MKW Stuttering

unknown394 · 09-26-2018, 11:39 AM #1

So I made a similar post on this a while back, but now it seems like the issue is different than what I've previously described.

This stuttering is probably not caused by shader compilation--at least from what I've seen I don't think so. I've played MKW for 2 years and I've ran through every track for about thirty thousand times. As expected, the shaders are well written and there are no stutters during the race.

However, every time when at the beginning of the third lap on a race, when the third lap warning music plays, the game stutters. The stutter can be long or short. Short ones can be half a second, and long ones can be two seconds. This is especially frustrating during online play, since it causes lag.

Now, I've crossed the starting/finish line on every course for thirty thousand times, so it doesn't make logical sense that this stutter is caused by shader compilation. Also, this stutter occurs randomly and frequently, but the place and situation when it occurs is consistent--always at the start of lap 3. Is it audio related, since the same sound plays at the beginning of the third lap of every race? I might be totally wrong, but that's just a guess.

My hardware is not the best but good enough; MKW runs at 130FPS on racetracks at unlimited framerate.

Ubershaders is on.

A solution will be deeply appreciated! Smile

Config Files:

Code:

[General]

ShowLag = False

ShowFrameCount = False

ISOPaths = 1

ISOPath0 = D:\Games\Wii

RecursiveISOPaths = False

NANDRootPath = //not shown

DumpPath = 

WirelessMac = 00:17:ab:8e:4f:31

WiiSDCardPath = //not shown

UseGameCovers = False

UseDiscordPresence = True

[Interface]

ConfirmStop = False

UsePanicHandlers = True

OnScreenDisplayMessages = False

HideCursor = False

MainWindowPosX = 191

MainWindowPosY = 117

MainWindowWidth = 1141

MainWindowHeight = 821

LanguageCode = 

ShowToolbar = True

ShowStatusbar = True

ShowLogWindow = False

ShowLogConfigWindow = False

ExtendedFPSInfo = False

ShowActiveTitle = True

UseBuiltinTitleDatabase = True

ShowDevelopmentWarning = True

ThemeName = Clean

PauseOnFocusLost = False

DisableTooltips = False

DebugModeEnabled = False

[Display]

FullscreenDisplayRes = Auto

Fullscreen = False

RenderToMain = False

RenderWindowXPos = 395

RenderWindowYPos = 11

RenderWindowWidth = 1318

RenderWindowHeight = 920

RenderWindowAutoSize = False

KeepWindowOnTop = False

DisableScreenSaver = True

[GameList]

ListDrives = False

ListWad = True

ListElfDol = True

ListWii = True

ListGC = True

ListJap = True

ListPal = True

ListUsa = True

ListAustralia = True

ListFrance = True

ListGermany = True

ListItaly = True

ListKorea = True

ListNetherlands = True

ListRussia = True

ListSpain = True

ListTaiwan = True

ListWorld = True

ListUnknown = True

ListSort = 3

ListSortSecondary = -4

ColumnPlatform = True

ColumnBanner = True

ColumnDescription = False

ColumnTitle = True

ColumnNotes = True

ColumnFileName = False

ColumnID = False

ColumnRegion = True

ColumnSize = True

ColumnState = True

[Core]

SkipIPL = True

TimingVariance = 40

CPUCore = 1

Fastmem = True

CPUThread = True

DSPHLE = True

SyncOnSkipIdle = True

SyncGPU = True

SyncGpuMaxDistance = 200000

SyncGpuMinDistance = -200000

SyncGpuOverclock = 1.00000000

FPRF = False

AccurateNaNs = False

DefaultISO = D:/Games/Wii/MKW.wbfs

EnableCheats = True

SelectedLanguage = 0

OverrideGCLang = False

DPL2Decoder = False

AudioLatency = 0

AudioStretch = False

AudioStretchMaxLatency = 300

MemcardAPath = //not shown

MemcardBPath = //not shown

AgpCartAPath = 

AgpCartBPath = 

SlotA = 1

SlotB = 255

SerialPort1 = 255

BBA_MAC = 

SIDevice0 = 6

AdapterRumble0 = True

SimulateKonga0 = False

SIDevice1 = 6

AdapterRumble1 = True

SimulateKonga1 = False

SIDevice2 = 6

AdapterRumble2 = True

SimulateKonga2 = False

SIDevice3 = 0

AdapterRumble3 = True

SimulateKonga3 = False

WiiSDCard = True

WiiKeyboard = False

WiimoteContinuousScanning = True

WiimoteEnableSpeaker = False

RunCompareServer = False

RunCompareClient = False

EmulationSpeed = 1.00000000

FrameSkip = 0x00000000

Overclock = 1.00000000

OverclockEnable = False

GFXBackend = D3D

GPUDeterminismMode = auto

PerfMapDir = 

EnableCustomRTC = False

CustomRTCValue = 0x386d4380

EnableSignatureChecks = True

JITFollowBranch = True

[Movie]

PauseMovie = False

Author = 

DumpFrames = False

DumpFramesSilent = False

ShowInputDisplay = False

ShowRTC = False

[DSP]

EnableJIT = False

DumpAudio = False

DumpAudioSilent = False

DumpUCode = False

Backend = XAudio2

Volume = 15

CaptureLog = False

WASAPIDevice = 

[Input]

BackgroundInput = False

[FifoPlayer]

LoopReplay = True

[Analytics]

ID = ceccb1745d3c6ac789ee55c04cdb729b

Enabled = False

PermissionAsked = True

[Network]

SSLDumpRead = False

SSLDumpWrite = False

SSLVerifyCertificates = True

SSLDumpRootCA = False

SSLDumpPeerCert = False

[BluetoothPassthrough]

Enabled = False

VID = -1

PID = -1

LinkKeys = 

[USBPassthrough]

Devices = 

[AutoUpdate]

TrackForTesting = 

HashOverride = 

UpdateTrack = 

[NetPlay]

TraversalChoice = direct

Code:

[Hardware]

VSync = False

Adapter = 0

[Settings]

AspectRatio = 0

Crop = False

wideScreenHack = False

UseXFB = False

UseRealXFB = False

SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 128

ShowFPS = False

LogRenderTimeToFile = False

OverlayStats = False

OverlayProjStats = False

DumpTextures = False

HiresTextures = False

ConvertHiresTextures = False

CacheHiresTextures = False

DumpEFBTarget = False

FreeLook = False

UseFFV1 = False

EnablePixelLighting = False

FastDepthCalc = True

MSAA = 0x00000001

SSAA = False

EFBScale = 4

TexFmtOverlayEnable = False

TexFmtOverlayCenter = False

Wireframe = False

DisableFog = True

EnableShaderDebugging = False

BorderlessFullscreen = False

SWZComploc = True

SWZFreeze = True

SWDumpObjects = False

SWDumpTevStages = False

SWDumpTevTexFetches = False

SWDrawStart = 0

SWDrawEnd = 100000

ShowNetPlayPing = False

ShowNetPlayMessages = False

DumpFramesAsImages = False

DumpFormat = avi

DumpCodec = 

DumpPath = 

BitrateKbps = 2500

InternalResolutionFrameDumps = False

EnableGPUTextureDecoding = False

EnableValidationLayer = False

BackendMultithreading = True

CommandBufferExecuteInterval = 100

ShaderCache = True

InternalResolution = 1

BackgroundShaderCompiling = False

DisableSpecializedShaders = False

WaitForShadersBeforeStarting = False

ShaderCompilationMode = 1

[Enhancements]

ForceFiltering = False

MaxAnisotropy = 0

PostProcessingShader = (off)

ForceTrueColor = True

DisableCopyFilter = True

ArbitraryMipmapDetection = True

[Stereoscopy]

StereoMode = 0

StereoDepth = 20

StereoConvergencePercentage = 100

StereoSwapEyes = False

[Hacks]

EFBAccessEnable = False

BBoxEnable = False

ForceProgressive = True

EFBToTextureEnable = True

EFBScaledCopy = False

EFBEmulateFormatChanges = False

BBoxPreferStencilImplementation = False

VertexRounding = False

XFBToTextureEnable = True

DisableCopyToVRAM = False

**JonnyH** · 09-26-2018, 03:22 PM #2

Do you use cheats? Try disabling that - there's a known issue right now where the cheat handling can cause stutter. It might be that?

**JMC47** · 09-26-2018, 04:22 PM #3

The stutter could be disc loading times - if you're on a bad harddrive/network drive.

unknown394 · 09-26-2018, 09:36 PM #4

(09-26-2018, 03:22 PM)JonnyH Wrote: Do you use cheats? Try disabling that - there's a known issue right now where the cheat handling can cause stutter. It might be that?

I do use cheats (change characters between races) but that's a suggestion I've already seen in the previous post. Disabling and enabling cheats doesn't seem to make a difference.

unknown394 · 09-26-2018, 09:39 PM #5

(09-26-2018, 04:22 PM)JMC47 Wrote: The stutter could be disc loading times - if you're on a bad harddrive/network drive.

First, shouldn't load times only affect the actual load times, like how long it takes the level to load, and not how the actual level plays? Also I have a SSD drive and it takes my computer 10s or so to boot up. I don't know if that's considered bad.

**JosJuice** · 09-26-2018, 09:44 PM #6

(09-26-2018, 09:39 PM)unknown394 Wrote: First, shouldn't load times only affect the actual load times, like how long it takes the level to load, and not how the actual level plays?

The speed of your HDD/SDD can in some cases affect Dolphin's performance when the game loads data, but it doesn't affect how long it takes for the game to load data in emulated time. I'm not sure exactly how Mario Kart Wii works, but it's not too unlikely that it would load some data off the disc when the last lap starts.

Anyway, unless you have Speed Up Disk Transfer Rate enabled, the speed of your SSD is not at all likely to be the problem. If you have it enabled, I'd suggest turning it off.

unknown394 · (This post was last modified: 09-26-2018, 11:39 PM by unknown394.)

(09-26-2018, 09:44 PM)JosJuice Wrote: The speed of your HDD/SDD can in some cases affect Dolphin's performance when the game loads data, but it doesn't affect how long it takes for the game to load data in emulated time. I'm not sure exactly how Mario Kart Wii works, but it's not too unlikely that it would load some data off the disc when the last lap starts.

Anyway, unless you have Speed Up Disk Transfer Rate enabled, the speed of your SSD is not at all likely to be the problem. If you have it enabled, I'd suggest turning it off.

Hmmm, it just happens that I do have it enabled. I'll try turning it off. Thanks

Also, would you recommend enabling Synchronize GPU Thread?

unknown394 · (This post was last modified: 09-27-2018, 12:27 AM by unknown394.)

Well, I played a few races with Speed Up Disc Transfer Rate off, and it seems to exacerbate the problem instead Sad

**JMC47** · 09-28-2018, 04:27 AM #9

This sounds like your harddrive has a low power mode. I have a harddrive on my laptop that i absolutely cannot to stay powered on during Wii games, and turning off speed up disc transfer rate makes the pause worse.

unknown394 · 09-28-2018, 05:20 AM **#10**

(09-28-2018, 04:27 AM)JMC47 Wrote: This sounds like your harddrive has a low power mode. I have a harddrive on my laptop that i absolutely cannot to stay powered on during Wii games, and turning off speed up disc transfer rate makes the pause worse.

Does this have to do with read/write speed at all? Files copy/delete on my computer pretty quickly.