Super Mario Galaxy 2 - i7 2600K?

[philexile]

Hello,

I'm new to Dolphin and so far I've had really great luck with it. The only game that I cannot get to run consistently full-speed (that I've tried) is Super Mario Galaxy 2.

It runs 60FPS for the most part, even at 1080p. When I collect a star, the FPS drop to about 50, sometimes 45, and the music gets choppy. From what I've read, this is due to my CPU not being quite fast enough to handle the DSP LLE audio, which is needed to keep the background music playing.

Currently, I'm running an i5 2500K system overclocked to 4.8ghz ,with 8 GB RAM, and an GTX 570 video card with 1280MB RAM. If I were to upgrade to an i7 2600K, would this correct the issues with Mario Galaxy 2 that I've described above?

Thanks

[philexile]

Sorry, just to clarify, its when I collect a star power-up and Mario becomes invincible.

[Garteal]

Quote:If I were to upgrade to an i7 2600K, would this correct the issues with Mario Galaxy 2 that I've described above?

No.

Quote:When I collect a star, the FPS drop to about 50, sometimes 45, and the music gets choppy.

Do you mean a regular star or a Grand Star?

What settings do you use?

[Duke Nukem]

(01-31-2012, 03:36 PM)philexile Wrote: Hello,

I'm new to Dolphin and so far I've had really great luck with it. The only game that I cannot get to run consistently full-speed (that I've tried) is Super Mario Galaxy 2.

It runs 60FPS for the most part, even at 1080p. When I collect a star, the FPS drop to about 50, sometimes 45, and the music gets choppy. From what I've read, this is due to my CPU not being quite fast enough to handle the DSP LLE audio, which is needed to keep the background music playing.

Currently, I'm running an i5 2500K system overclocked to 4.8ghz ,with 8 GB RAM, and an GTX 570 video card with 1280MB RAM. If I were to upgrade to an i7 2600K, would this correct the issues with Mario Galaxy 2 that I've described above?

Thanks

I have an i7 2600K + a ATi Radeon HD 6950 2GB card and to answer your question no it will not help since I have the same symptoms. The only real difference between an i5 2500K and an i7 2600K is that the 2600K have 2MB more in L3 Cache and Hyper Threading.

You have OC'ed yours pretty much so I think that's as good as it gets at the moment with these CPU's and Super Mario Galaxy 2.

[philexile]

That's good to know. Thank you!

I'll post what my settings are later today when I get home. Basically, I'm using OpenGL for graphics and LLE for audio.

---

Do you mean a regular star or a Grand Star?

>> The star that makes Mario invincible, like in this image: http://images.wikia.com/fantendo/images/6/6a/Starmanmario.jpg

[Duke Nukem]

Hmm OK, it's actually recommended that you use Direct3D9 instead since it's more faster and should yield a little FPS boost.

[philexile]

Hello, I tried Direct3D9 and it was actually slower. Not sure why, but OpenGL works best for this game. I was actually able to eek a bit more performance, which was a pretty big improvement overall. Also, my CPU was too overclocked. Its now running at a stable 4.3ghz, so 500mhz less than yesterday.

My new settings are:

GRAPHICS - OpenGL
1980x1080
Internal Resolution: Auto (Window Size)
Anti-Aliasing: 16xQ CSAA (This doesn't seem to impact performance, whether its on or not)
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x (Same for this)
Scaled EFB Copy CHECKED
EFB Copies: Texture (This was previously RAM - I think this helped most)
Texture Cache: Fast
External Frame Buffer: Disabled
Disable Per-Pixel Depth CHECKED
OpenCL Texture Decoder CHECKED
OpenMP Texture Decoder CHECKED

FPS: Auto

DSP LLE recompiler
Enable DTK Music CHECKED
DSP LLE on Thread CHECKED
XAudio2, 48000 Hz

PROPERTIES - CHECKED

Enable Dual Core
Enable Idle Skipping
MMU Speed Hack
Speed Up Disc Transfer Rate
Enable Block Merging
Enable Wide Screen

With these settings, the frames only drop to about 51 at the most and the music doesn't stutter as much as it did before. Additionally, its hard to make it drop to 51, usually it only drops to 55/56. The rest of the time (when Mario isn't invincible) the game plays at a solid 60 FPS. If there is anything anyone sees that could help improve things more, please let me know.

Also, I have another question. As you know, each game needs to be tweaked. For instance, New Super Mario World only performs 'perfect' with EFB copies to RAM, instead of texture. Is there a way to have Dolphin save a custom Graphics/DSP configuration for each game?

Thanks

[philexile]

I just tried "Cache display lists" - this gave me a few more frames when things get bogged down. It seems that now the lowest the FPS dip to is 55/58, but its very rare.

[Garteal]

Quote:OpenCL Texture Decoder CHECKED

Disable this.

Quote:OpenMP Texture Decoder CHECKED

Have you compared your performance with this on and off?
It does help sometimes, but it could also cause slowdowns.

[philexile]

I will tonight. Thank you for the suggestion!