Peformance issues on HD 6870 and Phenom II X6

[themateika]

I'm running the latest stable build of Dolphin 3.5, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Phenom II X6 1100T, and an XFX Radeon HD 6870

It would seem to me initially that this would be a machine capable of running Dolphin smoothly, but apparently not?

I'm currently starting LOZ: Twilight Princess and the performance is less than stellar. Looking at the fps meter, The framerates are 90-100% in very small map areas (ex. Links house), but dip as soon as you get into remotely larger maps (anywhere else). This does not seem right to me.

What is especially weird is that the performance issues seem to not be terribly affected by my graphics settings. Running at 1920x1080 and some AA and AF gave almost the same level of performance issues as 720p and no AA and AF.

I'm assuming there are some key configurations to make for dolphin to work well? I tried following the performance guide but it doesn't seem to help.

Could anyone with more informed insight give their input?

[admin89]

Quote:It would seem to me initially that this would be a machine capable of running Dolphin smoothly, but apparently not?

Depending on the game...Demanding games are out of the question
LOZ: Twilight Princess - Hyrule Field is insanely demanding . You need i5 3570k @ 4.5 GHz or i5 2500k @ 4.8GHz (overclocked) to run this part full speed with LLE and EFB to Ram for the map . I have no idea about HLE though , it will require less CPU power
So why the hell Phenom II x6 couldn't run this part full speed ? The answer is simple : Dolphin is a dual core application
An i5 2500k @ 3.3GHz perform almost the same as Phenom II x6 @ 4.5 / FX 8350 @ 4.5GHz in Dolphin

Don't misunderstand , Your Phenom II x6 is really good for multi-threaded application but that's about it

There is Dolphin Benchmark , you should check it

P.S : Just overclock your CPU if you want more speed

[themateika]

(05-06-2013, 01:21 PM)admin89 Wrote:

Quote:It would seem to me initially that this would be a machine capable of running Dolphin smoothly, but apparently not?

Depending on the game...Demanding games are out of the question
LOZ: Twilight Princess - Hyrule Field is insanely demanding . You need i5 3570k @ 4.5 GHz or i5 2500k @ 4.8GHz (overclocked) to run this part full speed with LLE and EFB to Ram for the map . I have no idea about HLE though , it will require less CPU power
So why the hell Phenom II x6 couldn't run this part full speed ? The answer is simple : Dolphin is a dual core application
An i5 2500k @ 3.3GHz perform almost the same as Phenom II x6 @ 4.5 / FX 8350 @ 4.5GHz in Dolphin

Don't misunderstand , Your Phenom II x6 is really good for multi-threaded application but that's about it

There is Dolphin Benchmark , you should check it

P.S : Just overclock your CPU if you want more speed

Is it really just the case that Dolphin is dual-core optimized? I won't deny it, it is just hard to believe.

The link you gave me to the Dolphin benchmarks indicate that people running an 1100T on Wind Waker are doing just fine. Maybe I'll try firing up Wind Waker and see if the problems persist. Others are using slower new FX CPUs and are doing fine as well.

I'll try and get back some results, maybe even overclock (Time to put my watercooler to better use than cooling a 3GHz X6)

[pauldacheez]

Dolphin can't really be split into more major threads than just the CPU thread and GPU thread. There's also the DSP thread if you have LLE + LLE on Thread enabled, but there's nothing else except the UI and some ancillary threads that take jack shit CPU to run.

[admin89]

Quote:The link you gave me to the Dolphin benchmarks indicate that people running an 1100T on Wind Waker are doing just fine

Zelda WW is a light-weight game that can run fine on a low-end CPU while Zelda TP is a demanding game
Did you see i5 2500k @ 3.3 (not overclock) or i5 2400 @ 3.4 outperform both FX 8350@ 4GHz and Phenom II x 6 1100T @ 3.8GHz (overclocked)in benchmark ?

Quote:Is it really just the case that Dolphin is dual-core optimized? I won't deny it, it is just hard to believe.

And my dual core i5 is neck in neck with Phenom II x4 955 Quad Core in Dolphin . Why does this happen ?

[themateika]

(05-06-2013, 02:37 PM)admin89 Wrote:

Quote:The link you gave me to the Dolphin benchmarks indicate that people running an 1100T on Wind Waker are doing just fine

Zelda WW is a light-weight game that can run fine on a low-end CPU while Zelda TP is a demanding game
Did you see i5 2500k @ 3.3 (not overclock) or i5 2400 @ 3.4 outperform both FX 8350@ 4GHz and Phenom II x 6 1100T @ 3.8GHz (overclocked)in benchmark ?

Quote:Is it really just the case that Dolphin is dual-core optimized? I won't deny it, it is just hard to believe.

And my dual core i5 is neck in neck with Phenom II x4 955 Quad Core in Dolphin . Why does this happen ?

Using guides, configs seen on youtube, some overclocking to 3.9GHz on the CPU, and upping the CPU/NB and HT to 2.4GHz, I've managed to keep 80% in Twilight Princess at the lowest. Most places average above 90%. I made some strange configurations to Dolphin, but it has worked. I know Intel chips tend to be better suited (i5/i7) for Dolphin and arguable better overall, but I think AMD has been getting dismissed too much.

That being said, I think I am going i7 or something next time, unless Dolphin introduces real multi-threading support that can help something like the 1100t.

My config in Dolphin (strange, but the fastest for me):
Dolphin 3.0 (stable)
Direct3D9
1920x1080 fullscreen
3x Native (1920x1584)
no AA
16x AF
Checked:
Scaled EFB
Skip EFB access from CPU
Cache display lists
openMP
disable per-pixel depth

Game properties (checked):
enable dual core
enable idle skipping
mmu speed hack
DSP HLE emulation

Maybe this will help someone else. Since the OC, maybe I can tweak these setting further. Dolphin 3.5 seems not the best for LOZ: TP in my case. Wish I knew why what I did worked!

[admin89]

Quote:That being said, I think I am going i7 or something next time

Dolphin does not support Hyper Threading -> i7 = i5 , you just waste money for nothing
Either i5 3570k + Z77 mobo or i5 4670k + Z87 mobo (June 2013) is fine

[themateika]

(05-07-2013, 03:15 PM)admin89 Wrote:

Quote:That being said, I think I am going i7 or something next time

Dolphin does not support Hyper Threading -> i7 = i5 , you just waste money for nothing
Either i5 3570k + Z77 mobo or i5 4670k + Z87 mobo (June 2013) is fine

I do much more than emulate, so dual cores are not an option for me. Quad or higher for my purposes.

I guess what this boils down to is raw CPU performance per thread (or for two threads). For now, I'll just make sure to tweak the CPU related settings, maybe even try to bump my clock to 4.2GHz.

Thanks for pointing me to the Dolphin benchmark guide...

[admin89]

Quote:I do much more than emulate, so dual cores are not an option for me. Quad or higher for my purposes.

i5 3570k is a quad core CPU (4 cores 4 threads)
i7 3770k is a quad core CPU with Hyper Threading (4 cores 8 threads)
HT is only usefull when you encode video

Quote:maybe even try to bump my clock to 4.2GHz.

I'm lazy to type .So I will quote my own post

Quote:You must leave 4 cores active . Although Dolphin is a dual core application , you still gain 10->20% speedup from background processing
For Example : Phenom II x4 3.0GHz is almost as fast as Phenom II x2 3.4GHz in Dolphin
Another example : StarCraft 2 is the almost the same as Dolphin which is a dual core app
i7 Dual Core vs i7 Quad Core in SCII
Please note that the i7 Dual Core has higher CPU clock speed but it still lose to i7 Quad Core in Dual Core application

I'm afraid you will have to disable a few cores to get 4.2GHz . If you can keep all 6 cores active , that's even better

[themateika]

(05-07-2013, 03:46 PM)admin89 Wrote: I'm afraid you will have to disable a few cores to get 4.2GHz . If you can keep all 6 cores active , that's even better

Oh please, the 1100T is not a hard overclock.

(05-07-2013, 03:46 PM)admin89 Wrote: HT is only usefull when you encode video

I wouldn't be so quick to say that