Slower When Compressed?

[darkshadw]

Will games be slower when they're compressed via Dolphin or another program?

Just wanna know :p.

[Matoking]

If you mean compressing meaning the file itself is compressed, then yes.

If you mean scrubbing (which Dolphin uses at least), which is just merely scrubbing off the unnecessary dummy data off ISO image, then no, I guess.

[ImbaMe]

(01-31-2010, 12:53 AM)darkshadw Wrote: Will games be slower when they're compressed via Dolphin or another program?

Just wanna know :p.

Hmm tough answer here i can only say it depends on the game, since your iso is compressed the emulator has the extra task of decompressing some of the data before it can process it so it steals a few processor cycles from the actual emulation process, the impact depends on your hardware.

In my opinion games that need fast access to files like racing games or fighting games are best left uncompressed, but games like rpg's, adventure or platformers that d'ont load data that often can be compressed without too much worry.

[naoan]

I thought it'll be fully decompressed before it began playing... I myself didn't notice any speed impact but maybe having more than two cores help...

[KHRZ]

Does Dolphin even support compressed files?

(Other than non-compressed scrubbed files)

[shuffle2]

The GC disk drive only supports ~3MB/s read speeds anyways.
KHRZ yes....have you been living in a hole?
Dolphin will only play compressed games in the gcz format (both gc and wii)...which can only be made with dolphin.
As stated above, there will be no noticeable slowdown, as the original drive isn't extremely fast anyways.
And for the record, images are compressed (and read) per-sector. So there is no need to decompress the whole thing at once or anything like that (@naoan)

[KHRZ]

OK, I thought gcz just removed iso dummy data (like wiiscrubber). Or is it basically the same?

[shuffle2]

for gamecube games, dolphin just compresses the image sector-by-sector. This means that no data is lost; decompressing will give you the same exact image.
for wii games, dolphin scrubs beforehand, since compressing all the random data would most likely yield 0 gain. So, areas which are not being used are replaced with either all 0s or all 1s (forget which one, atm), so you know at least those areas will compress very well. Once the unused areas are overwritten with constant data, the image is compressed sector-by-sector, just like the gamecube method.

[naoan]

Thanks for explaining that shuffle2