Hi guys,
I hope you can help me with this issue.
My friends and myself have been facing serious lag issues playing Dolphin games on netplay and even by ourselves for quite some time now, it got so bad that we stopped playing them altogether for a long time. The latest Dolphin 5 release got us excited that the problem might be solved, but we saw no significant performance difference after installing. As in, the particular problem we're facing has not been resolved by the latest release. And since some of us couldn't even get Dolphin 5 to run (long story - Windows update totally borked, hence can't get the update required to install VC2015 dist, hence can't run the app), we are back to Dolphin 4.0.2.
And now after some long sleepless nights I've finally figured out one major issue that's been ruining Dolphin games for us. Looks like Intel turbo boost is not working well at all when it comes to Dolphin, at least on some PCs. See for yourself:
Do you see what's happening? The OS stubbornly refuses to recognize that additional performance is needed and it is keeping the CPU downclocked and downvolted while the game is being played, resulting in potentially horrific performance drops depending on the intensity of what's happening on screen, with FPS drops down to single digits sometimes - especially if playing with several people who have the same problem. There is no throttling going on, the system is not at all overheated. The OS just doesn't understand that additional clock cycles are needed and it is perpetually keeping the CPU in "idle mode" with reduced voltage and halved clock rate.
The problem seems to be particularly acute during netplay, although single player tends to have the same issue often as well.
Where there's a problem, there's a solution: if I run a CPU stress test parallel to the game, artificially forcing one of the CPU cores to stay at 100% usage, turbo boost seems to recognize the need for additional cycles and increases the clock speed accordingly. And as soon as it does that, viola, all lag is instantly gone! Magic! Fucking miracles! But that's retarded. And what if the game needs to use that CPU core that I'm artificially stressing for no real purpose? I'm potentially reducing performance of my computer just so the system wouldn't downclock the CPU.
No lag the entire game! Even in netplay!
And as soon as the stress test finishes, the OS once again downclocks the CPU and considers it "idle", and the lag issues come back with it. Why can't I just run the game by itself and have the OS give it the correct clock rate? I mean, this is probably a question to Microsoft and Intel as much as it is a question to Dolphin, but still, it seems to be the only emulator and the only program in general that has this particular issue, I haven't had that issue with anything else yet.
Any ideas on meaningful solution?
System specs of the particular computer that's having this issue (It's not a very high end computer, but it's more than enough to run most Dolphin games at full speed provided that the CPU is not downclocked to hell):
-Intel Core i5-3350P, 3.1-3.3ghz (recently overclocked to 3.25-3.9ghz)
-SDRAM 8160 MB (DDR3-1600 recently overclocked to DDR3-1685)
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 (2 GB)
-Windows 7 SP1 DirectX 11.1
-Dolphin 4.0.2
Please note that the problem precedes the overclocking effort, in fact it was the lag issue that provoked me to try overclocking in the first place, thinking that perhaps insufficient computer resources might be at the root of it.
Thanks all.
I hope you can help me with this issue.
My friends and myself have been facing serious lag issues playing Dolphin games on netplay and even by ourselves for quite some time now, it got so bad that we stopped playing them altogether for a long time. The latest Dolphin 5 release got us excited that the problem might be solved, but we saw no significant performance difference after installing. As in, the particular problem we're facing has not been resolved by the latest release. And since some of us couldn't even get Dolphin 5 to run (long story - Windows update totally borked, hence can't get the update required to install VC2015 dist, hence can't run the app), we are back to Dolphin 4.0.2.
And now after some long sleepless nights I've finally figured out one major issue that's been ruining Dolphin games for us. Looks like Intel turbo boost is not working well at all when it comes to Dolphin, at least on some PCs. See for yourself:
Do you see what's happening? The OS stubbornly refuses to recognize that additional performance is needed and it is keeping the CPU downclocked and downvolted while the game is being played, resulting in potentially horrific performance drops depending on the intensity of what's happening on screen, with FPS drops down to single digits sometimes - especially if playing with several people who have the same problem. There is no throttling going on, the system is not at all overheated. The OS just doesn't understand that additional clock cycles are needed and it is perpetually keeping the CPU in "idle mode" with reduced voltage and halved clock rate.
The problem seems to be particularly acute during netplay, although single player tends to have the same issue often as well.
Where there's a problem, there's a solution: if I run a CPU stress test parallel to the game, artificially forcing one of the CPU cores to stay at 100% usage, turbo boost seems to recognize the need for additional cycles and increases the clock speed accordingly. And as soon as it does that, viola, all lag is instantly gone! Magic! Fucking miracles! But that's retarded. And what if the game needs to use that CPU core that I'm artificially stressing for no real purpose? I'm potentially reducing performance of my computer just so the system wouldn't downclock the CPU.
No lag the entire game! Even in netplay!
And as soon as the stress test finishes, the OS once again downclocks the CPU and considers it "idle", and the lag issues come back with it. Why can't I just run the game by itself and have the OS give it the correct clock rate? I mean, this is probably a question to Microsoft and Intel as much as it is a question to Dolphin, but still, it seems to be the only emulator and the only program in general that has this particular issue, I haven't had that issue with anything else yet.
Any ideas on meaningful solution?
System specs of the particular computer that's having this issue (It's not a very high end computer, but it's more than enough to run most Dolphin games at full speed provided that the CPU is not downclocked to hell):
-Intel Core i5-3350P, 3.1-3.3ghz (recently overclocked to 3.25-3.9ghz)
-SDRAM 8160 MB (DDR3-1600 recently overclocked to DDR3-1685)
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 (2 GB)
-Windows 7 SP1 DirectX 11.1
-Dolphin 4.0.2
Please note that the problem precedes the overclocking effort, in fact it was the lag issue that provoked me to try overclocking in the first place, thinking that perhaps insufficient computer resources might be at the root of it.
Thanks all.