OS X Retina Display and Full Screen Resolution Tinkering

[bushidounohana]

Recently acquired the latest 13" Retina MacBook Pro and have loaded up Dolphin 4.0-566. Before anyone starts flaming me for performance expectations/results, I'm well aware that this laptop's integrated Iris GPU isn't what anyone would call overly impressive. I have a modest gaming rig for that sort of thing, this is just Dolphin on the go.

THAT SAID--I notice that when I change my desktop resolution in OS X's Display preferences (I usually like to roll at 1680x1050) to 1280x800, that I can play any of my desired games at acceptable levels (again, I'm not here to debate the relative strength/weakness of the GPU).

Makes sense, no? Drop the resolution, gain a little performance. I buy it. And the FPS meter backs me up in my testing. But since I like to roll a little higher res in regular life, it's inconvenient to peel back the resolution just for Dolphin and then switch back for regular life again.

This got me to thinking about tweaking the full screen resolution in the ini file, and I found the value "FullscreenResolution = Automatic" under "[Display]". I've attempted to tweak around with the resolution in the file, though it doesn't seem to mirror the performance gains (or losses) based upon actual desktop resolution switching in OS X. That is to say, if I set the "FullscreenResolution=1280x800" in the ini file, I don't seem to enjoy the performance benefits of actually setting the resolution to 1280x800 in Display Preferences.

Anybody have any experience/suggestions with this? This probably isn't the appropriate venue for feature requests, but I'd sort of love it if I could set the full screen resolution within Dolphin.

[bushidounohana]

I should probably note that I'm running Dolphin in "Low Resolution Mode" (Right click on the app, Get Info, then you can tick the box there) in order to get it to mirror the desktop resolution. And I'm working within OS X Mavericks rather than Windows.

[pauldacheez]

Uncheck "Low-Resolution Mode" and control the rendering resolution via the "Internal Resolution" dropdown – 1.5x IR or 2x IR should be optimal, though you'll probably want to adjust that as you see fit.

Dolphin is Retina-aware, so max output resolution is equal to your display's actual resolution. The "FullscreenResolution" parameter isn't actually used on OS X since it doesn't use an exclusive (e.g. changes the display res and is impossible to switch out of) fullscreen mode.

[bushidounohana]

Thank you for your response, pauldacheez!

I've actually found that performance is *significantly* better when running in Low Resolution mode, which of course stands to reason as Dolphin is rendering a full screen resolution of 1280x800 rather than the full retina resolution of 2560x1600 (right?). I notice a difference in text size (all that status info that Dolphin spits out) at the top of each game load--in Low Resolution mode, the text is legible though when not in Low Resolution mode the text is super small. That is, Dolphin seems to be utilizing the resolution that OS X is stating my desktop "looks like" in Display Preferences.

For example--I can run Mario Kart Wii at an IR of 1.5x and using a "desktop resolution" of 1280x800 and get a passable frame rate while racing in the 50-60 fps range (with some occasional dips lower, of course, the Iris isn't a miracle worker, after all!). When trying to do the same thing not in Low Resolution mode, I don't get anywhere near 60 fps, usually topping out in the 40-50s if I lower the IR to 1x.

In Low Resolution mode, Dolphin seems to clearly be responding to the "desktop resolution" (again, I use that term relatively as we all know that the actual max res is 2560x1600).

Should that not be what I'm experiencing?

Uncheck "Low-Resolution Mode" and control the rendering resolution via the "Internal Resolution" dropdown – 1.5x IR or 2x IR should be optimal, though you'll probably want to adjust that as you see fit.

Dolphin is Retina-aware, so max output resolution is equal to your display's actual resolution. The "FullscreenResolution" parameter isn't actually used on OS X since it doesn't use an exclusive (e.g. changes the display res and is impossible to switch out of) fullscreen mode.

[NaturalViolence]

Internal resolution is the only thing that should effect performance here. Display resolution will only effect performance if IR is left on auto.

Your desktop and dolphin should both be set to operate at your max display resolution.

[bushidounohana]

Thank you, NaturalViolence, for your response.

I fear that while I don't dispute you I do think the operative word in your response is "should." Internal resolution absolutely impacts my performance in a substantive way (I always manually set it when tinkering), but it doesn't seem at all illogical to me that a display resolution of 1280x800 should perform at least *a little* better than 2560x1600 ... it's half the resolution, after all. Again, running in low res mode "tricks" Dolphin into doing just that--running at the lower resolution with significant performance gains (and the ability to up the internal resolution to achieve a better balance for visual fidelity).

That said, what I'm hearing from those smarter than myself is that my experience is the exception rather than the rule. I'm happy to continue onward simply swapping my display resolution as no one else seems to notice a difference, but my testing continually bears out the same results--lower the display resolution to squeeze out some precious FPS and make otherwise unplayable games playable (at least relative to metered expectations of the Iris chipset). Hopefully that helps somebody, somewhere!

Again, thank you all for your time and trouble--keep up the good work and onward soldiers, as they say!

Internal resolution is the only thing that should effect performance here. Display resolution will only effect performance if IR is left on auto.

Your desktop and dolphin should both be set to operate at your max display resolution.

[NaturalViolence]

I used the word "should" deliberately for that very reason. You are indeed the exception to the rule.

On windows and linux the display resolution has no effect on dolphins performance unless IR is set to auto. This is because it has no effect on how many pixels dolphin actually renders. It only controls the resolution that dolphin scales the output to. Clearly the issue either lies with MACOSX in general, Intels graphics drivers, or something more exclusive to your system. More testing would be needed from other users with different systems to figure it out.

[bushidounohana]

Thank you again, NaturalViolence. I suspected that your usage was deliberate, and while this may not be the appropriate forum to say this, I'd be happy to volunteer as a tester for the OS X side of things should a role like that be vacant/necessary (for this or any other testing purposes). I own a couple different Macs with differing internals (perhaps most apropos to this discussion, graphics cards), and through my own limited testing I seem to find similar results across a couple different machines.

Thank you again!

I used the word "should" deliberately for that very reason. You are indeed the exception to the rule.

On windows and linux the display resolution has no effect on dolphins performance unless IR is set to auto. This is because it has no effect on how many pixels dolphin actually renders. It only controls the resolution that dolphin scales the output to. Clearly the issue either lies with MACOSX in general, Intels graphics drivers, or something more exclusive to your system. More testing would be needed from other users with different systems to figure it out.

[NaturalViolence]

Test with bootcamp and see if the same behavior happens in windows.

[shadowstepster]

This behavior could be due to the way OSX renders retina resolutions at 1440x900 instead of true 2880x1800.