How to Speed Up Dolphin to the Max! [NO HARDWARE UPGRADES!]

[dannzen]

(01-09-2012, 06:47 AM)DefenderX Wrote: So, and now, I have a question.

I want to undervolt my Notebook, but RMclock doesn't recognize my CPU... Am I just stupid or is the Sandy Bridge architecture too new for RMclock?

If yes, are they any alternatives?

the whole i-serie is not supported...
and the whole THREAD is bullshit...
please close this sneaky oil

[kkc1945]

This thread is really bullshit. I have tried many options from this thread and you know what? Nothing helped! Not 1 fps ! NOT 1 fps !

[22029206]

How to Speed Up Dolphin to the Max! UPGRADE HARDWARES

[constantinosand]

i can confirm setting the prio to realtime

(even without sound)

[NaturalViolence]

Please try harder to form complete and coherent sentences when posting. The last thing we need is another dannzen .

[Dark Frost]

Very Nice Thread
tnx
TheBboyKnowledge

[jeremymd]

To make DOLPHIN run faster:

1. Make sure your processor will only be working on Dolphin.

This explains option 1. This will help if you don't have that strong a processor. Closing the "sidebar" process makes sense if you have gadgets on your desktop because I've observed they're always munching about 5% CPU power(I have 5 gadgets). Other than that, my "explorer" process only takes CPU power in 2% bursts, otherwise it doesn't use any.

2. RAMDisk?

Yes! Do NOT listen to anybody who says a RAMDisk won't help in speed. IT DEFINITELY WILL! The only possibly reason why this won't help would be because you don't have enough RAM.

Okay, let's say you have 4000MB of RAM. You run Dolphin. You see that Dolphin eats up only 500MB of it. Plus the other Windows 7 processes which use/reserve about 2000-3000MB of that. Cool. Still lots of room for Dolphin to use. That means Dolphin would be faster all in all.

Then you make a RAMDisk. Think of a RAMDisk as a hard drive WITH NO MOVING PARTS. It would be like a Solid State Drive which also has no moving parts, except a RAMDisk kicks SSD ass when it comes to speed. Anything at all on a RAMDisk will ALWAYS be faster as opposed to the software(Dolphin) written on a physical hard drive. ANYTHING!

The catch is, a RAMDisk eats up RAM. If you wanted a RAMDisk so you can put in and run a 3000MB game faster, you would need the same amount of RAM for that.

So just doing the numbers in your head, using a RAMDisk won't work for you if you only have 4000MB. If you had about 8000MB, then it's more likely to help.

** Theoretically a RAMDisk could still help in your situation if you make a small RAMDisk where you can copy the Dolphin program itself then run it from there. The performance boost will most likely be negligible, but I'm a 100% certain it would be a performance boost.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:Yes! Do NOT listen to anybody who says a RAMDisk won't help in speed. IT DEFINITELY WILL! The only possibly reason why this won't help would be because you don't have enough RAM.

Okay, let's say you have 4000MB of RAM. You run Dolphin. You see that Dolphin eats up only 500MB of it. Plus the other Windows 7 processes which use/reserve about 2000-3000MB of that. Cool. Still lots of room for Dolphin to use. That means Dolphin would be faster all in all.

Then you make a RAMDisk. Think of a RAMDisk as a hard drive WITH NO MOVING PARTS. It would be like a Solid State Drive which also has no moving parts, except a RAMDisk kicks SSD ass when it comes to speed. Anything at all on a RAMDisk will ALWAYS be faster as opposed to the software(Dolphin) written on a physical hard drive. ANYTHING!

The catch is, a RAMDisk eats up RAM. If you wanted a RAMDisk so you can put in and run a 3000MB game faster, you would need the same amount of RAM for that.

So just doing the numbers in your head, using a RAMDisk won't work for you if you only have 4000MB. If you had about 8000MB, then it's more likely to help.

** Theoretically a RAMDisk could still help in your situation if you make a small RAMDisk where you can copy the Dolphin program itself then run it from there. The performance boost will most likely be negligible, but I'm a 100% certain it would be a performance boost.

I really don't feel like picking apart that pile of nonsense right now so I'll just keep my response short and simple. It doesn't matter how much RAM you have, creating a RAMDisk won't improve performance because dolphin does not waste cycles waiting for data from the HDD unless the game wants it to (e.g. loading). Dolphin does whatever the game tells it to do. Dolphin "pretends" that the disk image on your HDD is in the GC/Wii DVD drive and gives the game the ability to transfer code/data between the emulated disk drive and emulated RAM. I'm also fairly certain that dolphin has some sort of prefetching/caching system used for this which makes disk performance even more irrelevant. The performance of your HDD is already massively better than the DVD drive in the GC/Wii causing dolphin to load data much faster than an actual GC/Wii would. Since this was innacurate emulation and was causing problems with a few games the developers added an option in to limit the disk transfer speed to that of the GC/Wii DVD drive, and this option is enabled by default for most games. In fact one of the developers (delroth I believe) is currently trying to implement a more accurate system for this which takes into account that fact that disk transfer speeds are not constant and depend on a number of different factors such as the location of the data on the disk.

To summarize:
1. Ram disks are used to improve disk transfer speed. But disk transfer speed is irrelevant to the performance of the game(s).
2. Even if it was relevant using a RAM disk wouldn't improve the emulated disk transfer speed since dolphin limits it anyways.

I've also tried it myself in the past and confirmed that loading the entire GC/Wii game plus dolphin into a Ram disk does not improve performance at all. But hey what do I know right? If you would like to prove me wrong please go ahead and try by backing up your ridiculous claims with some actual evidence.

[jeremymd]

Prove one of these points wrong then:

1. Dolphin READS the DVD image to play it, regardless of however Dolphin is made.
2. The DVD image is written ON YOUR HARD DRIVE.
3. Reading from RAM is faster than from the hard drive.
4. Therefore, if the whole DVD image is on RAM, reading it should be faster compared to when it's on the physical hard drive. Unless Dolphin actually loads the WHOLE image to RAM which is ridiculous. And I confirmed that this isn't so.
5. I did say " The performance boost will MOST LIKELY BE NEGLIGIBLE, but I'm a 100% certain it would be a performance boost. I have a 4.5gb and 150mb ram drive, mhtri and dolphin loaded there respectively. It SEEMS to be running better, but of course it could just be placebo.

-- "It doesn't matter how much RAM you have, creating a RAMDisk won't improve performance because dolphin does not waste cycles waiting for data from the HDD unless the game wants it to (e.g. loading)."

That's accurate. Of course the phrase UNLESS THE GAME WANTS IT TO (E.G. LOADING) deserves to be underlined. How many times do you think Dolphin reads a 4gb DVD image file while you're playing it? I can confidently say LOTS. Whether or not Dolphin uses prefetching/caching(which it most likely does), it STILL needs to read the image file so a part of it can be placed in the cache. Makes sense, right? So your own statement proves you wrong.

-- "Dolphin does whatever the game tells it to do. Dolphin "pretends" that the disk image on your HDD is in the GC/Wii DVD drive and gives the game the ability to transfer code/data between the emulated disk drive and emulated RAM."

True. Except that you confused me because this statement doesn't really contradict what I previously mentioned.

-- "I'm also fairly certain that dolphin has some sort of prefetching/caching system used for this which makes disk performance even more irrelevant."

See above.

-- "The performance of your HDD is already massively better than the DVD drive in the GC/Wii causing dolphin to load data much faster than an actual GC/Wii would. Since this was innacurate emulation and was causing problems with a few games the developers added an option in to limit the disk transfer speed to that of the GC/Wii DVD drive, and this option is enabled by default for most games. In fact one of the developers (delroth I believe) is currently trying to implement a more accurate system for this which takes into account that fact that disk transfer speeds are not constant and depend on a number of different factors such as the location of the data on the disk."

I understand now what you're saying and I find it EXTREMELY INTERESTING.

You were pressuring me for evidence to my "ridiculous claims". You are mistaken here. The pressure is on YOU. My ridiculous claims are actual performance theories which I know every intermediate computer enthusiast would agree to. And the only way for this to be wrong is for YOU to bring out YOUR evidence about Dolphin limiting image read speed to the actual Wii DVD read speed to prevent errors.

Lastly, whether your article is true or not, I want you to know... It's a win/win for me. It's either I'm right or I learn something new.
But for you, it's either you win or you're just a plain offensive moron.

[dannzen]

1. normal case for dolphin:
99.9% of all slowdowns are caused by cpu

2. dolphin trys to "emulate" the wii therefore an increased reading speed would be a hack... and not in mind of the developer
i think its capped to maintain sync of some threads... didn't looked into the core code

could someone close this fucking thread now?
100% sneaky oil