Major lag with all games. Is my PC ok to use?

[whiskey187]

Good morning. I am very glad that we have this forum and wanted to get help to find out if my hardware can run Dolphin correctly. I have tried all combinations suggested and still I have major lag with all games. I can play PC games fine without any noticeable lag.

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz Six Core (HDT90ZFBGRBOX)
Video Card: Sapphire R9 270 X 4GB
RAM: 12 GB

I am very surprised that the games have major lag because PC games seem to play fine such as Alien Isolation, Final Fantasy 14, The Evil Within, etc. When I try any game, the title screen is fine, but some minutes into the game the lag is really bad. The FPS is 20 or below that immediately. I have tried to defrag multiple times, tried Grimefighter, iolo system mechanic, and malwarebytes, spybot, super antispyware, avast antivirus, and avg free, but no viruses or spyware were found.

Please let me know what I can do to improve performance. Thanks.

[tueidj]

Imagine you had to have a conversation in a language you don't speak, using a phrasebook to understand what the other person was saying. Do you think you would be able to discuss things with the same efficiency as if you were speaking in your native language?

[whiskey187]

Imagine you had to have a conversation in a language you don't speak, using a phrasebook to understand what the other person was saying. Do you think you would be able to discuss things with the same efficiency as if you were speaking in your native language?

Good point. So, how do I fix it?

[MastterD]

Imagine you had to have a conversation in a language you don't speak, using a phrasebook to understand what the other person was saying. Do you think you would be able to discuss things with the same efficiency as if you were speaking in your native language?

Good point. So, how do I fix it?

You can't. Running emulators is far different from running PC games. When your computer runs PC games, it's running something that was programmed for it. When it runs games using an emulator, it has to translate something made in "console language" to "PC language". A lot of processing power is required. So, running PC games well doesn't mean that your computer runs Dolphin well.


Conclusion: emulators are very heavy on the CPU side and your CPU is not very good for Dolphin. Dolphin uses a maximum of two cores and stronger cores are best than having a lot of cores. The best CPUs for Dolphin are Intel. Processors like the Core i5-4670k are optimal for Dolphin.

[whiskey187]

Imagine you had to have a conversation in a language you don't speak, using a phrasebook to understand what the other person was saying. Do you think you would be able to discuss things with the same efficiency as if you were speaking in your native language?

Good point. So, how do I fix it?

You can't. Running emulators is far different from running PC games. When your computer runs PC games, it's running something that was programmed for it. When it runs games using an emulator, it has to translate something made in "console language" to "PC language". A lot of processing power is required. So, running PC games well doesn't mean that your computer runs Dolphin well.


Conclusion: emulators are very heavy on the CPU side and your CPU is not very good for Dolphin. Dolphin uses a maximum of two cores and stronger cores are best than having a lot of cores. The best CPUs for Dolphin are Intel. Processors like the Core i5-4670k are optimal for Dolphin.

Ok. Thank you. I am so happy to finally know what was causing the issue. I was thinking it was the hard drive or a virus.

[NKF98]

nope. not a virus.
randall munroe puts it well--

[tueidj]

There should be another circle that intersects both of those, labelled "Computer problems caused by anti-virus programs".

[admin89]

overclock your CPU if you want more fps
As stated above , even latest amd cpu also have poor single threaded performance . Therefore amd cpu won't perform as good as intel cpu in dolphin

[morgoth32]

Maybe your harddrive is a Western Digital Green ?
I bought a 4tb 2 months ago and the heads park after 8 secs of inactivity i have issues with dolphin and others applications.

DON'T BUY WD GREEN or use wdidle3 to resolve this !

[kirbypuff]

Your video card, OS and RAM are fine.

The CPU is a bit underpowered for Dolphin (relatively low single-threaded performance), but even that can be improved. A slight overclock should do the trick (you need at least 3.5 GHz clock speed for decent performance in Dolphin).

But the most important things for optimal performance are the version of Dolphin you're using and the graphics backend of choice.

Try this version, for example:
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

and select the Direct3D backend (runs a whole lot faster on AMD hardware)

.