I know my computer is strong enough, so why are my games slowing down?

09-30-2010, 09:11 AM #1

I have an Asus g73jh, Intel i7 720qm, Ati Radeon 5870, and 8gbs of RAM... So please, tell me what's the bottleneck or if something's wrong with my Dolphin emulators. The games I had been able to play so far have been SMBM, Windwaker, and Mario Party 7, and all have noticeable slowdowns.

**admin89** · 09-30-2010, 10:15 AM #2

1.6Ghz is too slow not strong at all ,dolphin not support more than 2 core.Your i7 will be the same as dualcore on dolphin,OC it to 3.0Ghz then you will run fullspeed
Ehh,your pc is a laptop so no way you can OC sorry
You can try disable Hyper Threading in your bios and use this config to gain some speed
http://www.dolphin-emu.org/performance.html
Resolution : 1366x768(720p) don't try with 1920x1080

**Billiard26** · 09-30-2010, 10:19 AM #3

Your CPU is likely your bottleneck.
Although it is a quad core it only runs at 1.6GHz, and Dolphin can only take advantage of 2 cores.

Make sure you enable "EFB Copy to Texture" in the graphics plugin config and use the D3D9 Graphics plugin.
This gives a most people a decent speed up compared to "copy to RAM". (the default)

09-30-2010, 10:38 AM #4

Well then it sucks for dolphin at the moment, since I can play most new games on high quality, oh well.

**Billiard26** · 09-30-2010, 10:43 AM #5

"I can play most new games on high quality"
Dolphin isn't a game, it's an emulator.

**NaturalViolence** · 09-30-2010, 01:47 PM #6

Quote:1.6Ghz is too slow not strong at all ,dolphin not support more than 2 core.Your i7 will be the same as dualcore on dolphin,OC it to 3.0Ghz then you will run fullspeed

Quote:Although it is a quad core it only runs at 1.6GHz, and Dolphin can only take advantage of 2 cores.

Did neither of you notice that his cpu is an i7m?

Which under turbo boost runs at 2.4GHz when 2 cores are being used and 2.8GHz when 1 core is being used. And at 2.4GHz in dual core mode it easily outperforms any desktop core 2 duo/quad running at 3.2-3.6GHz. I can confirm this personally. His cpu is more than enough for dolphin. He has clearly either configured something wrong or his laptop is overheating.

Speaking of which.

@Cakiman11

We need to know what revision you are using and what settings.

**skid** · 09-30-2010, 02:56 PM #7

Yeh, I know someone with a Asus g73jh and Dolphin runs silky smooth on it.

What are your settings?

**Ocean** · 09-30-2010, 06:19 PM #8

ya, can't believe nobody except NV mentioned that i7 720qm will *never* run at 1.6ghz (even if all cores are utilized the turbo would kick it to at least 1.8),
in most cases like playing on dolphin, the operating frequency will be between 2.4 and 2.8 unless you disabled turbo in bios

It's enough for playing games on dolphin.
Also, that laptop is better than most desktop rigs here, if you get slowdowns it's because you misconfigured dolphin

10-01-2010, 01:21 AM #9

I actually have a G73JH, and have no problems running Dolphin. I can easily play games like Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy at 1080p. Granted, I have the i7 840m inside compared to the OP's i7 720m, but there is not too much difference.

To the OP: The G73JH is a machine that needs some tweaking out of the box to get its best performance. I would recommend this thread for getting the best out of your machine:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/492354-all-g73jh-problems-solutions-here.html

A fresh install of Windows is always great as well, so that you can remove all the bloatware on your system and only keep the drivers you need. Make sure that your graphics drivers are updated and that turbo boost is on (which it should be, unless intentionally disabled it).

Are you trying to run these games at 1080p? Are you using the newest revision of Dolphin? If you are, perhaps you should start at a lower resolution and go up from there. I wouldn't necessarily recommend actual tweaks to you yet, because for myself Dolphin ran fine out of the box.

The information you provide is vague, so it is hard to surmise your problem. However, it is most likely you and not your hardware. The G73JH is incredibly capable, and the i7 you have is a powerful processor that can more than handle this emulator. You might be better off looking for help from those that actually possess the hardware you have like in the above link, instead of seeking help from people biased against what they do not own.

10-01-2010, 09:25 AM **#10**

My options in config are: Enable dual core, enable idle skipping, and HLE to IPL, JIT recompiler, on the DX9 plugin is V-Sync on, No Anti-Aliasing, Enable CPU->EFB access, Force bi/trilinear, enable 16x anisotropy filtering, and Enable EFB copy to RAM. My computer already has the latest drivers, and I can run most games on high quality, and i'm not saying dolphin is a game, I am only stating the fact that most new games work perfectly so my computer isn't a bad unit or something like that.