Optimal settings!

[retrogamer42]

Just to give an idea the types of games I'll be running will mainly be like Mario (galaxy/sunshine/part), Zelda (GC & Wii), Luigi's Mansion, and WWE (GC games)

Just wanted to get the optimal settings! I did my best to try and fill out the PC information, but I'm also gonna give you guys some of the places where it gives me options on what to choose

Backend
-Direct 3D9 (deprecated)
-Direct3D11
-Open GL
-Software Renderer

Adapter
-Intel® HD Graphics 4000
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M

So those seem to be the two settings that relate to things from my PC. Other than that I just need to know what to set things to in Dolphin for optimal performance on my PC based on my settings. Unless default is actually the way to go.


Operating System: Windows 8 x64
Processor/CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3520M CPU @ 2.90GHz, 2901 Mhz, 2 Core(s
Video Card/GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M
Memory/RAM: 8 GB DDR3
Dolphin Revision Currently Using: 4.0.2 x64

Also, if it's any indicator, I just tried to play WWE Day of Reckoning 2 with OpenGL and NVIDIA GeFORCE GT 630M as the two settings above, and when wrestlers were doing their entrance the frame rate dropped to 30 FPS, or 50% of what it should be.



I also seem to be having some weird settings problems. Sometimes when I select OpenGL pluggin, it doesn't let me select the NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M, only the Intel 4000. On Direct3D9 I haven't seem to be able to select the NVIDIA card at all! And when I try to start Direct3D11 but it crashes. I'm looking into that issue now.

Update: I went into my NVIDIA control panel and set Dolphin to high performance. It now allows me to set Backend to Direct 3D9 (deprecated) and my Adapter to NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M; however... this is actually making the game run slower. The intro and stuff were running at 100% at first, they only run at 50%.

Update 2: Okay this is really annoying, I can be in Dolphin, open Graphics Configuration, and it will be set to NVIDIA. I'll hit X, open it again, and it magically changes itself to Intel. It's likely randomly changing itself!

Don't know if these help

[admin89]

Do not select Nvidia GPU via Dolphin Configuration ! Leave that option as default (Intel HD)
All you have to do is add Dolphin to "High performance Nvidia GPU" via Nvidia Control Panell
However , the dedicated GPU also need a lot of power to run and it will increase heat output . Since your laptop is a multi-media one , ( both GPU and CPU use the same heat pipe ) , your laptop will run really hot and will end up with overheating after 5 mins of gaming . As a result , both GPU and CPU will throttle -> lower performance
A GT 630M power consumption is almost the same level as i7 3520M (35W) . By enabling dedicated GPU , your laptop will run 1.5->2x hotter than using integrated GPU
Take time and read this guide :
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

[retrogamer42]

(01-26-2014, 04:13 AM)admin89 Wrote: Do not select Nvidia GPU via Dolphin Configuration ! Leave that option as default (Intel HD)
All you have to do is add Dolphin to "High performance Nvidia GPU" via Nvidia Control Panell
However , the dedicated GPU also need a lot of power to run and it will increase heat output . Since your laptop is a multi-media one , ( both GPU and CPU use the same heat pipe ) , your laptop will run really hot and will end up with overheating after 5 mins of gaming . As a result , both GPU and CPU will throttle -> lower performance
A GT 630M power consumption is almost the same level as i7 3520M (35W) . By enabling dedicated GPU , your laptop will run 1.5->2x hotter than using integrated GPU
Take time and read this guide :
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

Okay first of all, thank you, I'll explain what I did, and the results I got.

-I went into Power Options and checked off the High Performance box.
-Went to my NVIDIA card and set Power Management to Prefer Maximum performance
-Went to Intel options, set 3D slide to performance, Anisotropic Filter to 16x and Vertical Sync to Application Settings

There was a definite improvement. The game went 100% FPS, until the entrance started. Once the entrance started, it still was a major improvement, but it was still dropping between 70-80% before going back up to 100%.

Now I downloaded throttlestop 6.0 but admittedly I don't know what it is, and I'm worried about messing with it unless I know what to do.

Is there any more recommended changes I could make in Dolphin or with that throttlestop program to improve the performance even more?


Also, I just tried running Luigi's Mansion and I gotta admit I'm pretty impressed. I got to the training part sucking up ghosts, and even when using the ghost vacum sucking up multiple ghost the FPS are not dropping. However there appears to be some distortion in the audio. Is that fixable?

[pauldacheez]

FYI, you're gonna have a hard time running Super Mario Galaxy (especially with DSP LLE), Zelda: Twilight Princess, or any of the WWE games at full speed. I'd recommend a box with an overclocked i5-4670K for those.

Aside from that, use OpenGL with "Vertex Streaming Hack" checked or use OpenGL on a current development build – either one's fine and should provide a decent speedup.

[retrogamer42]

(01-26-2014, 04:38 AM)pauldacheez Wrote: FYI, you're gonna have a hard time running Super Mario Galaxy (especially with DSP LLE), Zelda: Twilight Princess, or any of the WWE games at full speed. I'd recommend a box with an overclocked i5-4670K for those.

Aside from that, use OpenGL with "Vertex Streaming Hack" checked or use OpenGL on a current development build – either one's fine and should provide a decent speedup.

WWE runs at 100%, except when doing an entrance, at times during a wrestler entrance is drops down betwen 80-90%

I tried playing Luigi's Mansion up to the training part where you suck up multiple ghosts and it ran 100% the whole way


You may have solved the issue. I selected Vertex hack and got through both wrestlers entrances with 100% FPS and haven't dropped yet throughout the match!

Should that be good with other games too?

[pauldacheez]

I don't know why you decided to PM me, but the forum complains that you have them disabled when I try to reply, so you might want to fix that. For now I'll just reply publicly.

retrogamer42 Wrote:Hey I tried the vertex hack, and it seems to have worked!

I got through both wrestler entrances at 100% FPS (except for a split second where it dropped to 71%, but immediately went back up to 100% and remained there)

Will that hack work with other games as well? And is keeping OpenGL the best option? What about frameskips, vsync, disable fog etc... just trying to get anything I can to optimize the performance even a little.

I just hope I'm not getting overly excited. Like I said, before even applying the vertex hack I played Luigi's Mansion up to the training part where you suck up multiple ghosts (thinking multiple sprites would drop FPS) but it didn't it stayed 100% all the way. It just seems like this will really work.

Vertex Streaming Hack is pretty much a free speedup for all games. It doesn't cause any issues as far as I know, and it's one of the few things in the Hacks tab that doesn't specifically skip some step in the GPU emulation – it's only labeled as a hack because, from what I understand, it was designed to specifically avoid making the Nvidia drivers do anything that can't be done asynchronously, and thus it doesn't provide any speedup on other drivers and may even stop working on future Nvidia drivers.

OpenGL is commonly considered the best graphics backend in Dolphin, and for good reason. D3D9's been removed, and D3D (née D3D11) is almost invariably slower than OpenGL.

I wouldn't recommend touching too many other things in the Hacks tab, but feel free to turn up the enhancements – those are entirely GPU-bound, and you can turn them down without causing any bugs if they slow things down. Game speed is mainly dictated by CPU speed anyway, your GPU only needs to keep up with it.

Frameskip is only useful if your GPU is particularly awful, vsync always lowers framerate, and disabling fog is just there if you think the fog's ugly – it doesn't increase performance at all. Use the latter two only to make things look better, and avoid frameskip entirely.

[retrogamer42]

(01-26-2014, 05:41 AM)pauldacheez Wrote: I don't know why you decided to PM me, but the forum complains that you have them disabled when I try to reply, so you might want to fix that. For now I'll just reply publicly.

retrogamer42 Wrote:Hey I tried the vertex hack, and it seems to have worked!

I got through both wrestler entrances at 100% FPS (except for a split second where it dropped to 71%, but immediately went back up to 100% and remained there)

Will that hack work with other games as well? And is keeping OpenGL the best option? What about frameskips, vsync, disable fog etc... just trying to get anything I can to optimize the performance even a little.

I just hope I'm not getting overly excited. Like I said, before even applying the vertex hack I played Luigi's Mansion up to the training part where you suck up multiple ghosts (thinking multiple sprites would drop FPS) but it didn't it stayed 100% all the way. It just seems like this will really work.

Vertex Streaming Hack is pretty much a free speedup for all games. It doesn't cause any issues as far as I know, and it's one of the few things in the Hacks tab that doesn't specifically skip some step in the GPU emulation – it's only labeled as a hack because, from what I understand, it was designed to specifically avoid making the Nvidia drivers do anything that can't be done asynchronously, and thus it doesn't provide any speedup on other drivers and may even stop working on future Nvidia drivers.

OpenGL is commonly considered the best graphics backend in Dolphin, and for good reason. D3D9's been removed, and D3D (née D3D11) is almost invariably slower than OpenGL.

I wouldn't recommend touching too many other things in the Hacks tab, but feel free to turn up the enhancements – those are entirely GPU-bound, and you can turn them down without causing any bugs if they slow things down. Game speed is mainly dictated by CPU speed anyway, your GPU only needs to keep up with it.

Frameskip is only useful if your GPU is particularly awful, vsync always lowers framerate, and disabling fog is just there if you think the fog's ugly – it doesn't increase performance at all. Use the latter two only to make things look better, and avoid frameskip entirely.

Understood.

I just tried Sonic Colors, and that seem to go find through the intro, but once the game started it dropped into the 70% FPS frame. Is there anything I can do to help boost that, or do I pretty much just have to accept the limitations that I likely won't be able to play wii games?

[pauldacheez]

Yeah, not every game's gonna run at full speed unless you start upgrading hardware. If you do, I'd go straight for a desktop with an i5-4670K, preferably self-built so you can overclock it.

Also, Wii games don't necessarily run any slower than GameCube games, that's a common misconception. It depends mostly on the game itself, really.