[Pandora's Tower] framedrops, sound issues

Tomoya_ · (This post was last modified: 12-05-2013, 04:07 AM by Tomoya_.)

Hello fellas,

i'm new here and im gonna be honest. I only signed in because i have major problems with this one game but nothing else and i hope that someone here can help me out. The game is Pandora's Tower
I only tried it because i saw alot videos about it being played on dolphin from revision 3.0 till 4.0 fully playable without any major problems. So now we get to the problem i have:

The game laggs in whatever settings i use. Depending on some settings the lags get slightly better but not significantly. The pre-rendered cutscenes like in the beginning run absolutly fine but as
soon as the gameplay starts the sound gets cutoff every few seconds depending on the area im currently in. When i open the inventory the game goes derp and laggs every second and the frames
jump from 30-20.

Things i tried:
I used different configurations from people who can run this game absolutly fine.
I used different confogurations with different versions of dolphin (from 3.0 till the latest revision of 4.0).
I thought my cpu might be to weak (even though people got this game running with some different cpu's with only 2.4-2.8 GHz) so i overclocked it from 6x 3.2GHz to 3.8
Thought my game might be corrupt or something so i tried different versions.

Nothing of the above worked!

To be honest im out of ideas and quite desperate. Maybe someone here got some tips an tricks for me, or a complete config or even knows what problem im suffering from.

I'm going to add my configuration which is the best i could make, in a few minutes after this post and with it my pc configuration.

Edit: Here are the pics of my config, if you need more information say it and i'll deliver Smile

Windows 7 Proffesional 64 bit
AMD Phenom X6 1090T
Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5
G.E.I.L Value 8GB Ram
gigabyte ga-870a-ud3 Motherbord

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

My 2 cents

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

**KHg8m3r** · 12-05-2013, 05:19 AM #2

Does the lag still happen when you have the graphics configs at native resolution also?
Also, did you try the OpenGL backend?

Tomoya_ · 12-05-2013, 08:10 AM #3

Thanks for the reply Big Grin

yes i tried to change the resolution multiple times. But not the OpenGL backend, i'll try it tomorrow when i have more time.
my first thought was that my cpu was just to weak so i tried to lower the resolution or the quality at all and even tried to overclock it like i said but it always showed the same problem.

I'll get back to you tomorrow when i'm back from college and tried OpenGL backend. More advice is appreciated Big Grin

**admin89** · (This post was last modified: 12-05-2013, 08:59 AM by admin89.)

Pandora's Tower is a demanding game . You have CPU bottleneck for sure . Although your CPU is a six core one but its single threaded performance is bad compared to modern CPU's and Dolphin is a dual core application

Tomoya_ · (This post was last modified: 12-07-2013, 10:38 PM by Tomoya_.)

Sorry for the late answer, i was a bit busy the last two days. Ok so here is what i figured out.
First i tested what KHg8m3r suggested. Its running waaaay better then earlier. For example after the first mission when you first enter the house everything was lagging like hell. i couldn't open the menu or even get forward. With OpenGL on native resolution it was pretty smooth, here and there a lag but nothing major.

@admin89
Did i understood right that you say my CPU is slow or not "good enough"? Sorry my english is not that great. If yes do you think its so bad that i won't be able to play this game at a reasonable speed? I was already thinking about replacing my cpu but i don't have the money atm. Also do you think it would be a good idea to disable like 2 cores of my cpu and overclock the other 4 to 3.8 or is that stupid?

My conclusion for now is that OpenGL is a great improvement in the matter of speed, so far that its playable at a reasonable speed. Anything else i could try?

**admin89** · 12-07-2013, 11:33 PM #6

Quote:Also do you think it would be a good idea to disable like 2 cores of my cpu and overclock the other 4 to 3.8 or is that stupid?

Yes , it's a good idea . Please do that if you can
You better keep 4 cores for Dolphin , only need to disable 2 cores

Quote:Did i understood right that you say my CPU is slow or not "good enough"?

Your CPU is excellent for programs that can use all 6 cores of your CPU . Dolphin doesn't use 6 six cores but only 2->3 cores
Performance per core of your CPU isn't good enough for Dolphin . See Dolphin Benchmark . Your CPU is slower than the outdated Dual Core Intel Core i3 2120 @ 3.3Ghz in Dolphin

Tomoya_ · 12-08-2013, 01:48 AM #7

Oh well but i don't think there are many programms that use all 6 cores right? xD
At least i can't name you a single one. So like i say its playable with OpenGL on Native resolution so thats already a huge success for me. Thanks guys!
Next thing, i'll try to adjust my cpu to 4x3.8 or something in that area. But i don't think i'll be able to do that today so i'll get back to you guys tomorrow.
Thanks for the quick help.

**KHg8m3r** · 12-08-2013, 02:53 AM #8

At this point, you can try to scale the resolution up a bit. I think you can handle around 2x internal resolution with some anti-aliasing

Tomoya_ · 12-10-2013, 03:42 AM #9

So i tried to adjust the resolution but its so-so.
I think im really not meant to play this game with this cpu. I played it yesterday a bit but even on the lowest resolution it has hard laggs sometimes.
I'll put this aside for a while when have more time to deal with it and the right configurations (maybe even get a new cpu, had that thought for a while now).
Thanks for the help everyone Big Grin

**admin89** · 12-10-2013, 03:56 AM **#10**

Just a reminder , make sure your next CPU won't be another AMD CPU (FX-8350) but i5 4670k + Z87 mobo . AMD Pile driver is not faster than your Phenom II x6 clock for clock . So there won't be any improvement at all if you upgrade from AMD Phenom II x6 @ 4.0GHz to FX 8350 @ 4.0GHz
FX 8350 @ 4.6GHz is still slower than i5 4670k stock speed 3.4GHz in Dolphin anyway . And that isn't fast enough for demanding games like Zelda TP , The Last Story ....