Getting consistent stutters/frame drops in Melee

[Silent Hell]

Well, more specifically on Melee 20XX. I get annoying audio stutters in menu transitions and stage transitions. During gameplay I get frame drops which can also get rather annoying. I test the stable build of 5.0 and almost all the menu stutter is gone. So I guess I just want to know if this is a problem on my end. Is my build not good enough to avoid menu stutter and frame drops during gameplay? It's like this sometimes for SoulCalibur II. I've tried OpenGL, D3D11, and Vulkan. The performance is consistent on all resolutions up to 4k. I understand that AMD isn't the best in terms of optimization, but is it really that bad?

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Did you try setting "ubershaders" to 'hybrid' or 'exclusive'?

I don't know if it's still the case, but on Radeon GPUs it was recommended to use D3D for 'hybrid', though both Vulkan and D3D worked for 'exclusive'.

Normally 'exclusive' ubershaders is much more demanding on the GPU than 'hybrid' ubershaders, but an Rx 580 should have quite a bit of performance headroom at only 1360x768; yes you could "eat up" a good amount of that headroom by using higher internal resolutions, but at 768p you're going to start hitting diminishing returns at even just 3x IR and especially with anything past 4x IR.

[JonnyH]

(03-31-2018, 10:49 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: I don't know if it's still the case, but on Radeon GPUs it was recommended to use D3D for 'hybrid', though both Vulkan and D3D worked for 'exclusive'.

I believe that was for NVidia GPUs - some driver/hardware combinations still stuttered on hybrid with both Vulkan and OpenGL, but DX11 was fine. This was against the previous recommendation of OpenGL being /slightly/ faster in some cases for NVidia (though any remotely modern GPU will likely not need to worry about small speed improvements anyway).

I think all the options for radeon don't stutter, but their OpenGL is generally slower than DX11, and Vulkan often faster than that.

As for this issue - it may be that it's a cpu limit not a gpu - a 580 should be more than powerful enough. I know that there were some performance improvements specifically for Ryzen after the 5.0 release, so maybe trying the latest dev release would be useful?

[Silent Hell]

(03-31-2018, 11:01 AM)JonnyH Wrote: a 580 should be more than powerful enough. I know that there were some performance improvements specifically for Ryzen after the 5.0 release, so maybe trying the latest dev release would be useful?

That's the thing. The Stable release had less stutter than the latest dev build. As for the ubershaders, I'm sorta new to dolphin. How do I change the settings to hybrid or exclusive?

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

(03-31-2018, 10:33 AM)Silent Hell Wrote: As for the ubershaders, I'm sorta new to dolphin. How do I change the settings to hybrid or exclusive?

Ubershaders is found in the graphics settings under the tab "Enhancements".

It's in the same location as where you set the internal resolution, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc.

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(03-31-2018, 11:01 AM)JonnyH Wrote: I believe that was for NVidia GPUs

Well in the blogpost on ubershaders from 8 months ago, it says the following:

Quote:AMD on Windows
・ Use D3D for Hybrid mode.
・ Use D3D or Vulkan for Exclusive mode.

NVIDIA on Windows
・ Use D3D or OpenGL for Hybrid mode.
・ Use D3D or OpenGL or Vulkan for Exclusive mode.

[Silent Hell]

(03-31-2018, 11:10 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: Ubershaders is found in the graphics settings under the tab "Enhancements".

It's in the same location as where you set the internal resolution, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc.

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Well in the blogpost on ubershaders from 8 months ago, it says the following:

I don't have the option in either version of Dolphin.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

You're right, it seems they moved it to the "General" tab under graphics and renamed the options.  Presumably this would be something mentioned in a new status report blogpost, but we didn't have one for March.


Anyway, with new rearranged ubershaders settings, it looks like "Asynchronous (Ubershaders)" is what 'hybrid' was while "Synchronous (Ubershaders)" is what 'exclusive' was.  You likely will also want to check the box for "Compile Shaders Before Starting".


Also, crank up your graphic enhancements － using 1x IR with an Rx 580 should be considered a crime. (EDIT: unless you're using a CRT or a 480p display...which you're not)

[Silent Hell]

(03-31-2018, 11:25 AM)Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote: You're right, it seems they moved it to the "General" tab under graphics and renamed the options.  Presumably this would be something mentioned in a new status report blogpost, but we didn't have one for March.


Anyway, with new rearranged ubershaders settings, it looks like "Asynchronous (Ubershaders)" is what 'hybrid' was while "Synchronous (Ubershaders)" is what 'exclusive' was.  You likely will also want to check the box for "Compile Shaders Before Starting".


Also, crank up your graphic enhancements － using 1x IR with an Rx 580 should be a crime. (EDIT: unless you're using a CRT or a 480p display...which you're not)

Ah, this is rather annoying. Nothing appears to have changed. Still getting the same stutter in the same places. Could it be on option I'm using in my  graphics card settings? Or is this simply a regression from 5.0 stable, because I honestly was not getting this kind of stutter.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

And that stutter occurs with either ubershader settings regardless of whether you use Direct3D 11 or Vulkan?

You could also try the "Asynchronous (skip drawing)" option which can cause various weird graphical issues but is also supposed to be stutter-free.

Otherwise I would check your CPU utilization － are you maxing out one of your CPU cores and/or not hitting a constant 60fps?  If so, then there's still a few things you could possibly do that may alleviate that. (note that Dolphin only really heavily utilizes 2 cores, so with a 12-thread CPU your total utilization could appear to only be 15% even if you're CPU-bottlenecked).

[Silent Hell]

Just tried skip drawing and no change. My CPU doesn't reach 100% usage. Here is a brief video I recorded showing you the stutters I'm talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkHU9cvcL3g&feature=youtu.be

EDIT: Ah, I didn't check core usage.