I thought my PC was fine but getting lots of stutter

[cruachan]

Hi, I recently discovered Dolphin and have been playing around with it for a while and even got myself a Dolphin bar.
Trouble is, most games give me random slowdowns. The ones I have tried are Twilight Princess, Modern Warfare Reflex (the second mission where you land on the boat is particularly bad), Resident Evil 4 and Mario Galaxy 2. The stutter is like the whole games pauses for a split second. In twilight princes and mario galazy 2 the while game slows down and the sound goes wonky.
I am using Dolphin 5.0-rc-27. I tried the weird version as well (IshinukaA20) which seemed ok until I tried RE4 - the first cut scene, the first bad guy in shack right at the start of the game, that was all slowed down too.

My Spec

Intel core 2 quad q6700 2.66Hz
Radeon HD 5870
6 GB RAM

[kirbypuff]

Dolphin requies decent / modern hardware for a stutter-free experience.
Your GPU is fine (still a beast, capable of running every title at 4K / 6xIR), but your CPU is old and underpowered.

Dolphin is a dual-threaded application, so it prefers CPUs with high clockspeeds (GHz) and high efficiency (IPC).
A quad-core CPU doesn't improve the performance that much over a dual-core (only ~10% faster). That's why a higher clocked Core2 Duo with more cache is always the better choice.

FYI, your Core2 Quad performs slightly worse than a Phenom II X4 (with DDR3) at the same clock speed.
And the recommended speed for a relatively smooth experience with a Phenom II X4 is 3.5 GHz or higher.
This means you'll have to overclock that CPU to at least 3.6~3.7 GHz (if that's possible) or upgrade that old rig with new, modern components (CPU + Mainboard + RAM).

For best performance, try the latest Development build (4.0-76xx). It's better and faster than 5.0-rc.
Also, get the latest unstable version of Ishiiruka (the one you're using now [v420] is a bit old)

[cruachan]

Thanks for the reply. Would upgrading the CPU to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 - 2.83 GHz make any real difference?

[AnyOldName3]

There's not really anything that'll go in the same motherboard that isn't going to be really disappointing. In the short term, I'd overclock what you already have, and in the long term I'd consider an upgrade to something Haswell or Skylake.

[kirbypuff]

(09-08-2015, 07:00 AM)cruachan Wrote: Thanks for the reply. Would upgrading the CPU to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 - 2.83 GHz make any real difference?

Only if it's dirt cheap and you overclock the **** out of it.
It would be a nice upgrade over your current CPU @ stock clocks.

[admin89]

Quote:Thanks for the reply. Would upgrading the CPU to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 - 2.83 GHz make any real difference?

Buy a new Z97/Z87 mobo with dirt cheap Pentium G3258 ($70) . With just stock speed 3.2GHz , you will have double performance gains compared to the fastest Core 2 duo/ Core 2 Quad . With a mild OC like 4.2GHz , your G3258 will be on the same level as i7 4790 since Dolphin is a dual core app

[cruachan]

Ok - what about this?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121346195827?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&fromMakeTrack=true

:-)

If you guys say yes - i'm getting it :-)

[admin89]

Not cheap . Check your amazon.co.uk or http://www.scan.co.uk for better price
Besides , i5 4460 is not unlocked , it would be very stupid to pair it with Z97 mobo

[cruachan]

I just compared a fairly modern CPU with the one I have on cpuboss , there is not much in the difference, will an I5 based system really stop the stuttering that I am seeing

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q6700-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4460

[Helios]

I find that http://www.pcpartpicker.com is fairly good at finding the cheapest prices for components.

But yes, your CPU is very old.