee, so Melee works flawlessly of course.)

You can access that setting in a game's game properties page.

Really what you want is to record input, and then use Dolphin's framedump later on. But, I think the netplay record input is still bugged for an unknown reason.

[degasus]

Dolphin's framedumping code is terrible. It's a huge slowdown, much more than required. This slowdown is on the GPU thread, and here comes the dual core issue. Because of the crappy implementation, the CPU may think that the GPU is too slow, and start to drop frames. You can use "SyncGPU" (within the ini) to keep them in sync, or the dual core way of netplay. Both will be a slowdown, but they will fix this behavior. Or we're going to improve the framedumping code, this will make this behavior less likely - but it won't fix it.