Increased CPU consumption on MacOS Sierra

[wicked_umd]

Since upgrading to MacOS Sierra, I have not been able to play Melee or Project M at 60fps. When running locally with Activity Monitor I found that PM uses up 100% of my CPU while Melee takes up about 80%. Netplay exacerbates the issue which I've gotten as high as 150%. The emulation runs pretty steady around 50-55fps.

I'm running on a 2.3 GHz i7 processor and have been playing Netplay for over 2 years without fps issues and the issue began immediately after upgrading. Any solution?

[KHg8m3r]

You're playing on a Mac /s

On a more serious note, not many people have Sierra yet, so there hasn't been much testing. Also, Apple GPU drivers are shitty, you might want to look into running Windows under Bootcamp for better performance.

[iwtfasb]

Hej, i early upgraded to the macOS Sierra beta and now to the final release version and i have my kernal task taking up 1gb and no games on dolphin are running anymore. From a usual 60+fps i'm down to unplayable 2-4fps.
I tried everything OS related to get rid of the kernel task high memory, but even that should not be a problem.
I also updated to dolphin 5.0, maybe it's because of that, that all my games are not working/unplayable slow now? Could a 3.x version of dolphin be better for mac?

[KHg8m3r]

Make sure your framelimit/speed is set to 100%

[Craftyawesome]

Reset your settings?

[JMC47]

So, you're saying that the only thing that changed is the Operating System version... and you're trying to figure out what's wrong with the emulator. Instead, I'd wonder if maybe something's wrong with the operating system. Apple seems intent and destroying OpenGL as it is, so, yeah.

[wicked_umd]

My settings are fine, they are the standard for Netplay. Most menu screens run perfectly fine at 60fps with the occasional frame drop when a sound or visual changes (like sliding through menu options or loading the next screen) but it seems that once I get into the game is when the framerate drops and stays down. As soon as the match ends and it goes back to the character select screen, the full framerate comes back. For whatever reason I tested out Brawl today and it worked just fine, but Melee and PM still have the issue.

[The Whump]

(09-28-2016, 09:48 AM)wicked_umd Wrote: Since upgrading to MacOS Sierra, I have not been able to play Melee or Project M at 60fps. When running locally with Activity Monitor I found that PM uses up 100% of my CPU while Melee takes up about 80%. Netplay exacerbates the issue which I've gotten as high as 150%. The emulation runs pretty steady around 50-55fps.

I'm running on a 2.3 GHz i7 processor and have been playing Netplay for over 2 years without fps issues and the issue began immediately after upgrading. Any solution?

Hi there,

I had a pretty similar issue. With a bit of research and troubleshooting, I figured out the source of some of the problems. For one thing, sierra continuously runs a lot of unnecessary processes that slow down the CPU. I have added a link below that talks about them. Also, when you are in finder, select "Go", then "Utilities" then "Activity Monitor" to see what processes are taking up too much CPU time and you can quit them by clicking on the process and selecting "quit" or "force quit". Cleaning you desktop and clearing you cache is also benefits performance. After enough tweaking, I was able to get sierra to run Dolphin about as well as it did on El Capitan/Yosemite. The links below have some suggestions/steps you can try out.

Useful links:

http://osxdaily.com/2016/10/04/macos-sierra-slow-fix/

http://www.cultofmac.com/449369/solve-three-big-macos-sierra-problems/

Also, the following settings may help you--they helped me solve this problem:

Under Graphics Configuration:


-Backend: Direct3D9
resolution: 1280x720
-Select Render to main window
-To make the screen proportional to fullscreen while being faster than it click and drag the edge of the window to make it larger.
-Scaled EFB copy under enhancements makes the game look a lot better for only a small performance hit.
-Keep Text Cache under Hacks fastest unless a game keeps crashing for you then make it second fastest.
-Disable Widescreen Hack
-Enable Dualcore
-Enable Idle Skipping
-Framrate 65 limit by FPS (will usually actually be at 60 FPS)
-(Interface) Theme:Boomy
-JIT recompiler 
-enable DSP HLE emulation
-enable DTK music
-(Gamecube) Skip BIOS


(source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-settings-for-speeding-up-the-Dolphin-Emulator)


Good luck, I hope your issues get resolved!

[mstreurman]

(05-25-2017, 07:32 PM)The Whump Wrote: Hi there,

I had a pretty similar issue. With a bit of research and troubleshooting, I figured out the source of some of the problems. For one thing, sierra continuously runs a lot of unnecessary processes that slow down the CPU. I have added a link below that talks about them. Also, when you are in finder, select "Go", then "Utilities" then "Activity Monitor" to see what processes are taking up too much CPU time and you can quit them by clicking on the process and selecting "quit" or "force quit". Cleaning you desktop and clearing you cache is also benefits performance. After enough tweaking, I was able to get sierra to run Dolphin about as well as it did on El Capitan/Yosemite. The links below have some suggestions/steps you can try out.

Useful links:

http://osxdaily.com/2016/10/04/macos-sierra-slow-fix/

http://www.cultofmac.com/449369/solve-three-big-macos-sierra-problems/

Also, the following settings may help you--they helped me solve this problem:

Under Graphics Configuration:


-Backend: Direct3D9
resolution: 1280x720
-Select Render to main window
-To make the screen proportional to fullscreen while being faster than it click and drag the edge of the window to make it larger.
-Scaled EFB copy under enhancements makes the game look a lot better for only a small performance hit.
-Keep Text Cache under Hacks fastest unless a game keeps crashing for you then make it second fastest.
-Disable Widescreen Hack
-Enable Dualcore
-Enable Idle Skipping
-Framrate 65 limit by FPS (will usually actually be at 60 FPS)
-(Interface) Theme:Boomy
-JIT recompiler 
-enable DSP HLE emulation
-enable DTK music
-(Gamecube) Skip BIOS


(source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-settings-for-speeding-up-the-Dolphin-Emulator)


Good luck, I hope your issues get resolved!

-Backend: Direct3D9

resolution: 1280x720
-Select Render to main window
-To make the screen proportional to fullscreen while being faster than it click and drag the edge of the window to make it larger.
-Scaled EFB copy under enhancements makes the game look a lot better for only a small performance hit.
-Keep Text Cache under Hacks fastest unless a game keeps crashing for you then make it second fastest.
-Disable Widescreen Hack
-Enable Dualcore
-Enable Idle Skipping
-Framrate 65 limit by FPS (will usually actually be at 60 FPS)
-(Interface) Theme:Boomy
-JIT recompiler 
-enable DSP HLE emulation
-enable DTK music
-(Gamecube) Skip BIOS


lol what? is that a thing now?

[MayImilae]

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Announcement-global-forum-rules

Global Forum Rules Wrote:Necroposting: Do not revive a discussion older than 6 months unless your post adds something meaningful or otherwise contributes to the thread. Please create a new thread about your subject instead. Threads violating this rule will be closed. Stickied threads, Game Discussion threads, and HD Texture threads are exempt, however, and users can freely post there regardless of how old the topics are.

Please note the time they were last here before giving advice! ...also their operating system. And how ancient the advice you are giving them is! (that advice appears to be 3.0 centric! newer versions are WAY faster!)

*waves her magic moderator wand*

Closed!