[macos]newer dolphin versions not using cpu time

[labyrinth153]

Hi there, I would like to ask if there is some oddity with Dolphin not using as much cpu time as previous versions. I am well aware the new releases are more accurate and intensive and my computer is relatively weak. My confusion is that the older release of dolphin seems to make excellent use of multi-core stressing the computer to 170-200%. The newer versions (4.0 and on) have abysmal performance and use only a partial amount of one cpu core. I would assume that dolphin would strain my system to it's limit and then see low frame rates. In this case it is acting as if it isn't particularly intensive.

Is there a way for dolphin to use both of my cores? I am quite happy to continue to use speedy and buggy 3.5 but I would like to contribute to the new versions.

Hopefully screenshots are attached. I did extensive testing and research on this before posting.

[Craftyawesome]

If you have any power saving things in mac turn them off. You may have set only the old dolphin to have max performance.

[labyrinth153]

(10-02-2016, 12:07 PM)Craftyawesome Wrote: If you have any power saving things in mac turn them off. You may have set only the old dolphin to have max performance.

I have both programs set to stock settings. My mac is the 2014 mini, which has no relevant power settings as far as I know. I would guess that my computer doesn't have enough oomph except for the fact it is not even maxing out the one core. Intel power gadget shows they are indeed running at high cpu frequency (2.5ghz).

[leolam]

Have you tried resetting (completely deleting) your Dolphin settings?

Also, the CPU usage is not always relevant. If previous versions needed x% of CPU time to do something and new versions only need half of that, it doesn't mean new versions are slower or anything. In fact, 5.0 is much, much faster /and/ accurate than 3.5.

[labyrinth153]

I didn't mean slower, I meant much more intensive. I have an i5-4260U, which while it packs a good punch isn't high end by any means. I am assuming that my computer just can't run the new version. I was just wondering if the dual core optimizations were not working or required for some reason, because the version 3.5 of dolphin can even run wii games at near 60fps.

[mimimi]

Does it run slower now? Degasus made a great contribution on 4.0-xxxx, so the gpu thread didn't run a busy loop anymore and instead put the thread to sleep when waiting. It didn't impact performance, well on desktops it didn't. On notebooks with APUs, it is supposed to increase the performance, because of less power consumption and thermal throttling being triggered later.

[labyrinth153]

It's unplayable. I also have the problem where since it is running slower than 100% the sound is horrible. The old version can even play wii games at near 100%.

[mimimi]

(10-03-2016, 02:41 PM)labyrinth153 Wrote: It's unplayable. I also have the problem where since it is running slower than 100% the sound is horrible. The old version can even play wii games at near 100%.

Ah. So Dolphin went from 95% speed to something like 85% to 90% while also making audio worse, even when it runs at the same <100% speed as before?

For one the audio stretching feature was removed, because it breaks lots of games, at least if it's implemented the way it was implemented. I don't know when exactly it was removed.

The other thing is that there were lots of changes to improve the accuracy, at the cost of a bit of performance. I think this hits people with integrated gpus more than people with gaming gpus, because gaming gpus usually don't run under full load in Dolphin. So most people are not affected by half of the performance losses. Maybe you need to reduce the internal resolution(IR) more than you are already doing. If you play at lowest settings already, i fear there's nothing that can be done.

[JosJuice]

(10-03-2016, 07:00 PM)mimimi Wrote: For one the audio stretching feature was removed, because it breaks lots of games, at least if it's implemented the way it was implemented. I don't know when exactly it was removed.

What was removed was emulating the DSP at a speed that isn't proportional to the emulated CPU's speed. Doing audio stretching on the output of the DSP won't cause any problems, but it will sound noticeably worse than what you would get if the emulated DSP's speed matches the real-time speed.

[labyrinth153]

Actually it went from 95-99% on intensive wii games to 80% and mind grinding audio on well supported game cube games. I am not complaining I am just wondering if something isn't working right considering it doesn't even use up 100% of one core. I would assume if my computer was just too slow it would run at 100% of one core and then struggle. Not just run slow and have idle time. That is just me though. I will rule out os problems maybe run it in boot camp. Thanks for the replies thus far. I think I was right to maintain 3.5 on opensuse as long as I did.

I knew I would get snarky answers just for asking a question.