Questions about my new laptop

[Korados]

Hello everyone,

I bought myself a nice new laptop. It's an Alienware M17! I listed the specs in my profile and signature.

I bought it because my last laptop just got too old for the new revisions of Dolphin. At least I thought this.
Today I tried playing on Dolphin and noticed that the games are stuttering somewhat on all versions of Dolphin past 3.5.
When I use 3.5 with D3D 9, the most games run perfectly smooth. On the 4.0.2 stable, the games are good at D3D9 but
stutter with D3D11 and OpenGL. I tried the new revision 4.0-1519 and on both D3D and OpenGL the games are stuttering
very much and the sound is crackling so much it's almost unbearable.

How come that since D3D9 was removed from Dolphin, all the games stopped working correctly for me?

[Anthe]

I can't help you with your problem, though I would really like to know why in the world you would need an i7 and 32GB RAM? Is there even ny program out there that fully uses all those resouces? And since its alienware it was probably hella expensive.

[DJBarry004]

Make sure it´s not overclocking. Post your configs as screenshots.

[KHg8m3r]

Technically, the i7-4900 can't overclock, it's using Turbo Boost.
Your CPU should have no issues running these games, its the best there is for Dolphin in a laptop. Seconding what DJBarry said, post your graphics and config tabs from Dolphin here so we can see what the issue might be.
Make sure windows Power Management is set to High Performance, your computer is plugged into power, and under Nvidia Control Panel you have Dolphin set to use the high-performance card and maximum power (DON"T SET THROUGH DOLPHIN, YOU WILL GET ERRORS)

[hedgesmfg]

KHg8m3r is correct. I have an MSI laptop with specs which are very similar to yours (a 4700mq processor, how I wish I could bench games on yours to see what kind of improvements I'd get). The key issue I have with dolphin is that you MUST manually adjust the preferences from the nvidia control panel, often again after a reboot, otherwise it uses the intel GPU and performance is obviously throttled, which is pretty annoying. It's a feature designed to preserve battery life that I never use, but that's how gaming laptops are these days.

Did your laptop come with intel extreme tuning utility? I am actually able to very slightly OC my turboboost to 3.6 (though I keep it on a cooling pad and do so 'only' when gaming to as not to hit higher temps more than necessary). Not sure if the 4900 is more limited in this respect.

[Korados]

Ok, I didn't know the difference between Overclocking and Turbo Boost. I'm new to such a high-performance computer.
Yeah, 32 GB RAM sounds way too much but I anticipate that in some years or so there will be games which maybe need this much RAM.
Luckily, I got some discounts on the laptop and I convinced my parents to pay 50-50%. FYI, it cost € 2356.62.

I set the power manangement to High Performance right away. I run the games with the default settings, at least I guess. I attached screenshots them.
The Graphics driver I have is the newest one that can be downloaded.

You said that I should set Dolphin to High Performance card and maximum power in the NVidia control panel. Where exactly can I set this?

[admin89]

Here
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide

[DJBarry004]

@KHg8m3r: I meant overheating, not overclocking. Stupid typos.

[KHg8m3r]

So as for your settings:
Under full screen resolution (vollbildauflosung) - set it to auto
Under internal resolution (interne auflosung) - set it to a number (like 2x or 2.5x), not to the auto settings

Everything else looks good

[Korados]

I set Dolphin to maximum power on the NVidia Control Panel. This must have worked wonders because most of
the games are perfect now! Even Super Mario Galaxy works at full speed! Thank you for this!
However, when I set the internal resolution to a number, the rendering looks quite bad. I like the Auto setting better.

But, strangely, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is still stuttering and the audio crackling is there, albeit only on the new revisions.
On 3.5, Brawl is fine. Maybe there's something in the new revisions what interefers with Brawl?