Good Pc but dolphin is messing up

[aceofwings]

Hi,

This is my first time posting here just downloaded the dolphin software and was ready to play some of my old games on my labtop.
I am running a Intel® core i7-4500u CPU @ 1.8 ghz 2.4 ghz with a Nvidia 745m dedicated graphics card on my new asus labtop.
and i'm using the dolphin 4.0
(if thats sufficient please tell me because i'm getting a frame rate drop on medabots hence why i'm here)

I'm starting this thread because i'm looking around but i can't seem to find any optimal settings for my laptop...er graphics card.

when i first started using it it seemed the intel graphics card could run it just fine i had no frame rate issues at all and the only reason medabots crashed was because of it's bomb balloons. So i started trying to get it to accept my Nvidia graphics card and tried to find and use optimal settings for the program, but the program kept crashing the second I tried to pull up the game. I started running Dolphin with the graphics card after that and it seemed to solve the issue but then I started to get a frame rate drop that wasn't there before...and i'd hope the nvidia card was stronger than the built in intel one.

I was wondering if anyone had some optimal settings for the Nvidia 745m card and would mind telling me how to set it up so it will take my graphics card, not crash on me and hopefully leave me with a playable frame rate.

XD I just bought this laptop and was really hoping it'd be able to handle all these emulators I was wanting to play.

[Shonumi]

The slowdowns you're getting are most likely CPU-based, not GPU based (assuming you haven't set your Internal Resolution and AA too high). Your CPU is slow for Dolphin. You have an Ultra-low Voltage CPU (hence the U) suffix. It's not designed for power consumption, and it will throttle down to 1.8GHz frequently if you generate too much heat (which Dolphin tends to make CPUs do). In short, your CPU is the bottleneck here because of its low clock.

About your issue with the Nvidia GPU, just ignore whatever Dolphin reports. Follow admin89's laptop performance guide here: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide I advise you to pay attention to Part 2 only though.

The best thing you can probably do after that is to stop using 4.0. Try the latest development builds at https://dolphin-emu.org/download (4.0-1130 at this time). Recent builds are much faster than the older stable builds. That said, you laptop isn't ideally suited for Dolphin. Aside from running a handful of lightweight games, you'll experience slowdowns in nearly every other game, no matter what you do.

[aceofwings]

(03-10-2014, 07:29 AM)Shonumi Wrote: The slowdowns you're getting are most likely CPU-based, not GPU based (assuming you haven't set your Internal Resolution and AA too high). Your CPU is slow for Dolphin. You have an Ultra-low Voltage CPU (hence the U) suffix. It's not designed for power consumption, and it will throttle down to 1.8GHz frequently if you generate too much heat (which Dolphin tends to make CPUs do). In short, your CPU is the bottleneck here because of its low clock.

About your issue with the Nvidia GPU, just ignore whatever Dolphin reports. Follow admin89's laptop performance guide here: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide I advise you to pay attention to Part 2 only though.

The best thing you can probably do after that is to stop using 4.0. Try the latest development builds at https://dolphin-emu.org/download (4.0-1130 at this time). Recent builds are much faster than the older stable builds. That said, you laptop isn't ideally suited for Dolphin. Aside from running a handful of lightweight games, you'll experience slowdowns in nearly every other game, no matter what you do.

Dang it i just bought this thing to.

Alright, well thank you so much for your help i'll go follow up on what you suggested and hopefully that ends the problem...for the most part

[aceofwings]

Alright I went and followed up on your advice but now i'm really confused.

not on how to all of that i am clear on it is my problem.
Before I started messing around with all these settings medabots infinity was running 60 fps with no drop.
But now after following all this optimization to a T it seems like I've lost performance!
This is why I'm so confused and I came here seeking some help. I only started to look for optimization when metabots crashed after I broke a bomb balloon(turned out this was the one thing that crashes the game anyway). Is there anything else i might be able to look at or change?

[Shonumi]

You made sure to follow only Part 2, correct? All you have to do is set up things through your Nvidia driver and ignore Dolphin's Adaptor option.

At any rate, what Internal Resolution and AA are you using? If it's 1x IR and no AA, you won't be bottlenecked by the Intel HD Graphics for this game (it won't look terribly pretty though), in which case any slowdowns are CPU based. Post your Dolphin settings and show us what you've got set.

[aceofwings]

(03-10-2014, 12:36 PM)Shonumi Wrote: You made sure to follow only Part 2, correct? All you have to do is set up things through your Nvidia driver and ignore Dolphin's Adaptor option.

At any rate, what Internal Resolution and AA are you using? If it's 1x IR and no AA, you won't be bottlenecked by the Intel HD Graphics for this game (it won't look terribly pretty though), in which case any slowdowns are CPU based. Post your Dolphin settings and show us what you've got set.

And yes i did i didn't touch anything on the CPU side. i followed your advice to the letter as well as information here
https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/guides/settings/

however i did not mess with the integrated Intel settings like it shows in the website you gave me because i thought i was just supposed to put it all on Nvidia
Graphics
backend OpenGL
Adapter Nvidia 745m
( i set it to this be cause with it set on direct 3D11 and set to the intel HD graphics it would drop to 50-40 right away. with this option set it started at 60 but dropped to 55-50 in the opening sequence of the game after the ikki chracter model enters the frame.)
(just realized you can't even play the medabots game to begin with because to get past the start of the game you have to hit the bomb balloon which crashes the game.)

Enhancements
IR 1x
AA none
AF 1x
scaled EFB COPY on

Hacks
Ignor format changes
EFB copies - texture
texture cache fast
EFB disable
other-fast depth calculation

Configuration
Enable dual core
enable idle skipping
framerate auto
CPU engine-JIT

Audio
DSP HLE
backend - Xaudio 2

[NaturalViolence]

Again: Your cpu is too slow.