Framerate / Sound Skipping Problems (Wii Emulation)

[FeedMeCheese]

Hi all, I'm having a few problems with Dolphin 4.0.2 with regards to Wii emulation. Basically, I've tried Pokemon Battle Revolution and Mario Kart Wii and the sound constantly skips and lags. The game is running at around 95% speed (averaging about 56 FPS), which is rather strange as my rig should be able to run it at 100%. I've ended up having to play these games with my PC's sound turned off, and the problem's getting rather annoying. I believe that the fact that the game is only running at 95% is why the sound is skipping and there is some (but not very noticeable) framerate lag.

My rig is as follows:
Intel i7 - 2600K @ 3.4GHz (Factory overclocked to 3.9GHz)
nVidia GeForce GTX 590
16GB RAM
Windows 7 (64 Bit)
Dolphin 4.0.2 (64 Bit)



Here is my Dolphin config (Anything not listed is UNCHECKED):

-Config (General Tab)-
Enable Dual Core Checked
Enable Idle Skipping Checked
Framelimit: 60, Limit by FPS Checked

CPU Emulator Engine: JIT Recompiler (recommended)

-Config (Audio Tab)-
DSP HLE Emulation (fast)
Audio Backend: XAudio2
Everything else uncheked

-Config (Wii Tab)-
Use EuRGB60 Mode (Pal60)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9

-Graphics (General Tab)-
Backend: Direct3D11
Adapter: GeForce GTX 590
Fullscreen resolution: 1920x1080
Aspect Ratio: Auto
V-Sync Checked
Use Fullscreen Checked

-Graphics (Enhancements Tab)-
Internal Resolution: Auto (Window Size)
Anti-Aliasing: None
Ansiotropic Filtering: 1x
Scaled EFB Copy Checked

-Graphics (Hacks Tab)-
Ignore Format Changes
EFB Copies: Texture
Texture Cache: Fast
External Frame Buffer Disabled
Fast Depth Calculation Checked

-Graphics (Advanced Tab)-
Nothing Checked

Here are screenshots of all the tabs for reference: http://imgur.com/a/yrG3M

So yeah, basically I'm wondering what I have to do to get 100% speed on my Wii games? Changing resolution, anti aliasing amount and ansiotropic filtering have practically impact on performance, so I'm thinking it doesn't have anything to do with my PC being underpowered. I'm able to run Battlefield 4 on Ultra settings, and while I know this doesn't have much bearing on how well emulation works, I think there's enough "grunt" there to power through it, especially since I've seen people on YouTube run at 60FPS at even higher resolutions. Has anyone else been able to run these games at full speed, or at least without audio skipping and lagging?

[ExtremeDude2]

OC more

[FeedMeCheese]

(12-13-2013, 01:39 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: OC more

This guy is running Battle Revolution on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9505 2.83 Ghz @ 3.6 Ghz at 40 - 60 FPS, but his sound is just fine :/
This guy is running Mario Kart at 60FPS on an Intel i5 2500k @ 3.3GHz. Again, sound doesn't skip, runs fine :S


If these people can run the games fine with slower CPUs, just posting "OC more" isn't really helpful :/ Plus, I've noticed that my CPU useage maxes out at 30% when running Wii games. Is there any way to get Dolphin to use more? I mean, I could overclock to something crazy like 4.2 gHz but if Dolphin is only going to use 30% it's not going to be much use :S

[JMC47]

Since you don't seem to follow dolphin, I'm going to go with a general explanation. Please don't think I'm talking down to you. Regardless, I agree that the answer "Just OC more" is a poor one, in fact, I think there are quite a few things that could help you out.

One: The sound skipping is due to an upgraded HLE audio setup. It skips when the game slows down because that's the accurate way to do it. The old system as used in that video. Audio was always full speed, but it causes a lot (hundreds) of games to crash, lose audio, or have other severe issues. I think your game should be running full speed, so here are a few tricks.

Using OpenGL on a Nvidia is faster. Mario Kart Wii was also faster on a set of development builds, for example, https://dolphin-emu.org/download/dev/6cece6b486670dd149c827053a84754c98397ccc/ is about twice as fast for me on OpenGL backend. It was unfortunately reverted due to causing issues in the D3D11 backend, and will have to be reworked before it sees Master again.

Make sure you enable the "Vertex Streaming Hack" under hacks. I believe the game will run a lot faster for you. If it doesn't, disabling format change emulation can also be a nifty speedup at the expense of some graphical glitches. I hope this helps you out, if you have any other issues, I'll be watching this thread. Cheers!

I hope this is a more satisfactory answer for you!

[ExtremeDude2]

I agree that I should have given a better answer, I tend to assume too much and give extremely simple answer, but as for those other people running full speed, they weren't using dolphin 4.0.2 which is far more accurate (and therefore slower) then what ever build they may have used.

[FeedMeCheese]

(12-13-2013, 02:14 AM)JMC47 Wrote: Since you don't seem to follow dolphin, I'm going to go with a general explanation. Please don't think I'm talking down to you. Regardless, I agree that the answer "Just OC more" is a poor one, in fact, I think there are quite a few things that could help you out.

One: The sound skipping is due to an upgraded HLE audio setup. It skips when the game slows down because that's the accurate way to do it. The old system as used in that video. Audio was always full speed, but it causes a lot (hundreds) of games to crash, lose audio, or have other severe issues. I think your game should be running full speed, so here are a few tricks.

Using OpenGL on a Nvidia is faster. Mario Kart Wii was also faster on a set of development builds, for example, https://dolphin-emu.org/download/dev/6cece6b486670dd149c827053a84754c98397ccc/ is about twice as fast for me on OpenGL backend. It was unfortunately reverted due to causing issues in the D3D11 backend, and will have to be reworked before it sees Master again.

Make sure you enable the "Vertex Streaming Hack" under hacks. I believe the game will run a lot faster for you. If it doesn't, disabling format change emulation can also be a nifty speedup at the expense of some graphical glitches. I hope this helps you out, if you have any other issues, I'll be watching this thread. Cheers!

I hope this is a more satisfactory answer for you!

I've just had a try with Mario Kart now, using the settings you suggested (OpenGL) and it runs at around 57 FPS, creating the audio skipping effect (I didn't realize it was a genuine feature to prevent crashing, makes a lot more sense now). There are also a few small yet annoying graphical artifacts with OpenGL, namely a big line across the lower third of the screen.

Then, I decided to try Direct3D 9 (Depreciated) just for the hell of it, as it's the only one I haven't tried yet and it runs at 60 FPS for the majority of game play. Looks like I'll stick with D3D9 for Mario Kart for the time being! I'm about to try Pokemon Battle Revolution now, I'll report back with results.

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(12-13-2013, 02:41 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: I agree that I should have given a better answer, I tend to assume too much and give extremely simple answer, but as for those other people running full speed, they weren't using dolphin 4.0.2 which is far more accurate (and therefore slower) then what ever build they may have used.

Fair enough, I wasn't having a go at you by the way Lets hope we get some more performance boosts with newer updates!

[JMC47]

OpenGL should really be faster than D3D9 in this setup, I have a NVIDIA card and compared the two. But, whatever works, I guess.

[Zorglorfian]

My framerate has drastically dropped sometimes, usually during the start of the game or during loading times... Any clue?

[LordVador]

What i7 processor have you got exactly?

[FeedMeCheese]

(12-13-2013, 03:03 AM)JMC47 Wrote: OpenGL should really be faster than D3D9 in this setup, I have a NVIDIA card and compared the two. But, whatever works, I guess.

Yeah, that is rather confusing. Even though I would have thought it wouldn't matter seeing as it's a problem of the CPU not the GPU. Mario Kart is now running at 60FPS on D3D9, 11 and OpenGL, this is really confusing :S

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(12-15-2013, 05:41 AM)Zorglorfian Wrote: My framerate has drastically dropped sometimes, usually during the start of the game or during loading times... Any clue?

If the drops are only occuring around loading and the start of a game, I'd say that's to be expected? A lot of games stutter on the original consoles when loading!