MSI GX60 3AE-212FR

[mouch]

Hi there,


I'm new with Dolphin.
I wish I could play to my favorite Gamecube games like The Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask (wait, I only played with Zelda games??) and Mario Kart Double Dash (no ).

I bought a new PC one year ago with a configuration set up to run actual (actual from last year thus) PC games with high quality of details. I played to Skyrim, Borderlands and Hitman with high details without issues (medium for Hitman btw).

I heard from some specialized forum this laptop has one default : its processor. It is actually bounding the GPU capacity...
Too bad, I read here the Dolphin emulator use essentially the processor :/


Here is the config (the laptop I bougth last year)
http://www.materiel.net/ordinateur-portable/msi-gx60-3ae-212fr-hitman-edition-89143.html


I just tried to launch "The Wind Waker" but its not running in a way I could enjoy the game (the FPS came low sometimes in spite of my low details settings) !



Can you help me a bit to understand that ? I have to confess, I did not understand everythings in the available settings... There are so many choices depending on specific configuration ! I need some start points to understand that.
Is my laptop really so bad at running GC games ??
Do I have to overclock my laptop ? I never did that before, is it safe even for a laptop ?


Thanks a lot for your help, and thanks for ceating such a great tool

[Anti-Ultimate]

Seems you're getting either CPU bottlenecked or Dolphin is using the integrated graphics. Assign Dolphin to high-performance in Catayst Control Center.

[KHg8m3r]

The Ax series APU chips don't have great per-core speeds compared to Intel i5/i7 3rd or 4th gen CPUs.
If what Anti-Ultimate suggested doesn't work, you're getting a CPU bottleneck.

[mouch]

Well. It seems that Dolphin actually uses the integrated graphics...


By the way, I tried to install GPU Z to check it but I can't. I am stucked on that display


And, I also tried to install Catalyst Control Center, but I can't see any option to configure my graphic card. I guess I downloaded the wrong CCC ?



NB: Note that I bought this laptop with Windows 8 installed and 2 weeks later, I removed it to install Win7 x64. I got some trouble with my drivers there...

[KHg8m3r]

Under preferences, look for an advanced view option to get the full control center setup
Try just the .zip version of GPU-Z, not the installer version

[admin89]

A10 5xxxM iGPU (integrated GPU) is pretty good for dolphin afaik , it's faster than Intel HD 4600 . He won't get more speed by switching GPU unless he uses high internal resolution such as 3xIR (higher than 1080p) or higher . However , A10 5xxxM CPU is low-end . It's slower than most modern dual core i3 even though it's quad core (Well , it's not a true quad core btw) and it's extreme bad at single threaded performance which Dolphin requires
Use CPUZ to check CPU clock speed when Dolphin running . If it run at stock speed instead of turbo core , try to force your battery settings at high performance . Still not work ? There is nothing you can do , AMD Trinity / Rickland mobile CPU are locked to the core
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-laptop-performance-guide

[mouch]

I ran the executable in the zip folder downloaded from techpowerup. I thought it was an installer. However, it still doesn't work!
And I can't figure out any option to manage my graphic card settings in the CCC.

I got this with CPU Z


Note that in the graphic tab, only the integrated GPU is recognize (maybe its normal since we are investigating on the CPU?)


Thanks for your help!

[admin89]

Your laptop did its best . You're using LLE backend which is very demanding on CPU side ! CPU bottleneck for sure , this has nothing to do with your GPU since Zelda WW is a light-weight game .
There is no way you can make the game run full speed with LLE backend unless you have a very powerful rig (i5 4670k + Z87 mobo ) or a Haswell gaming laptop (prefer : i7 4700MQ or better CPU)

If you want more speed then go back to your audio settings and choose HLE instead

[mouch]

So, finally, I was able to run GPU Z (after waiting like 15 minutes on the previous screen).


But from here, I cant choose my AMD Radeon 7970M. The soft become very slow and not responds...

[mouch]

Here it is! I finally decided to uninstall every AMD drivers and downloaded the last Catalyst version.
I now have a Catalyst Control Center.


From here I added High Performance to the Dolphin executable but still, the 7970M doesn't appear in the Dolphin Adaptater configuration

Admin89, I heard what you said but still, for the moment, my graphic card is not working properly and I wish I could repair this before insulting my CPU :]