Getting fps drops in most games

[Saint Chewy]

Hey everyone first time posting and I've got to say dolphin is amazing! However as awesome as dolphin is I have a really annoying problem. In most of my game I am getting lots of fps drops. And they aren't really random most times. For example in Mario Kart wii the very first race ( I think the Luigi cup) I cannot play at all with all solid 60 fps. I am constantly getting drops and as a mainly pc player, it makes it unplayable. I was playing at 1080p but then tried to play the wii native resolution and it made zero difference. I was still getting fps drops.

I also have played legend of zelda: windwaker and after changing the audio to hle it played amazing, but now I have noticed when I am sailing I am getting massive fps drops when objects begin to pop in so I'm not u Sure if this is normal .In super Mario sunshine, it is not as bad as the fps drops are when a level is loading but it's still there. I tried to play wii sports resort and it's a laggy mess no matter the settings again

I have a pretty beefy rig- i5 2500k oc to 4.4 ghz, a Nvidia gtx 780ti and 16 gb of ram. As far as I understand about this emulator (which is very little) I should have no problem playing these games

I am sorry for the wall of text, but I really would like to figure this out. I love dolphin and what it's doing but I can't stand the frame rate dropping. I am at work right now and am typing this on my phone so forgive me if there are typos.

So can anyone tell me if a) my problems can be fixed or b) this is normal. If it is the latter then I might just cry lol thank you for reading and support

[Shonumi]

Is this the first time you've played Dolphin on this computer? Dolphin needs to generate shaders for each game, but once it's done that once, it caches the shaders for later reuse. The initial generation of shaders is known to cause drops and dips in FPS. Have you tried extended play sessions? Lastly, what about the latest development builds (4.0.2. is old and slow) have you played on those yet?

If you, for example, manage to play 10-15 minutes and still get those speeds, can you clarify what the FPS range is? It's very hard to tell if this is a serious issue (like getting 10 FPS) or if it's something relatively minor. Be sure to post your Dolphin settings (as screenshots) too if you continue getting low speeds. FYI, I am not nearly OC'ed as high as you, and my GPU is fairly weaker, so you shouldn't be getting any issues of this sort (normally I mean, obviously it's happening to you now :p)

[Saint Chewy]

For the most part yes this is the first time playing on this PC. I do usually play anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours it just depends. I was using 4.0.2, but am now using the latest dev build 4.0.1776. My fps range is 30 fps (for gamecube games) for the most part and when I get my drops, usually its around 12-15 fps. Which causes stutter which is extremely noticeable and annoying.

On Wii games I am sometimes at 60 fps but mostly it just jumps from 30 all the way up to 60. In Mario Kart Wii I am almost never at 60. Only when I am completely by myself. I also played SMG and was getting fps drops in the very beginning when running up to the castle. I try to play with IR at X4 if that helps but tone it down to nothing at all if my fps isnt what I want. But from what I understand my GPU handles the IR right?

[xystus]

Do you experience the same choppiness when selecting D3D instead of OpenGL?

I don't see anything particularly weird with your settings; you could enable "skip efb access" for a speedup, but I don't think that the reason for all of the slowdowns..

Is your CPU throttling, does it get too hot?

[Shonumi]

Yes, your GPU is responsible for allowing you to play with high Internal Resolutions and various levels of AA. If your GPU can handle those settings, it won't become your system's bottleneck in Dolphin. Have you tried turning it down to 1x IR to see how that goes? Your GPU should be good for 4x IR, but if turning it down to 1x IR results in good speeds, we know the issue is with your GPU rather than your CPU.

Additionally, Nvidia GPUs were known to remain at idle clocks with Dolphin, which artificially created GPU bottlenecks when they weren't supposed to happen. Make sure you set your GPUs performance profile to Maximum Performance or whatever Nvidia calls it on Windows. Can you download a program called GPU-Z and take a screenshot of it while running Dolphin? For good measure, can you do the same, but with a program called CPU-Z as well?

Like xystus said, your settings look fine from where I'm standing. It's probably little hardware quirk, since you're definitely beefy enough to run Dolphin without these kinds of slowdowns.

[Saint Chewy]

(06-05-2014, 02:37 PM)xystus Wrote: Do you experience the same choppiness when selecting D3D instead of OpenGL?

I don't see anything particularly weird with your settings; you could enable "skip efb access" for a speedup, but I don't think that the reason for all of the slowdowns..

Is your CPU throttling, does it get too hot?

Actually when playing Mario Kart Wii in Directx 11 its worse, it crashes dolphin.

---

Here is a screen shot just sitting in the menu where it dips down. The frame drop wouldnt be so bad if the audio didnt lag out with it. My temperatures are great too

[Saint Chewy]

And here is Windwaker





And another (look at the top of the screen not the fps counter. for some reason its a couple seconds behind)





One more... I think you get the point

[JMC47]

Your internal resolution looks ridiculously high. Maybe that's the issue. Also, the menus in Mario Kart are limited for a different reason; not a good benchmark result. Only the Haswell's can handle them because of how they play videos or something in the background it's silly.

[Saint Chewy]

(06-06-2014, 02:11 AM)JMC47 Wrote: Your internal resolution looks ridiculously high. Maybe that's the issue. Also, the menus in Mario Kart are limited for a different reason; not a good benchmark result. Only the Haswell's can handle them because of how they play videos or something in the background it's silly.

I am playing at IR x4 because I havent had any issues with it before. I did have fps drops during combat in Wind Waker, but after I switched to DSP HLE, it stopped. On Wii games I will usually turn it down if I need to. But apparently my GPU is capable at playing that high

[xystus]

(06-06-2014, 02:11 AM)JMC47 Wrote: Your internal resolution looks ridiculously high. Maybe that's the issue. Also, the menus in Mario Kart are limited for a different reason; not a good benchmark result. Only the Haswell's can handle them because of how they play videos or something in the background it's silly.

Eh.. IR4x ridiculously high for a Nvidia gtx 780ti..? Not true. Even with my AMD 7950 I can easily choose IR4x with lots of games; Windwaker and MarioKart Wii are no exception. So the 780ti should have no problem at all with it; which shows in the graphs, because it doesn't seem to run at "full speed".. Core clock = 653mhz and memory clock = 405mhz. Core should have a boost clock of around 925mhz.. So it's not really flexing it muscles at all - so it seems.

Which could be part of the issue. I notice smoother framerates when I stress my GPU some more (so that it doesn't switch to lower clock-speeds, which sometimes causes a small hiccup). So you could try amping up de MSAA, so that you stress your GPU a little further. Maybe this helps? Again, with these 2 games IR4x is a piece of cake for the almight 780ti (which really is a beast).

Also, you could try re-installing your GPU drivers (a faulty uninstall can create some weird issues). Make sure to uninstall them REALLY good with DDU: http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html