Slow emulation speed, i7 underloaded??

[aspen1135]

I just got a new macbook pro (2011 model) with its new hardware with a i7 2720qm (2.2ghz up to 3.3ghz) and a radeon HD 6750 1gb. This should be plenty of power to emulate games like super smash bros brawl at full speed.
So because of my speedy CPU and Graphics card, i put my graphics settings at full resolution with 9ssaa/ x16 filtering. But when I run games, it gets close to full emulation speed but not quite fully there. Its hitting just around 40 to 45 fps unless I turn the filter down to 4ssaa.. This surprised me because i was thinking a 3ghz quad core should be plenty to emulate 100% with all the shiny settings on. So, while I had dolphin running, I ran CPU-Z and discovered that the processor wasn't turning on turbo boost to get the max benefit out of the 3ghz potential. But it also looked as though dolphin wasn't giving the CPU enough load, because a lot of times it rested at around 1.8 to 2.6ghz which is boosted but not all the way.

Or is an 2.2ghz i7 (up to '3.3') not actually good enough for SSAA filtering at full speed?

[admin89]

But when I run games, it gets close to full emulation speed but not quite fully there. Its hitting just around 40 to 45 fps unless I turn the filter down to 4ssaa..

Hold on there . Do you know how demanding SSAA is ? 9x SSAA is insane ! If you use 4x Internal Resolution + 9xSSAA , even the fastest single GPU on earth (Nvidia GTX Titan - 1000$) can't handle that
HD 6750M is mid range mobile GPU which is much slower than the mid-range desktop GPU : Nvidia GTX 650 / AMD 7750 GDDR5

You should use 2.5x or 3x Internal Res , no AA, 16x AF
CPU has nothing to do with graphic stuffs .
If you're using Windows 7 via bootcamp , you can use "Thottlestop" to set CPU multiplier (force CPU clock speed higher) .

[aspen1135]

Thanks for your reply. What would you recommend for majority of games to be played then. For example, i can run SSBB @ full speed with 4xSSAA but games like metroid prime I can barley run at full speed without any filtering of any kind.

what if I wanted 4xSSAA to be on, but not on for a certain game. I noticed you can set custom game properties, but I don't see any options for graphics filtering. Do you know how I can the filters to off in the config text?

But when I run games, it gets close to full emulation speed but not quite fully there. Its hitting just around 40 to 45 fps unless I turn the filter down to 4ssaa..

Hold on there . Do you know how demanding SSAA is ? 9x SSAA is insane ! If you use 4x Internal Resolution + 9xSSAA , even the fastest single GPU on earth (Nvidia GTX Titan - 1000$) can't handle that
HD 6750M is mid range mobile GPU which is much slower than the mid-range desktop GPU : Nvidia GTX 650 / AMD 7750 GDDR5

You should use 2.5x or 3x Internal Res , no AA, 16x AF
CPU has nothing to do with graphic stuffs .
If you're using Windows 7 via bootcamp , you can use "Thottlestop" to set CPU multiplier (force CPU clock speed higher) .

[admin89]

i can run SSBB @ full speed with 4xSSAA

What's Internal Resolution you're using ?
Don't tell me 1x IR + 4x SSAA
For god sake , you should not use SSAA at all because it's always broken (simply does not work ) and cause graphic glitches on some games
Use Internal Resolution instead !

Besides , your CPU is not really fast for demanding games either . Some demanding games like The Last Story , Mario Galaxy (+LLE back end) require quad core Ivy Bridge i5 3570k @ 4.2GHZ . So you should not expect too much from a laptop

Your CPU will not run at 3.3GHz because it's single core turbo boost as you can see here

Set CPU multiplier to either 30 or 32
You will have
99.68 x 30 = 2990.4 MHz ~ 3.0GHz

Click Save and close throttlestop and then reopen (keep Throttlestop running while you're using DOlphin)

[aspen1135]

My internal resolution was set to auto adjust until you recommended 2 or 3x. But what good does the internal resolution do if i end up playing the game in full screen. Won't it just change to the full screen resolution?

i can run SSBB @ full speed with 4xSSAA

What's Internal Resolution you're using ?
Don't tell me 1x IR + 4x SSAA
For god sake , you should not use SSAA at all because it's always broken (simply does not work ) and cause graphic glitches on some games
Use Internal Resolution instead !

[admin89]

But what good does the internal resolution do if i end up playing the game in full screen

Internal Resolution (IR) can be set higher than your native resolution . For Example : My laptop display native resolution is 1366x768 , i use 2.5x IR (1600x1320) which is much higher than my display native res . As a result , i will get the best downscaling (graphic look much sharper to the point that i don't need to use anti-aliasing)

[aspen1135]

Hellz yeah!!! Okay well I didn't even realize it made such a visual impact! Now that i'm running this thing full speed and hella sharp looking, i can say screw that SSAA filter. Now i can run games in 'HD' @ full speed (well, majority). Thank you!!!

As for throttlestop, I've actually been using it for some time now, but i didn't know that the turbo boost was limited to certain cores. So does that mean if i set the multiplier for 32 and run a really demanding game, it will run only 2 cores at 3ghz and the others at 3.2ghz or will they all just run at 3.0ghz?

But what good does the internal resolution do if i end up playing the game in full screen

Internal Resolution (IR) can be set higher than your native resolution . For Example : My laptop display native resolution is 1366x768 , i use 2.5x IR (1600x1320) which is much higher than my display native res . As a result , i will get the best downscaling (graphic look much sharper to the point that i don't need to use anti-aliasing)

[admin89]

Well , Dolphin is a dual core application ... Quad core CPU will be used 50% potential (it should be abit more than 50%)
If you set multiplier to 30 , 4 cores will be active
................................32 , 2 cores will be active and 2 cores will stay idle

[aspen1135]

Well , Dolphin is a dual core application ... Quad core CPU will be used 50% potential (it should be abit more than 50%)
If you set multiplier to 30 , 4 cores will be active
................................32 , 2 cores will be active and 2 cores will stay idle

So therefore 32 would be the best performance wise in this particular instance?

[admin89]

30 would be the best performance
To make it simple to understand , i imply :
2 pure cores for Dolphin (plus 1 more core active if you enable "DSP LLE on thread" via DSP audio) , 2 cores for background processing . This will result a speed up (up to 20% performance)