Getting full speed in SW: Rogue Squadron

[dcj123]

Hello all,

I am a new user with both a hacked Wii and Gamecube though the Gamecube is broken. I have ripped all my games with cleanrip (Took forever) and have been experimenting with dolphin. So far its a great piece of software, so huge thxs to the devs. Anyway the problem is I have a semi powerful computer (Not Intel) and everything seems to work full speed but Star Wars Rogue Squadron is slowish. I would really like to get it working cause I love that game but I fear without having an Intel processor that might not be possible. I am not hating on AMD but this is what I have gathered from browsing the forums before I registered. I just want to get others opinions on this, is an AMD FX 8350 too slow for Star Wars Rogue Squadron?

Below is my full specs

AMD FX 8350
Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
32 GB of Kingston Ram (I do a lot of video editing)
1200 Watt Corsair Power Supply (I thought I was going SLI)

Thxs guys,

EDIT: Oh forgot to add I am using Dolphin 4.0-5991 but I have tested other versions too, if I left something out just let me know and I'll happily reply with that information.

[NKF98]

That specific game is pretty CPU intensive. It has a huge area to generate constantly. Intel is vastly superior to AMD for running Dolphin specifically. Wonder why that CPU has 8 cores and still a <$200 pricetag? Bad single thread performance. Dolphin utilizes 2 cores (3 w/ DSP LLE) and no more, so extra cores don't really make it run better. Invest in an i5 for good Dolphin performance.

[dcj123]

(04-11-2015, 09:56 AM)NKF98 Wrote: That specific game is pretty CPU intensive. It has a huge area to generate constantly. Intel is vastly superior to AMD for running Dolphin specifically. Wonder why that CPU has 8 cores and still a <$200 pricetag? Bad single thread performance. Dolphin utilizes 2 cores (3 w/ DSP LLE) and no more, so extra cores don't really make it run better. Invest in an i5 for good Dolphin performance.

Hm thats what I thought, well that sucks. My next PC will be Intel, I am currently saving up for one now. Let me ask this, will overclocking help single thread performance any?

[NKF98]

Yes, it will. Stable OC for the FX 8350 is like 5GhZ iirc. What's your CPU temp right now? Also, you don't really need to get a new desktop, just replace the mobo+CPU for like $400.

[dcj123]

(04-11-2015, 10:20 AM)NKF98 Wrote: Yes, it will. Stable OC for the FX 8350 is like 5GhZ iirc. What's your CPU temp right now? Also, you don't really need to get a new desktop, just replace the mobo+CPU for like $400.

I max out at around 38c but I am not water cooled, I have one of those huge Noctua heatsinks. I have never had much luck overclocking this processor because heat rises REALLY quickly. I'll look into it again though, I might be able to get to 4.4 Ghz but I am not foreseeing 5 Ghz happening on this rig.

[NKF98]

Without real good cooling I wouldn't suggest 5GhZ either. For that rig I'm thinking ~50C should be an absolute maximum

[Fiora]

Rogue Squadron is both an EFB2RAM game (GPU intensive) and an MMU game (CPU intensive), making it pretty much the most intensive thing you can play in Dolphin. In terms of raw CPU requirement, it probably requires more CPU power than any other Gamecube game, and even Virtual Console games, so a non-Intel chip will suffer.

Possible ways to make it faster:

1. Turning off EFB2RAM and EFB Access From CPU (in the graphics settings) will break some effects, but give you more speed.
2. Rogue Squadron is a variable framerate game, so reducing the emulated CPU clock (in the advanced settings) can lower the game's FPS to make it use less CPU and be more able to run at full speed. You may have to drop it quite a lot though; don't be surprised if you need to go to 50% or lower to get a major effect.
3. If you disable the music, DSP HLE can be used (HLE is bugged with the music currently, from what I recall). This could save some CPU.

... but there's no guarantees. My Ivy Bridge @ 3.4Ghz could barely play it at full FPS in some levels even with a bit of underclocking.

[NKF98]

Fiora obviously knows better than I. Do those things

[dcj123]

(04-11-2015, 10:38 AM)Fiora Wrote: 2. Rogue Squadron is a variable framerate game, so reducing the emulated CPU clock (in the advanced settings) can lower the game's FPS to make it use less CPU and be more able to run at full speed. You may have to drop it quite a lot though; don't be surprised if you need to go to 50% or lower to get a major effect.

This helped but I got this error after a few minutes of gameplay, I realize this method is not supported so I'll just leave this here in case it might help development.

[Fiora]

Turning off dual core might fix that; from what I recall the game doesn't benefit much from it anyways, but that might have changed.