Framedrops where there shouldn't be and Netplay Desyncs

[oerg866]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

I am first of all going to introduce you to my PC's specifications, which are as follows:

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5, Intel X79 chipset
Intel Core i7-3820 Quad Core (Socket 2011)
4x4GB DDR3-1600 memory (G.Skill RipJaws-X)
Palit Jetstream (NVIDIA Geforce) GTX670, 2GB GDDR5

A very potent machine, so it is adequate that I expect Dolphint to have no frame drops at any point in time. Or something like that, anyway.

I have tried the following types of Dolphin builds:

3.0 x64
3.0-710 x64
3.0-631-gec0ddb4 Lectrode
DefenderX's latest build

However, my problem is weird. When playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for example, the game just... lags really hard as soon as a match starts, during the 3-2-1-GO! countdown for example, or as soon as i chose what map to play on, the sound loops at several instance (as in, hard hang until the game-I assume- loaded everything into memory). Once the fight has actually started the game runs absolutely rock-stable and super smooth.

In Mario Kart I can see the same problem.

Then we have one of my favourite games EVER: Metroid Prime. This game, unfortunately, runs worse than any Wii game I have tried. The intro movie that is playing in the background on the main menu as well is kind of laggy and I get severe lags on Chozo Ruins, the big outside world. I also get lots of framedrops when going into/leaving rooms, and on big battles where I have to shoot lots of things.

I have no idea how to fix this, and I saw lots of Dolphin recordings on Youtube that do not have this problem. Ironically the best running so far for Metroid Prime seems indeed to be the plain old 3.0.

In addition to this, we are having problems getting Brawl in sync on Netplay. Each time we try we reipmort the save game data.bin and check our settings, and it always desyncs. While hilarity ensues, e.g. "wait did you just jump off the map?" "uhh... no?" /// "Man you are the worst Pikachu player I've seen ever." "WTF? I took Marth!" /// "Would you select a map already?!" "Wait what, I just punched you off the map..." --- This is not exactly what we want to do, even though it is pretty hilarious. We had trouble getting the game to run full speed, however with 3.0-710 or 3.0 stock, can't remember, we got it to run at 50FPS permanently. However, we are already desyncing early on, in character select one selects a character and some of the movement didn't come through so it appears to me he selected a different one.

My buddy's specs are pretty good too, IIRC 8 or 12 GB, Core i5, Gainward GTX460. We both have very good internet connections, 100/10 Mbits for me, 32/5 MBits for my friend. The question mark button suggests me to use a buffer of 0.85, default being 20, no setting we tried helps anything.

I would be very thankful for any answers you might bring forward. Thanks in advance,
Oerg866

[Starscream]

Lets start here first and see what happens. Use the settings in the link below and report any differences. Honestly, you shouldn't be having these issues.

http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread.php?tid=23618

[oerg866]

Thank you, kind sir. With your settings, in a small window, I seem to have mostly no issues. Now, I just get sporadic lags when something is about to happen (eg. some roaches dig up from the ground or a fight with those annoying bees starts), however now I have the issue that i get framedrops instead of slowdowns. Dolphin says SPEED 100% but the frames drop down to ~30 sometimes. I cannot grasp this as I have one of the most potent graphics cards on the market today.

The problems with Brawl and Kart however are still there. I'm going to try and record that in a moment.


Best regards,
Oerg866

[Starscream]

When I said "Honestly, you shouldn't be having these issues." this is true if you're playing the game normally by yourself with dual-core enabled, but with netplay, there are issues. The person you're playing against affects things as well, like what kind of a PC and internet connection the other person has. Both players have to use the same Dolphin build and settings as well. Netplay is just not perfect either way.

[oerg866]

Nono, the netplay thing is a different issue, no worries the other issues were all "signle player" so to speak ;D

[Starscream]

When you run into these "slowdowns" when certain things happen in a game, it's probably the game cache being saved. After the second time you play the game, the same game-slowing issue shouldn't be there. Also, your video card is good, so you should be able to up your internal resolution to 3x (actually 4x) making the game look much better without losing any speed.