I had the same problem as thebeardedchild and dark2792 and was able to track it down. The problem which causes a short but unavoidable stutter every 15 seconds occurs when using a widescreen gecko code.
Originally I thought it is just a faulty code and used the AR widescreen code without any problems, but that code stretches non 3D screens (like the menus and HUD) to widescreen, which the beautiful gecko widescreen doesn't.
Then I noticed that the last stable version 5.0 has worked fine with the gecko widescreen code, no lag or stutter.
It took me a while but I tracked the version down with the change that made it not work properly. Ironically the lag started with Dolphin 5.0-4575 that introduced an improved gecko codehandler.
Here two people already noted that the update made Widescreen Gecko hacks stutter:
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/5670
If I understand it correctly from the last comment, this might be a problem for Windows with non-ASCII paths? That would explain why this bug survived for so long, unnoticed by many. But maybe this is unrelated, I can't say. Would be great if it get's fixed though.
Work around for now: Replace the current "codehandler.bin"(2.78KB) in the folder "dolphin"->"Sys" with the old one (4.18KB) from Dolphin 5.0-4572 or earlier.
Originally I thought it is just a faulty code and used the AR widescreen code without any problems, but that code stretches non 3D screens (like the menus and HUD) to widescreen, which the beautiful gecko widescreen doesn't.
Then I noticed that the last stable version 5.0 has worked fine with the gecko widescreen code, no lag or stutter.
It took me a while but I tracked the version down with the change that made it not work properly. Ironically the lag started with Dolphin 5.0-4575 that introduced an improved gecko codehandler.
Here two people already noted that the update made Widescreen Gecko hacks stutter:
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/5670
If I understand it correctly from the last comment, this might be a problem for Windows with non-ASCII paths? That would explain why this bug survived for so long, unnoticed by many. But maybe this is unrelated, I can't say. Would be great if it get's fixed though.
Work around for now: Replace the current "codehandler.bin"(2.78KB) in the folder "dolphin"->"Sys" with the old one (4.18KB) from Dolphin 5.0-4572 or earlier.