Hyrule Field Slowdown Observation

[Xtreme2damax]

Unfortunately I have an Asrock G43Twins motherboard and can not get it over 100 - 200 Mhz else it refuses to post. There's a specific jumper configuration I need for this motherboard else it won't post after raising the FSB above 345 Mhz or 352 Mhz, I can't figure out the correct configuration.

I've searched Google without much luck or finding much information how to overclock with this particular motherboard.

[jakeslogan]

how about BSEL to get 333 Mhz then OC it to reach further???

[Xtreme2damax]

I meant no more than a 100 Mhz - 200 Mhz overclock, the FSB is already 333 Mhz by default.

[Weasel Spunk]

Here is my experience with this game and this issue.

I played right up to the point after Goron Mines and entering Hyrule Field north's twilight. I got very little slow downs and the major ones that others have observed (Faron woods, Hyrule Field in general) where fixed by disabling vsync.

However, right after I entered the twilight in Hyrule Field north the fps dropped from 30 to 15.

Now here's a strange thing that I did notice which gives me a 5 fps boost. I have a quad core and if I set the affinity to allow dolphin to use only the first two cores I get the previously mentioned fps boost.

I know the developers aren't planning to implement support for quad cores, but could their be something wrong with dolphin's processor code that creates slow downs when it is ran on quad core processors as opposed dual cores? Could someone with a quad core test this also?

Here are the specs of my computer and the settings in dolphin:

Computer:

Intel quad core - Q9650 3.0ghz
EVGA 790i mo-board
GTX 280
4 gigs ram
WIN XP 64

Enabled in dolphin:

dual core
idle skipping
framelimit auto
hle the ipl
jit recompiler
dsplle on thread
anti-alias 9x ssa
cpu->efb access
16x anisotropy filtering
efb scaled copy
efb copy to texture

[shortzi]

I just tested that Weasel Spunk (Where do people think of these names lol) and indeed it does give a 4/5fps boost!!

Playing with taskmanager running and setting cores whilst in Hyrule Field

Cores 1 & 2 = 5fps extra
Cores 3 & 4 = 5fps extra
Mixture of 1 & 3 or 2 & 4 is no boost
All 4 core is no boost

*EDIT* BTW this only seems to speed up Hyrule Field, doing the same on any normal place doesn't result in any speed boost. Interesting!

[deathjijn]

It could also have to do with the way windows Distributes the load across the cores also and not just the program itself.

[Xtreme2damax]

(04-29-2010, 12:15 PM)deathjijn Wrote: It could also have to do with the way windows Distributes the load across the cores also and not just the program itself.

Already ruled out and is likely not the issue despite some threading or syncing issues the emulator exhibits. Issue is actually stated several times throughout the thread if you look and even a few developers mentioned what the issue likely is.

What Kiesel mentioned doesn't seem to be the issue, although it may be related in some way.

His patch does seem to offer a minor speedup, likely only because it isn't rendering some textures and geometry before/after (not sure which) the pipeline flush. His patch only gave a 5 - 6 FPS speedup at most and the speedup wasn't great enough for the game to run full speed, likely not the core issue that is causing the slowdowns.

As quoted by Jack Frost, only time will tell if this is indeed the issue and is fixed by Skids fifo work:

Quote:My guess it that skid's FIFO changes might be just what we need. Stuff blocks and hangs in there where it shouldnt have to.

Fifo does seem to be the issue in a sense as Fifo_EnterLoop is the most intensive. Maybe the emulator is stuck in an infinite loop when it encounters that function, those specific areas (Hyrule Field) triggering this odd behavior. However I'm not sure since I'm no developer and don't know how to code.

[kiesel-stein]

I really should have tested my patch a bit more.

This

Code:

if (((u32*)&bpmem)[bp.address] != bp.newvalue)

is responsible for the graphical glitches,

while this

Code:

if (bp.address < BPMEM_TEV_COLOR_ENV || bp.address >= BPMEM_TEV_ALPHA_ENV+32)

gave me a boost from 5 fps to 15 fps on the revision i initially tested on, and now still gives me a boost from 5 to 11. With this modification, dolphin is still cpu bound, but it is now the cpu thread that eats a full core, no longer the gpu thread.

This is all using nvidia driver on linux. Your mileage may vary with other gpu manufacturers, but you will probably see something similar on windows when using nvidia.

[darkshadw]

Maybe a stupid question but, can't you save the hyrule field to a file and then when you enter it again it loads that file so it don't have to load everything again, like a cache or something (sorry for my bad english, but iI don't know if this is possible lol...)

[StripTheSoul]

it's the Hyrule Field which is loaded and which makes the problems...and if you load a save there, Hyrule Field still has to be loaded...so if I understand you right, that doesn't work.