Random Micro Freezing

[Xzibit]

I am experiencing some really weird micro freezing with Dolphin 5.0, I never used to have this problem until one day I started it up to play Mario Party 5 and at random times the game would freeze for 2 seconds then resume. Sometimes this would happen once every few minutes, but other times it would freeze 3-4 times in a row without stopping and then resume normally. I took a break from playing Gamecube for awhile, so I have no idea what could be causing this issue, as it was fine and working very well before. Freezing happens on every game that i have, so if anyone knows what the heck could be the problem, please let me know.

[Ivybridge11]

(08-07-2016, 10:06 PM)Xzibit Wrote: I am experiencing some really weird micro freezing with Dolphin 5.0, I never used to have this problem until one day I started it up to play Mario Party 5 and at random times the game would freeze for 2 seconds then resume. Sometimes this would happen once every few minutes, but other times it would freeze 3-4 times in a row without stopping and then resume normally. I took a break from playing Gamecube for awhile, so I have no idea what could be causing this issue, as it was fine and working very well before. Freezing happens on every game that i have, so if anyone knows what the heck could be the problem, please let me know.

Did you just upgrade from a previous version of Dolphin? Because unless it's literally pausing for several seconds, that sounds like Shader Compilation to me.

[Helios]

Yep. Shader compilation.


Because Dolphin is not a game engine, Dolphin has no way of knowing what effects a game will generate that will require a specialized shader until the game does it. And to keep things stable and looking correct, the game will stutter while that shader is compiled. Once compiled that particular effect for that game will stay cached on disk and will no longer be an issue until you either update Dolphin or your GPU driver.

[Xzibit]

(08-08-2016, 12:28 AM)Helios Wrote: Yep. Shader compilation.


Because Dolphin is not a game engine, Dolphin has no way of knowing what effects a game will generate that will require a specialized shader until the game does it. And to keep things stable and looking correct, the game will stutter while that shader is compiled. Once compiled that particular effect for that game will stay cached on disk and will no longer be an issue until you either update Dolphin or your GPU driver.

When i first got Dolphin 5.0, there was never this issue. Everything worked flawlessly, this issue literally came out of nowhere, because i never updated dolphin and never updated my GPU drivers, it just started freezing for a few seconds then resuming one day. I am super confused as to why this happened at all. To be more specific, the freezes are 4-5 seconds long.

[Helios]

4-5 seconds makes me wonder if something is wrong with the medium you have your games stored on. You don't need a fast drive by any means to store your games, but if you have say, a hard drive that spins down to sleep, and then spins up again when Dolphin accesses something from the game image, that sounds like it would cause a 4-5 second freeze.

[Xzibit]

(08-08-2016, 10:47 AM)Helios Wrote: 4-5 seconds makes me wonder if something is wrong with the medium you have your games stored on. You don't need a fast drive by any means to store your games, but if you have say, a hard drive that spins down to sleep, and then spins up again when Dolphin accesses something from the game image, that sounds like it would cause a 4-5 second freeze.

It's been an annoying day and i have still not found a fix. This is incredibly frustrating, I have no idea what the hell would cause Dolphin to all of a sudden have micro freezing out of nowhere, I have reinstalled it multiple times, messed with various settings and i have gotten nowhere with finding out what is causing this. I guess i'm gonna just have to deal with it and not play gamecube for awhile.

[jra64]

Are you running the game offline?

[Xzibit]

(08-12-2016, 02:23 PM)jra64 Wrote: Are you running the game offline?

Yes, i have never touched netplay

[KHg8m3r]

If you keep messing with settings and changing revisions you keep invalidating your shader cache.

[Xzibit]

(08-13-2016, 03:07 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: If you keep messing with settings and changing revisions you keep invalidating your shader cache.

This shader cache thing, shader compilation whatever has never happened before. Dolphin was working perfectly fine, then i took a break for a few weeks, came back and it started having problems.