performance of dolphin on a good pc?

[herberckle]

Hello everybody,

first of all, i really love this emulator, its amazing! I have a question about the performance though: I think i have a pretty decent PC (i54690k, 8gb ram, gtx 970) and im using one of the newest revisions (5091) but when i put settings on that increase image quality, i feel like the performance takes a hit in many games.

For example in mario galaxy the IR pointer seems to start lagging a bit, the camera doesnt seem as fast, it stutters when i collect star bits; in skyward sword the camera seems a bit slower as well and smash bros brawl feels like im getting some input lag and slowdown as well when there are a lot of enemies on screen.
The thing is in most games the stats still show fullspeed even when i notice these small things.

As a reference i was using something like 3x native resolution, 16 AF, 4x AA, scaled EFB copy, force texture filtering etc (all in OpenGL).

Now i switched everything off, except still using 2x AA and 1.5x native resolution and all games run super smooth, no hickups.

I really dont mind using these lower settings, i guess my question is more how do these image quality settings really work/ is there any PC that can use high settings without any slowdown in dolphin and why does it still show fullspeed in the status bar, even when there are all these minor slowdowns/ hickups in the gameplay?

Anyway i LOVE this emulator thanks so much to the developers!!

[KHg8m3r]

I know there are some issues when using EFB and OpenGL at higher resolutions. Switch over to D3D and see if the same issue is still happening.

[herberckle]

Thank you so much, i tried D3D but i had some sound stuttering and mini freezes with that in Zelda and mario but disabling "Scaled EFB copy" and "anisotropic filtering" while using OpenGL seems to work well.
Im now using 3x native resolution, 2x aa, per pixel lighting and forced texture filtering and all games i tried seem to run with no hickups, even the jetski slalom courses in wii sports resort which ran just horribly before .
Thanks!

[kirbypuff]

r5091 is old.
Get the latest dev build (4.0-5168 as of this writing) from here: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/ and check out the "Dolphin settings" section of the AMD/ATI GPU Performance Guide:
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-amd-ati-gpu-performance-guide-featuring-dolphin

[KHg8m3r]

To save you the time:

(12-28-2014, 11:10 PM)kirbypuff Wrote: Dolphin settings
=============
* Make sure you're using the latest development build of Dolphin. You can download it from here: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/
The latest build will give you the most optimal performance, improved accuracy and the latest feature set.

Herberckle is only 17 builds behind. He's practically running the latest build. The only thing that may be beneficial is the rewrite of the JIT vertexloader in 5143 and then the fix in 5152.

(12-28-2014, 11:10 PM)kirbypuff Wrote: * Always use the (incredibly fast on AMD) Direct3D backend.  OpenGL (even with the Pinned_Memory extension) is still slow on AMD GPUs, especially with CPU->EFB Access and EFB to RAM.

Herberckle alreasy tried this and said it didn't help.

(12-28-2014, 11:10 PM)kirbypuff Wrote: * Use "Borderless Fullscreen" instead of "Exclusive Fullscreen":

The Exclusive FS implementation in Dolphin still has some unresolved issues:
- it doesn't activate the first time you start Dolphin
- when it does work, it increases the CPU load, leading to a noticeable drop in performance (CPU hog)

* Do *NOT* use the "Per-Pixel Lighting" enhancement. It's a HUGE resource hog. When this feature is enabled, Dolphin generates an order of magnitude more shaders, which may lead to massive stuttering due to Dolphin's inefficient real-time shader compilation.

These could help

(12-28-2014, 11:10 PM)kirbypuff Wrote: * It's best to leave the Anisotropic Filtering setting at default (1x). AF is USELESS at high IRs (no image quality improvement, all it does is introduce unwanted artifacts)

I don't use AF, it is pretty much useless from what I can also see at high IRs

(12-28-2014, 11:10 PM)kirbypuff Wrote:

portable Dolphin mode: (Show Spoiler)

Running Dolphin in Portable Mode (for testing purposes)
=========================================

1. Create a new folder on your drive (e.g. Dolphin_Test1)

2. Extract the contents of the .7z archive with the Dolphin build into that folder

3. Create a blank file named portable.txt in the same folder

4. Start Dolphin and then close it, so the User folder is generated

5. Copy all your regular build saves (not the settings, just the saves) from your Documents folder to the respective dir(s) in the User folder

6. Start Dolphin, adjust the settings to your preference and then close it again

7. Now you can use the test build without the risk of messing up your normal Dolphin settings

I find that running at 3x IR and some AA on my GTX 770M looks better than just plain old 3x IR because the edges of things aren't as jagged. Also the downsampling makes a better picture too. And since herberckle is running a GTX 970, he really shouldn't have an issue.

What happens at 4x IR and 8x AA?

[kirbypuff]

AF =/= AA

[KHg8m3r]

Yep, you're correct, I misread that part, will fix

[kirbypuff]

(01-20-2015, 04:27 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: The only thing that may be beneficial is the improved JIT vertex loader.

That's why I was recommending the very latest build.

[KHg8m3r]

I'm still running 30 builds behind on 4.0-5051, and I don't like to recommend what I haven't tested yet

[Gozmit]

i have an i5 3470 and a slightly overclocked gtx 660ti and i run dolphin at 3x native resolution, either 2x or 4x AA and the filtering can be any settings, with EFB enabled, on OpenGL i can get a good solid 60fps on mario galaxy and all other games ive tried so far.

Have you tried benchmarking your computer to see where it stands against where it should stand?

I just did a Pass Mark Performance Test, i usually average just shy of a score of ~4,000, if you are getting a lower number than that i would check your computer and see whats keeping your down. Going on just your cpu and gpu you should be getting a smoother gameplay than i am.