Oscillating stuttering in Dolphin

[gaussnit]

Hi, I recently started using Dolphin again since I formatted my laptop, but I found it suffering from notable performance issues. Half the time it runs with a decent FPS, half the time stutters to 15-20 FPS, in a constant, oscillating way (see attachment with CPU usage while playing).

   

Games tested: Fire Emblem Path of Radiance (USA), Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn (USA), Super Mario Sunshine (USA) (this one works slightly better).

I've checked high performance option for battery is enabled, as well as maximum battery performance in NVidia options. Also tried disabling dual core (I read somewhere it could benefit some games) but it is the same result. Also tested with hybrid ubershaders.

To me this is strange, because I remember playing Path of Radiance with the same laptop on Windows 8 a few years ago with an acceptable frame rate, although with glitchy/chirping noise.

My specs are the following. I'd like to know if there is any tweak or configuration I can do to solve play lightly smoothly. By the contrary, if you think my laptop is not powerful enough for the current development version, just tell me.

Version: 5.0-5564
Backend: OpenGL
Windows 10 Professional x64
Inter Core i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40 GHz
16GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
Dolphin and games stored in Sasung SSD 500GB

Thanks in advance.

[envisaged0ne]

A few years ago, Dolphin wasn't as demanding. As the emulation has become more accurate, the system requirements have changed. Your CPU, with a STR (single thread rating) of only 1363 is very weak for running Dolphin. You've already tried setting your latptop to high performance, and I'm assuming you're just using default settings. Not much else you can do. I'd recommend getting an upgrade

[Helios]

Sounds like your laptop is routinely choking it's CPU or GPU clock speed for whatever reason or another program is stealing processing time. You'll need to resolve that.