Lag On Surface Book 2 Regardless Of Settings

[roderrooder]

Hey there, trying to play Xenoblade Chronicles on my SB2 15", specs:
i7 8650U
GTX 1060
16GB RAM

When trying the "stable" version (5.0) and running at native resolution (no FPS hacks or textures either) I get stutters, sometimes during busy moments, other times for seemingly no reason at all. What's strange is for 10-15 minutes at a time the game runs flawlessly... Laptop is plugged in and in performance mode, I have selected the GTX 1060 to be used in NVIDIA control panel, and witness no throttling when motoring hardware performance. In-fact, both my GPU and CPU are under 25% usage while Dolphin is running in game, I don't see any performance spikes or anything when I encounter lag, all temperatures are low.

After further testing this appears to be the case with the latest Dolphin version too and when upping the resolution (even by 4x) I'm in the same situation. Perfect performance for 10 minutes at a time, sometimes longer, then random lag spikes during abilities or for seemingly no reason at all, with insane lag every once in a while which leads to forced termination.

Any ideas? Would really appreciate some help...

PS: I've tried switching between OpenGl, Dx11, and Dx12 to no effect.

[Shonumi]

What's your actual CPU speed when Dolphin is running? Most of Intel's Ultra Low Voltage CPUs these days dynamically change their clock to fit the situation. Windows Task Manager will show you what's going on. If you see yourself dipping to the base frequency (1.9GHz) or around that number, the CPU is throttling, likely due to thermal limits. Temperatures might look low to you when monitoring it, but the CPU might decide otherwise, and Ultra Low Voltage CPUs tend to be conservative in that regard.

If everything is fine with the CPU's clock, and everything runs fine the GPU (e.g. running at 1x IR to eliminate the GPU as the source of the bottleneck), it sounds like shader compilation stutter. On 5.0, the more you play, the more shaders Dolphin will generate and store for a game, meaning stuttering is reduced (until more need to be generated anyway).

I'd highy advise you to upgrade to the latest Dolphin development builds. 5.0 is old and slow in comparison; there have literally been thousands of improvements since 5.0! We also have an option called uber shaders which for the most part get rid of shader stuttering (check out the Hybrid mode for starters). Read more about it here: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/07/30/ubershaders/

[KHg8m3r]

Just to clarify, when you say you're in performance mode, do you mean you have Windows Power Options at High Performance, and you have Nvidia Control Panel setup a profile for Dolphin to use maximum power?
Are you also running the latest GPU driver? For both your Nvidia GPU and Intel GPU? Link for Intel cause their website is a little hard to navigate. You may need to force it to install, and you should, because there's no reason to not be running stock Intel Drivers.

[roderrooder]

My CPU looks to stay above 3ghz when just the emulator is running, it starts jumping around as soon as I start doing anything else though. I know that on most PCs you can tell the CPU to stay at max possible clock but I'm not seeing that in the settings on my SB2.

I've been running the latest build for a bit now, I'll check out hybrid mode.

When I say performance mode I mean high performance, as far as I can tell the only thing that dictates this on the SB2 is a slider on the battery icon, "balanced" is the only option in control panel. With my current settings I can run Monster Hunter World 1080p at a constant 60FPS so I don't think there is anything funny going on. I have the latest GPU driver but I didn't think to update my iGPU, also I don't see a place in NVIDIA control panel to setup a "custom profile", only thing I did in NVIDIA control panel was dictate that dolphin use the 1060 and not the iGPU.

Thanks for the replies, I'll do a few things suggested and see if anything fixes!

[DJBarry004]

(10-15-2018, 08:13 AM)roderrooder Wrote: My CPU looks to stay above 3ghz when just the emulator is running, it starts jumping around as soon as I start doing anything else though. I know that on most PCs you can tell the CPU to stay at max possible clock but I'm not seeing that in the settings on my SB2.

I've been running the latest build for a bit now, I'll check out hybrid mode.

When I say performance mode I mean high performance, as far as I can tell the only thing that dictates this on the SB2 is a slider on the battery icon, "balanced" is the only option in control panel. With my current settings I can run Monster Hunter World 1080p at a constant 60FPS so I don't think there is anything funny going on. I have the latest GPU driver but I didn't think to update my iGPU, also I don't see a place in NVIDIA control panel to setup a "custom profile", only thing I did in NVIDIA control panel was dictate that dolphin use the 1060 and not the iGPU.

Thanks for the replies, I'll do a few things suggested and see if anything fixes!

Too bad Dolphin requires a lot more CPU power than most (if not any) existing PC game...

[roderrooder]

Updated all my drivers, but can't seem to find the "Ubershader" option, articles and photos would suggest it's under "Enhancements" but it's not... I'm running 5.0-8905.

[DJBarry004]

It´s not there. It´s in the General tab.

[roderrooder]

(10-15-2018, 09:24 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: It´s not there. It´s in the General tab.

Thank you thank you.

[roderrooder]

Clean installed my GPU / iGPU drivers, updated to 5.0-8905 and enabled ubershaders.

GPU usage has gone from about 20% to 50%, iGPU usage below 10%, CPU clock over 3.0 (and low usage) but still getting the same stutters / drops

However, now when I have stutters / drops it reflects in task manager, before I wouldn't even see performance spikes.

Not sure what to do.