Performance issues with a high-end gaming laptop

[Vykan_12]

Here are my laptop specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6 GHz
GPU: GTX 970M
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 10 64 bit

For most games I get 60 fps most of the time, but there's still enough sound clipping and frame drops to ruin the experience long-term.

I'm thinking the CPU is the issue, 2.6 GHz seems pretty low. I was thinking of doing a very minor overclock with MSI afterburner, but I don't want to overclock if I don't have to, given all the issues that can cause.

Should I just bite the bullet and overclock, if so to what CPU speed? Or is the bottleneck something else?

[KHg8m3r]

No, what you should be looking into is certain settings in Windows to make sure you're running at maximum power.
First of all, make sure you're playing while plugged into a power source.
Secondly, make sure you have a Windows Power Management set to High performance.
Thirdly, make sure you have a profile set in Nvidia Control Panel for Dolphin to use the Nvidia GPU and use maximum power. (and turn off battery boost in Geforce Experience)
Fourth, make sure you're using the OpenGL backend because that's the fastest backend for Nvidia GPUs mostly (followed by Vulkan)
Lastly, if all that doesn't help, look into a program called Throttle stop, which can help make your CPU run at the Turbo speeds it should be hitting for Dolphin. There's a laptop performance guide somewhere on these forums that explains how to work that.

[Vykan_12]

No, what you should be looking into is certain settings in Windows to make sure you're running at maximum power.
First of all, make sure you're playing while plugged into a power source.
Secondly, make sure you have a Windows Power Management set to High performance.
Thirdly, make sure you have a profile set in Nvidia Control Panel for Dolphin to use the Nvidia GPU and use maximum power. (and turn off battery boost in Geforce Experience)
Fourth, make sure you're using the OpenGL backend because that's the fastest backend for Nvidia GPUs mostly (followed by Vulkan)
Lastly, if all that doesn't help, look into a program called Throttle stop, which can help make your CPU run at the Turbo speeds it should be hitting for Dolphin. There's a laptop performance guide somewhere on these forums that explains how to work that.

1- Yes
2- I believe you meant Power Options, I have that set to High performance (see screenshot)
3- I think this might be the real issue. Under Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D settings -> Program Settings I am able to find dolphin.exe, but it just lists out a bunch of individual options with dropdowns, and each dropdown is different. I also have an issue with a 4 monitor setup where 2 USB connected monitors tend to intermittently shut off and back on, I think it has to do with the graphics card switching between integrated and GPU. I remember I hooked up my laptop to a 60 inch TV and it could play newer games like Doom (2016) just fine, but struggled mightily on less demanding games like Super Meat Boy.
4- Yes
5- Haven't tried yet

[KHg8m3r]

USB monitors render from your CPU. I would not use those for playing Dolphin, cause they suck.
What Nvidia GPU driver are you currently running?

[Vykan_12]

USB monitors render from your CPU. I would not use those for playing Dolphin, cause they suck.
What Nvidia GPU driver are you currently running?

The thing is, even if I unplug the USB monitors, leaving the laptop itself and an HDMI connected monitor, it doesn't change anything. I merely brought that up because of the integrated GPU vs graphics card potential issue.

Current Nvidia driver is 376.33

Btw, for turning off battery boost in geforce experience, is it enough just to uninstall that program? When I opened the application, it wanted me to login to an account before I could do anything.

Edit: Something strange, when I run Dolphin with some game I get <60 fps with, I only get around 22-23% CPU usage, 17-18% of which is Dolphin itself.

[Helios]

Dolphin uses two hard working threads. That's why you don't see full CPU usage.

It's not reasonably possible to make more hard working threads. Two threads for the CPU and GPU emulation is already a hack.

[Vykan_12]

I got MSI Afterburner to track my GPU usage in Dolphin (Settings -> Monitoring -> GPU Usage). It's showing 30-40%, higher than I expected actually. For what it's worth, my GTX 970M has 3GB of memory.

So 17-18% CPU usage, 30-40% GPU usage, what else can I check to debug the issue?

Edit: I can't make sense of the GPU usage. It went as low as 7-9% for a specific portion of the game that still managed to have frame hiccups!

[Helios]

Because Dolphin isn't GPU limited unless you're on like, an Intel iGPU. It's usually waiting on the CPU thread.

I don't know why you're having performance issues though.

[KHg8m3r]

Nvidia wants you to make an account with them for some reason. I would just make a gmail account or use like a trash email that you have.
If you uninstall it, weird things may happen

[Vykan_12]

Ok, so I re-downloaded Geforce Experience just to shut off the battery booster option, no difference! However, in the Nvidia control panel -> Manage 3D settings -> Program Settings -> Dolphin, there's a Power management mode option which I changed to "Prefer maximum performance". That seems to have helped a bit! There's other options I could tweak like Antialiasing and Texture filtering (see attached image in my 2nd post in this topic). Would tweaking any of those help?

I know the CPU is almost certainly the issue. I recently bought a PC for a different purpose that has the same i7 processor but with 4 GHz CPU instead of 2.6 and it runs most of the games I tried flawlessly. When I hit tab for turbo, it also hits significantly higher framerates, like 120-150 instead of 90.

Going to try overclocking and see if that helps.