• Login
  • Register
  • Dolphin Forums
  • Home
  • FAQ
  • Download
  • Wiki
  • Code


Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums › Dolphin Emulator Discussion and Support › Support v
« Previous 1 ... 505 506 507 508 509 ... 1189 Next »

New to Dolphin, is stuttering normal?
View New Posts | View Today's Posts

Pages (2): 1 2 Next »
Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Thread Modes
New to Dolphin, is stuttering normal?
01-02-2015, 12:18 AM
#1
BuckoA51 Offline
Junior Member
**
Posts: 7
Threads: 1
Joined: Jan 2015
So I was lucky enough to be able to build a new PC this Christmas Big Grin My specs are as follows:-

Asus Z97-A motherboard
16GB RAM
Intel Core i7 4790K 4ghz
Nvidia Gforce GTX 770 (just the one)
Windows 8.1 Pro

All in all a nice PC with a very good CPU I think. One of the things I wanted to do was see how Dolphin ran, as I'd heard that on faster computers you can actually play some games almost perfectly. However, every single game I've tried suffers from stuttering. The stuttering is basically random as far as I can see. I'll be playing the game at full speed and it will just pause completely for a split second then resume. It makes playing platform games really difficult, for instance.

I wondered if the problem was a bad driver. Not so long ago I had a PC that stuttered on video that was caused by a driver taking too long in an interrupt so I checked using the LatencyMon test (which measures DPC and ISR execution time) and it says "Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts". Not that then.

Here are the games I have tried:-

Kirby's Return to Dream Land (EU)
Geometery Wars Galaxies (EU) (On the title screen you can see the spinning galaxy stutter occasionally)
Sonic Colours (US)
F-Zero (US - this dropped to 40fps on some tracks but I'm told that's to be expected, the stuttering thing happened on all tracks though)

I've tried Dolphin 4.0.2 and 4.0-4875 same problem on both. Tried V-Sync on and off, DirectX11 and OpenGL.

There does not appear to be stuttering in other games and programs that I've so far tried.

So is this problem normal and maybe I'm just expecting too much of the emulator or is something else wrong?

Thanks in advance for any advice!
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 01:58 AM
#2
Scimoxis
Unregistered
 
Some games work, some games don't. Stuttering is normal in some games.
Reply
01-02-2015, 02:04 AM
#3
JMC47 Offline
Content Producer
*******
Content Creators (Moderators)
Posts: 6,542
Threads: 29
Joined: Feb 2013
The stuttering, if it's shader-cache problems, will slowly go away the more you play games. We have to compile/cache shaders the first time around, and GPUs are slow enough at this task that it causes Dolphin to lag during the compilation. After they are compiled though, Dolphin already has them compiled and can just load them, which means there isn't a stutter a second time shaders are used and so on.
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 02:42 AM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2015, 02:44 AM by BuckoA51.)
#4
BuckoA51 Offline
Junior Member
**
Posts: 7
Threads: 1
Joined: Jan 2015
OK thank you, exactly how long should I play for before I can be confident that this isn't the aforementioned shader cache problem? I did play the same opening level on Sonic a few times and there were stutters in different places each time.
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 04:43 AM
#5
JMC47 Offline
Content Producer
*******
Content Creators (Moderators)
Posts: 6,542
Threads: 29
Joined: Feb 2013
If the shader cache is working right, it should only need one playthrough before pretty much everything is generated.
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 05:53 AM
#6
BuckoA51 Offline
Junior Member
**
Posts: 7
Threads: 1
Joined: Jan 2015
(01-02-2015, 04:43 AM)JMC47 Wrote: If the shader cache is working right, it should only need one playthrough before pretty much everything is generated.

Hmm, so having played through the level two or three times, it's not that then?

Anyone any other ideas Huh
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 06:11 AM
#7
KHg8m3r Offline
Doesn't sleep, just Dolphin and Robots
*******
Posts: 5,914
Threads: 4
Joined: Sep 2013
Make sure under windows power options you're in high performance mode, and in the Nvidia control panel you have a profile set for dolphin and that it is on prefer maximum performance.
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 06:11 AM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2015, 06:13 AM by relic1882.)
#8
relic1882 Offline
Junior Member
**
Posts: 25
Threads: 6
Joined: Jul 2014
I had a bad stuttering problem with my PC when I built it too. Make sure you go to Nvidia's control panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Global Settings -> Power management and set it to maximum performance. I too have a great system and that setting was required or I'd be stuttering and chopping constantly.

KHg8m3r you beat me by seconds!
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 06:22 AM
#9
KHg8m3r Offline
Doesn't sleep, just Dolphin and Robots
*******
Posts: 5,914
Threads: 4
Joined: Sep 2013
I'm the master ninja :p
Find
Reply
01-02-2015, 06:51 AM
#10
Aleron Ives Offline
Senior Member
****
Posts: 662
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2014
(01-02-2015, 02:04 AM)JMC47 Wrote: The stuttering, if it's shader-cache problems, will slowly go away the more you play games.  We have to compile/cache shaders the first time around, and GPUs are slow enough at this task that it causes Dolphin to lag during the compilation.  After they are compiled though, Dolphin already has them compiled and can just load them, which means there isn't a stutter a second time shaders are used and so on.

This gets mentioned a lot, which makes me curious to know how this differs from what a real GC/Wii would do. Does the real hardware not need a shader cache, or is it fast enough to generate one in real time? The real hardware obviously doesn't have slowdown problems the first time you play a game, so I'm curious why Dolphin behaves this way.
Find
Reply
« Next Oldest | Next Newest »
Pages (2): 1 2 Next »


  • View a Printable Version
  • Subscribe to this thread
Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)



Powered By MyBB | Theme by Fragma

Linear Mode
Threaded Mode