Getting worse performance than I would expect

[mryokomoto]

I've got an i5 4670k and a GTX 770. I've been tweaking settings trying to zero in on how to get consistently good performance but the story is almost all the same. I can max out internal resolution or use 1x, turn off AA or crank it up, but what happens in both cases is the game runs at 60 fps for a few minutes/levels, then stutters constantly at 30-45 fps with some brief breaks here and there back at 60.

I've seen this on SSSB where a few matches ran flawlessly then the game became unplayable, as well as in Mario Kart Wii where a bunch of races were fine, and then after it got choppy I went back to the exact same races as before and they were suddenly choppy.

Any ideas?

[KHg8m3r]

It could be thermal throttling. Check your temps while playing Dolphin and see if they get too high.

Use the latest dev build, 4.0-3164

Try moving the Dolphin Folder from Documents to the Desktop, and then rerun Dolphin as a clean slate and see if the issue is still there.

[Suprvgeta]

I have a similar setup to you, and was having a similar issue before I changed my GPU settings. It sounds like your GPU is under-volting/down-clocking itself to save power. You basically go into your nVidia control panel, and under"Manage 3D Settings," change the power management mode setting. Change it from the default setting to "PREFER MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE."

Here is an explanation (Under Part 2: GPU)
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

[mryokomoto]

I'm seeing CPU utilization in the 50-60% range on each core.

I'm getting weird readings on CPU1 of 500c, which I'm pretty sure isn't possible so there might be a measurement problem? The temps on the CPUs is around 50c. It starts out in the high 30s then slowly ramps up. GPU temp is around 35c.

It definitely seems to be a heating thing, I left SSSB game running for a while and it went from smooth to unplayable, then continued to be unplayable after restarting the game. That, plus a clear ramp up of temperatures seems to point to it.

What I'm not sure about is what temperatures are acceptable or what the threshold for throttling is. The temps seem okay. Between the CPU and GPU, which is probably the culprit?

Thanks.

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(09-12-2014, 04:45 AM)Suprvgeta Wrote: I have a similar setup to you, and was having a similar issue before I changed my GPU settings.

Thanks, I've had this setting enabled for Dolphin and so I don't think that is a problem.

[mryokomoto]

Okay I spent some time understanding the afterburner graphs I was looking at and, the GPU is not overheating it's at 40c which is totally fine.

It is being underclocked though when an SSSB match is running, at a constant 536 MHz. Is there any way to make it run faster? The "prefer maximum performance" Nvidia power management setting doesn't seem to take.

[AnyOldName3]

Pumping up your IR and AA should help bring it out of idle clocks.

[mryokomoto]

I cranked up the settings, didn't see a clear difference. Here are some monitor charts. The left half is when the game was started up, the right half is a short time after it had started becoming problematic.

In the left chart, you can see that the framerate was stable and started to degrade after a few minutes.

The clearest difference is that the GPU utilization was higher initially, and then started trading with the CPU more later on. The temperatures look pretty stable the whole time so I'm not sure how to explain this.

I've also included my current Dolphin settings.

[DJBarry004]

Have you tried enabling Skip EFB to CPU access?

[mryokomoto]

Thanks everyone, I got ahead of myself here. Once I switched to the latest dev build instead of Dolphin VR, it started working.