New PC - having trouble

[pdog128]

Hey guys, I just bought a new PC and decided to try out Dolphin. I've heard (and seen) very good things and would like to get it up and running. The computer is by no means a gaming computer, but I thought I'd try it out and see what happened.

The specs are:

Windows 8.1
Intel i5-4460s (2.9 GHz)
8 GB RAM
Radeon R7 250 (1 GB)

The only game I've tried so far (really the only one I really interested in) is Xenoblade. As I understand it, it's a bit quirky? It seems like when I first installed everything and booted it up, it seemed to run fine. I tried tweaking the setting and now it stutters and the FPS dips down into the single digits. I uninstalled/reinstalled and am still having issues.

Is my system just not powerful enough to run it?

Thanks for any help!

[KHg8m3r]

Delete the dolphin folder saved under my documents, see if that helps.

[pdog128]

(12-18-2014, 03:51 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: Delete the dolphin folder saved under my documents, see if that helps.

Well, that helped but it's still pretty unplayable. FPS is still dipping into the single digits.

I tried using just the onboard video (Intel Graphics 4600) and while it didn't help, it didn't get drastically worse either. Does this just mean that the Radeon R7 250 isn't that effective of a video card? I suppose my setup just isn't going to cut it.

I dunno. I've set the settings down as far as they can go. I don't have another game to try yet; I'll have to rip something tonight to have something to compare against I suppose.

Any other ideas?

[pdog128]

Ok, I downloaded 4.04699 and tried it; much better! I can actually play it now. I'm ecstatic.

BUT it didn't fix all the problems. I still have slow down in Xenoblade, particularly in battles. I usually hit 30fps just running around, but it drops into the teens when I go into battle. Again, it seems like the settings don't have a lot to do with it; it runs better when set at the minimum, but not spectacularly so. And I can't really tell a difference from medium settings to high settings.

Is it just a limitation of the i5 @ 2.9 GHz? Just looking at Task Manager, it never seems like the processor is maxed out.

[AnyOldName3]

A 4460 should be able to handle most games at 2.9 GHz. The reason it won't be shown as maxed out is that Dolphin only emulates two chips, so can only split its workload across two threads, whereas that's a quad core, so has four threads.

[KHg8m3r]

The 4460s has a max turbo of 3.4 Ghz, so maybe you aren't hitting that. Make sure under windows power options you're set to high performance

[pdog128]

(12-19-2014, 02:55 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: The 4460s has a max turbo of 3.4 Ghz, so maybe you aren't hitting that. Make sure under windows power options you're set to high performance

D'oh, the power setting was on power saver. I never would have thought to look. Thanks guys, smooth as butter now!

[KHg8m3r]

Yeah, it's on of those things that we've seen too many times to count