Sudden little freezes (not shader cache related)

**StripTheSoul** · 06-19-2016, 10:41 PM #1

Heya guys,

I'm having an issue that kinda feels like something you wouldn't want to have in 5.0...

I just played Super Mario Galaxy for a while and suddenly I got a lot of little freezes/stutters (graphics and sound). They remained until I got out of the scene. It felt almost like the game suddenly got out of the rhythm and only got back into it when changing the place. I know it has nothing to do with the shader cache generation because it remained and also because it also happens with Ishiiruka (and its async shader cache generation). Once it happened while feeding a hungry Luma and the other time it happened when after a level the map showed up to show me a new galaxy had appeared (and the stuttering didn't even stop when the map disappeared but only when I got out of that little 'house').

Since it seems to happen rather randomly (another Luma feeding went through without any issues) I fear it would take forever to find out when this issue got introduced into Dolphin (this has never happened to me before but I haven't played much in the past few months).
However, MAYBE this issue is related to the one I described here just yesterday: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-wii-exerbeat?pid=412340#pid412340

I did have the new diagnostics reporting enabled, so maybe you can get something out of that Wink

I do have the feeling this is not just a one-game-issue.

mimimi · 06-20-2016, 03:33 AM #2

Are you using a HDD or a SSD? If it's a HDD, could it be that it goes into sleep mode, or that it is heavily fragmented, or just old and getting slower?

Other than that, as long as you can't pin this to a specific build or situation in the game, nothing can be done.

**StripTheSoul** · 06-20-2016, 03:42 AM #3

Using an SSD.
I don't think it's hardware-related. If it was, it wouldn't suddenly be fine by going out of the room I guess.

Well, maybe someone else could play SMG for a while and see it if happens to them. The shitty thing is that it's so random so it's hard to 'trigger' it :/

**JMC47** · 06-20-2016, 04:02 AM #4

It probably depends on camera angle; there are spots where the game uses EFB Access heavily that didn't use to be emulated a few hundred builds ago in D3D11/D3D12.

**StripTheSoul** · (This post was last modified: 06-20-2016, 04:17 AM by StripTheSoul.)

Nah, that's not it. If it was, it would be reproducible.

I know Dolphin for years now and my feeling is that this is an actual issue with the emulator.

**JMC47** · 06-20-2016, 04:19 AM #6

Have you tried turning off the framelimit during the situation? It's very unlikely anyone will be able to do anything about this, but if you can fastforward and it's lagging I may have an idea. I actually had this problem not too long ago, and it turns out I set my audio variance too low.

**StripTheSoul** · (This post was last modified: 06-20-2016, 04:31 AM by StripTheSoul.)

You mean setting the 'speed limit' to 'unlimited'? No, haven't tried that. Will do when I get it again...
What do you mean by 'audio variance'?

But it's not low performance I'm talking about; that feels different. Here, it's really little freezes.