high end build, performance issues

sunnaryt · 02-28-2016, 04:54 AM #1

on several releases of dolphin i am having performance issues in different games, mainly stuttering and hitching, though my computer currently has a i5-4690k and 980ti! it does not make sense! i'm only trying to run it at 1080p and no combination of settings i've tried have solved it.

**Helios** · (This post was last modified: 02-28-2016, 05:02 AM by Helios.)

By using the latest build do you mean the latest development build or 4.0.2

4.0.2 isn't the latest build.

Additionally, what you're probably hitting is shader compilation, which happens every time you play a new game in Dolphin, and will persist until the shaders are cached for that game in the shader cache folder. Some games generate a lot more shaders than others.

sunnaryt · 02-28-2016, 05:10 AM #3

many different dev builds including the latest, i have different folders with different releases so i tried a few, mario kart in particular has been unplayable.

that's alright then i suppose.

**Helios** · 02-28-2016, 05:27 AM #4

When you switch Dolphin versions, your shader cache gets invalidated and has to regenerate.

sunnaryt · 02-28-2016, 08:48 AM #5

Is 62% max GPU utilization an expected value?

**leolam** · 02-28-2016, 09:03 AM #6

Depends on your GPU settings, but yes that seems normal to me.

**Helios** · (This post was last modified: 02-28-2016, 11:05 AM by Helios.)

Dolphin isn't really that intensive on your GPU. In fact, under certain circumstances, nvidia drivers will actually get confused at which power saving level to run at because the workload is so low, in some cases requiring one to go into the nvidia control panel and force high performance mode for dolphin. A simple way to bump up GPU utilization is to set the IR close to your display's resolution (3x if 1080p), and turn on SSAA.

**leolam** · (This post was last modified: 02-28-2016, 06:55 PM by leolam.)

Slightly off-topic, but is there a way to only force performance mode when Dolphin is running? I guess this could be done with a wrapper script, but I wonder if there's an easier way.

**Helios** · 02-29-2016, 12:44 AM #9

My last comment in this thread does that.

You make a profile specifically for Dolphin.exe

**leolam** · 02-29-2016, 01:07 AM **#10**

Sorry if this seems obvious to you, but how would that work with nvidia-settings (under Linux)? I can match Dolphin by matching the process name (dolphin-emu), but there doesn't seem to be a way to apply a different performance mode. Unless I missed it…