Smooth things out?

[Vendace]

Alright, so...I've been using Dolphin for quite some time now, and constantly tweaking it, especially for individual games. Most of the stuff I play, like Metriod Prime, Star Fox Assault, Viewtiful Joe, Paper Mario, and Tales of Symphonia run just fine. However, two games have been giving me a headache, especially since I've had to rebuild my system since I first started using Dolphin; Star Fox Adventures and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess(GC). Both games give me an average of 65% speed, while most other stuff gives me closer to or right at 100%

General options selected are as follows:
Enable Dual Core
Enable Idle Skipping
JIT Recompiler
Lock Threads to Cores
DSP LLE Recompiler
DSP LLE on Thread
Audio Backend: XAudio2
Sample Rate: 48000 Hz

Graphics options selected:
Backend: Direct3D9
Internal Resolution: 2x Native
No Anti-Aliasing
Anisotropic Filtering: 1x
Scaled EFB Copy
Ignore Format Changes
EFB Copies: Texture
Texture Cache Accuracy: Fast
External Frame Buffer: Disable
Disable Per-Pixel Depth
OpenMP Texture Decoder

And, of course, system specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate
Intel i7 870 @ 2.93 GHZ
8GB RAM, DDR3 @ 1333 MHz
nVidia GTX 550 TI 1GB GDDR5
Dolphin version: 3.0-863 x64

Now, I've tried using the Direct3D11 backend, but for some strange reason, it actually causes slowdown for me, along with quite a few other tweaks that I've tried. Even the speed fixes listed here don't seem to do much for those games, which is rather odd...Used to have an ATI Radeon HD 5750, and while Star Fox was still a bit slow, Twilight Princess ran just fine. I'm honestly starting to run out of ideas here XD

EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm not to terribly keen on overclocking...I just get this feeling that I'd end up blowing my processor up or something XD

[admin89]

Star Fox Adventures and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

are demanding games

I'm not to terribly keen on overclocking

then you won't get full speed

just get this feeling that I'd end up blowing my processor up

unless the voltage are too high . I doubt overclocking will hurt the CPU or anything
3.6GHz should be ok

[Vendace]

That is very true about them being demanding...

And yeah...Problem is, I honestly don't know much about overclocking (even the stuff I've been reading online hasn't made much sense), and truthfully...It's the extra heat that I'm worried about with the whole thing. My computer is essentially a rebuilt Gateway FX machine, so the only CPU cooler I have is the default Cooler Master that it came with. I guess it would be worth a shot, though. Hmm...Now that I think about it, I honestly might not have much choice in the matter, unless I want to rebuild yet again, which I really don't X3

[admin89]

a rebuilt Gateway FX machine

If the mobo is OEM product , you can't OC via Bios but software overclocking maybe...

[Vendace]

That was actually the cause of the rebuild and new graphics card. All video processing on the OEM board fried, so I ended up having to get a new one. I'd still be using that ATI card, but the stupid thing was tied to the motherboard...

Anyway, I'll see what I might be able to do with that. Picked up a decent little Intel board, so I should be able to do something. Looks like settings tweaks won't be able to help me much with this one.

[admin89]

Use these settings
Nvidia GTX 550Ti can handle 4x Internal Res , no AA , 16x AF for most games

[svtfmook]

your hardware is fine without overclocking, my amd apu at 2.6 handles it just fine. your i7 has enough bandwidth to work just fine. and your 550ti is fine as well, again, i run dolphin on an amd apu at about 80%.

your best bet is to just make a change and test. try disabling lock threads to core. if that doesn't give you a better result, disable dsp lle on core. test, rinse and repeat. but start with those 2.

also, what resolution are you running. reduce the IR to 1x until you find the optimal, turn off AF. and change to DSAudio (or whatever the other option is).

either way, results will vary for everyone, so you really just have to keep making a change, test, make another change, test, etc

[Shonumi]

Turn off AF? Did you mean AA instead? AF incurs a very negligible impact on performance; there's no reason not to have it at 16x all the time.

[svtfmook]

Turn off AF? Did you mean AA instead? AF incurs a very negligible impact on performance; there's no reason not to have it at 16x all the time.

if i was trying to optimize my system for the fastest settings, i would disable any type of negative impact, regardless of it's significance. once i found the absolute fastest/smoothest settings, i would then go back and start enabling all the negligible impact items.

[Shonumi]

if i was trying to optimize my system for the fastest settings, i would disable any type of negative impact, regardless of it's significance. once i found the absolute fastest/smoothest settings, i would then go back and start enabling all the negligible impact items.

The thing is, even when the GPU was already bottlenecking a system, I've verified that you can still raise AF all the way to 16x without affecting performance. It's that negligible. If you're going to optimize a system for the fastest settings, it's very safe to ignore AF when considering possible slowdowns. It'd be more practical to focus on IR and AA instead, in addition to items like Per-Pixel Lighting/Depth.