is it a CPU matter?

[sandwich2k]

Hi everybody,

I'm suffering from a very little lags when I play using Dolphin, the games looks quite playable, but I ... pay attention to very little details, and I noticed that sometimes there is a little lag or even an slowdown but I'm not capable of identify any decrease of the % of speed showed in the title window.

I've tried Dolphin-emu using several kind of configurations, I think the best I got were with the defaults one.
I tried it on Ubuntu 16.04 64 bits and even with Windows 10.

I've little played New Mario Bros and Mario Galaxy, both of them runs quite well (with Nvidia instead of intel), most of time the window title says they're running at 60fps and 100%, I'm not considering the menu selection, just the real game.

My CPU is the i5-4460@3.2Ghz, it has an intel HD, it uses intel HD Graphics 4600 according to the intel official site.

Those games were unplayable, but I bought a dedicated graphic card, a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 750 Ti 2GB OC and then it's when they start to run quite well

I have the operating system installed on a SSD but the games are in a HDD.

The same issue seems to happen on Windows 10 64 bits edition using DirectX11 (11 or 12, I don't remember right now)

Those are my specs, I hope they help to determinate if my problem is because of my CPU.

System:    Host: desktop Kernel: 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.3.1)
          Desktop: Cinnamon 3.0.4 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3) dm: lightdm
          Distro: Ubuntu 16.04 xenial
Machine:   Mobo: MSI model: H97 PC Mate(MS-7850) v: 1.0
          Bios: American Megatrends v: V5.8 date: 08/11/2015
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i5-4460 (-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB
          flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 25599
          clock speeds: min/max: 800/3400 MHz 1: 3400 MHz 2: 3302 MHz
          3: 3379 MHz 4: 3395 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti]
          bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1380
          Display Server: X.Org 1.18.3 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
          Resolution: 1680x1050@59.95hz
          GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
          GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 361.42 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 Intel 9 Series Family HD Audio Controller
          driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:8ca0
          Card-2 NVIDIA Device 0fbc
          driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:0fbc
          Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-22-generic
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1120.2GB (48.6% used)
          ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_850 size: 120.0GB serial: xxx
          ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST1000DM003 size: 1000.2GB serial: xxx
Partition: ID-1: / size: 69G used: 9.2G (15%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
          ID-2: /home size: 721G used: 495G (72%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb1
          ID-3: swap-1 size: 4.29GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2

Thanks in advance

[JosJuice]

Getting small slowdowns occasionally is a problem that's inherent to Dolphin. It happens when new shaders need to be compiled. Shaders will get cached as you play the game, so the longer you play, the less stuttering you will get. The shader cache will get cleared if you change Dolphin versions.

[leolam]

Also, make sure you are using the latest development builds, not 4.0 (the official repos only have 4.0.2).

[Depressed Osaka]

Yes, the emulator it's CPU heavy, but as JosJuice says, those small slowdowns are Dolphin compilating new shaders, it only does it once. If you play again and get to the same area you won't see any slowdown.

Anyway it isn't THAT CPU heavy. Your i5 should be more than alright, but it's a fact that my FX 4300 (the weakest of the weak!) can move Dolphin decently too.

Use the last development build, that will guaratee you the best performance.

[sandwich2k]

First of all, I thank you all for so fast answers to my questions.

I'd like to read your comments once you have watched how the game behave in my computer.

I tried to recorded with gtk-recordmydesktop, I think the max fps allowed are 50 and the game was played at 60 fps, so the recorded gameplay may differ from the real gameplay, but from my point of view it was recorded quite according to what I'm watching.

First thing I did was deleting the cache shaders this way:

~/.cache/dolphin-emu/Shaders$ ls
ogl-NAAE01-shaders.cache  
ogl-SF8E01-shaders.cache  
ogl-SMNE01-shaders.cache

I check their size

~/.cache/dolphin-emu/Shaders$ du -sh
7,3M .

Then I delete them

optimus@desktop:~/.cache/dolphin-emu/Shaders$ rm *

And this is an example of what I get:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6cwbr85krzxq39...5.ogv?dl=0

It's not always the same behavior, it sometimes looks better it sometimes looks worse.

Besides some little slowdowns I also noticed that when characters are moving they looks a little blurred. It depends on the level I'm playing and the amount of characters (maybe textures and shaders) involved I get even a worse performance.

Another question, what does last dev build mean? is the 4.0 the last one?

I tried main from the official Ubuntu Xenial repository and I also tried the one from this ppa that says unofficial, https://launchpad.net/~dolphin-emu/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

But I also tried it for Windows 10 64 bits and the result is almost the same, I cannot appreciate a big difference about the performance

[Helios]

the one in the ubuntu repositories is the stable branch, which is nearly 3 years old because our release cycle is trash.

The unofficial PPA is just roughly weekly builds of the git repository.

Note, by using the repository, every time you update Dolphin you'll invalidate your shader cache and it will have to rebuild. I honestly recommend just compiling from source so you don't have to deal with apt and holding pack individual packages.

[leolam]

Yeah, the development builds are really much better than 4.0.2. You'll have a much better experience with them.

If you want to use the PPA, for example because you (probably) don't want to compile Dolphin yourself, you can prevent the package from being upgraded (hold it) with echo "dolphin-emu-master hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections. To "unhold" replace "hold" by "install" in that command.

[sandwich2k]

Thank you again.

May I ask about my gameplay?

Does it look like it's suppose to be?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6cwbr85krzxq39...5.ogv?dl=0

[sandwich2k]

About the gameplay, I didn't pay attention to make resolution higher but the performance is the same.

Thank you again.

May I ask about my gameplay?

Does it look like it's suppose to be?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6cwbr85krzxq39...5.ogv?dl=0