You can always use the Unofficial Dolphin Benchmark, but did you know there's another way to benchmark the ability of your PC's CPU to run Dolphin smoothly?
If you have DKCR, you can do a "real-world" CPU benchmark.
The DKCR demo FMV (that plays after you wait a while at the title screen) is a perfect benchmark for your CPU:
- it's very demanding (puts a lot of stress on the CPU)
- doesn't stress the GPU (at all)
- both backends give the exact same performance, so you can use OpenGL with AMD or Intel GPUs as well
- it's deterministic (the framerate is consistent during the whole run)
- you get the results much faster than by running the Dolphin benchmark
Download Dolphin 4.0-8074 dev. build from the official page, extract the .7z archive to a new folder, create an empty file named portable.txt in the same folder, start Dolphin and change these settings:
- Set the frame limiter to "OFF"
- Turn off "Scaled EFB copy"
- Enable "Borderless Fullscreen"
Leave everything else at default (e.g. OpenGL backend, 1xIR, Auto aspect ratio, no AA, 1xAF, etc.)
Start DKCR and when the title screen appears, press the connect/disconnect hotkey once (puts the input thread to sleep) and then wait for the first FMV to play.
Scoring
---------
* The mimimum spec PC capable of running Dolphin smoothly should get 61 FPS or higher in that demo FMV (video).
* For the demanding titles (e.g. TLS), you should have a CPU that scores 91 FPS or better.
* For running the most demanding titles (e.g. SWRL) at full speed, you need a high-end CPU that scores an impressive 145 (!) FPS or better.
Even better, the scores obtained by running this "benchmark" are proportional to the scores obtained with the Unofficial Dolphin Benchmark:
- A CPU that finished the UO Dolphin Benchmark in 9 minutes (9:00) should get about 60fps in this bench.
- A CPU that finished the UO Bench in 6 minutes should get about 90fps in this one.
If you have DKCR, you can do a "real-world" CPU benchmark.
The DKCR demo FMV (that plays after you wait a while at the title screen) is a perfect benchmark for your CPU:
- it's very demanding (puts a lot of stress on the CPU)
- doesn't stress the GPU (at all)
- both backends give the exact same performance, so you can use OpenGL with AMD or Intel GPUs as well
- it's deterministic (the framerate is consistent during the whole run)
- you get the results much faster than by running the Dolphin benchmark
Download Dolphin 4.0-8074 dev. build from the official page, extract the .7z archive to a new folder, create an empty file named portable.txt in the same folder, start Dolphin and change these settings:
- Set the frame limiter to "OFF"
- Turn off "Scaled EFB copy"
- Enable "Borderless Fullscreen"
Leave everything else at default (e.g. OpenGL backend, 1xIR, Auto aspect ratio, no AA, 1xAF, etc.)
Start DKCR and when the title screen appears, press the connect/disconnect hotkey once (puts the input thread to sleep) and then wait for the first FMV to play.
Scoring
---------
* The mimimum spec PC capable of running Dolphin smoothly should get 61 FPS or higher in that demo FMV (video).
* For the demanding titles (e.g. TLS), you should have a CPU that scores 91 FPS or better.
* For running the most demanding titles (e.g. SWRL) at full speed, you need a high-end CPU that scores an impressive 145 (!) FPS or better.
Even better, the scores obtained by running this "benchmark" are proportional to the scores obtained with the Unofficial Dolphin Benchmark:
- A CPU that finished the UO Dolphin Benchmark in 9 minutes (9:00) should get about 60fps in this bench.
- A CPU that finished the UO Bench in 6 minutes should get about 90fps in this one.