Super Mario Galaxy suddenly runs slow

[misko1311]

So hello,

As you can see form the title,I have a problem with the Super Mario Galaxy Wii game. Recently,I have been playing it with no problem (it lagged on many places but it's kinda normal with my PC) but yesterday it started acting weird,it's not the first time it happened but usually I turned my PC off and on the other day it was working but not now. I can play Transformers Prime which is a Wii game also almost constantly at full speed,but it happened with that game sometimes too,could it have something to do with playing the game for a longer period? As it only happened with Transformers when I was playing it,now that I don't,when I run it,it plays full speed.

EDIT: I am writing from mobile now so I can atleast provide you with my PC specs and some configuration that I remember.
So first of all,I am using Dolphin 3.5-160 for Super Mario Galaxy and Sunshine because it's much faster than the new revisions and I also can't get the newest ones because I have 32-bit.

PC Specs:
OS: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
RAM: 4GB
CPU: Intel G860 3.0Ghz (or something like that I don't really remember,but I should have that in my forum profile)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics (I even set that slider thingy to performance in the graphics card settings)

Just a little note,it was sometimes even happening for Sunshine (same Dolphin version as for Galaxy as it's apparently the last one that the HLE sound works good with Sunshine) and I just disabled dual core for a while and even though it was slow,it atleast wasn't lagging and when I noticed it's a little faster I switched back to dual core and it was good.

Settings: (I'll list atleast those I remember)
General:
Dual core
Idle skipping (but that's disabled in Galaxy's properties because I have to use LLE sound and it sounds a little better without that)
Framelimit: Auto

Sound:
DSP LLE sound (HLE in main config but in Galaxy's properties,HLE is disabled so it uses LLE)
DSP LLE on thread (yes I tried disabling it,no change)
Dsound (just switched from XAudio2)
48000hz

Graphics:
DirectX 11
1600x900
1x native
Antialiasing,Anisotropic filtering and this stuff is all at lowest
EFB to Texture
Texture Cache: Fast

Frameskip: 2

I might list more if needed and when I get to my PC/remember something.

Thanks

[RandomDane]

On my high-end PC I have no slow-down problems, everything runs at max frames all the time.
But when I played on my laptop, it would gradually get slower and slower in certain games, especially when running splitscreen.
I am no expert, but I reckon it's because your PC ain't strong enough, or gets too hot in-game, so it becomes slower.

[misko1311]

But if I run a PC game like Saints Row The Third,it works good :/

[Admentus]

Running a native PC and an emulated game through Dolphin is completely different. Emulation relies more on having a better CPU than a GPU, unlike native PC gaming. The Super Mario Galaxy games are among the most demanding to emulate. You are not playing Super Mario Galaxy on your PC, instead your PC emulates a Wii that runs Super Mario Galaxy. This take more processing power than you might expect since you are not only requireing power for the game but for emulating the Wii too.

Saints Row: The Third is a game from 2011, which is not that demanding for today's systems. You are also able to lower the graphical settings. In emulation, you can not do so, except for the global settings such as internal resolution (which affects the emulator in general, not a particular game). You might be surprised how demanding Higan (bsnes) is for example which is just a SNES emulator. Higher accuracy requires more system power, but it also allows to actually play your games with fewer issues. While the resource cost is high for Higan, the accuracy is near perfection.

While looking at your specs, SMG is demanding and your specs might not live up to that. You state that you have an integrated Intel GPU and use Windows 7 at 32-bit. First of all you really need a 64-bit system as Dolphin 5.0 is faster and better, period. A lot has been changed and optimized since 4.0.2. Older versions of Dolphin are not supported anymore, only 5.0 and the latest development builds are. At least you have access to D3D11, but you lack D3D12 support due your weak GPU, use of Windows 7 and having an outdated version of Dolphin. You really should use HLE audio and enable Idle skipping because LLE is far to demanding. Besides Dolphin 5.0 has perfect HLE audio.

Long story short. Upgrade your system to 64-bit, download Dolphin 5.0 and then come back for help. We can't do anything else for now. It is up to you to provide the proper hardware. As I said, emulation is demanding. You could still always try to use Project64 (assuming you stay away from GlideN64), mGBA or Snes9x which are all light-weight to use.

[misko1311]

Well but that doesn't explain why it was perfectly playable like 3 days ago... And also,there are two a little weird things,when the game runs slow as... you know... dolphin keeps telling me the speed is 100% and also LLE sound is supposed to lag when the game is slow but it isn't,the music and sound is just perfect. But when the game was playable,the sound was stuttering at most places so that's kinda weird...

[Admentus]

You can always try to reset your cache, just reset your Dolpin 3.5 folder (but you really should upgrade to 5.0!). Dolphin 3.5 does weird things due it's hacky nature and the Dolphin Team has since long stated they shifted toward more accurate behaviour (so less issues for you).

You should also define what playable means for you. 60 FPS Fullspeed at all times at 3x Internal Resolution for 1080p? With LLE audio you are bringing your system to it's knees. As I said, Dolphin 5.0 has near-perfect HLE audio, which removes the need for LLE in almost every situation. Dolphin 3.5 is known for that Super Mario Galaxy hangs at claiming the final Grand Star with HLE audio (Wind Waker hangs too occasionally when obtainining an item). The music also tends to stop after one loop, so yea... HLE audio is bad in 3.5. You should consider not playing with audio at all if you insist to keep using Dolphin 3.5.

Dolphin 3.5 was never supposed to play your games with an enjoyable experience, that is an fact too. That version is really that outdated, which is almost 4 years old. The emulator was not yet mature enough back in that time. A lot of technology worldwide has been improved and introduced which the emulator can benefit from since then. It was still amazing what Dolphin 3.5 could do back at that time. It was almost impossible to think of that Wii games would be fully playable back at that time. Just imagine the mere thought of that Dolphin could do that and more. Dolphin kept improving and improving at a pace so fast.

[admin89]

Quote:CPU: Intel G860 3.0Ghz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics

Seriously , get yourself a real graphic card , you can find a used AMD HD 7750 for like 30 bucks on ebay and that should be fast enough for 1080p . Your 2nd gen Intel HD is horrible , it does not meet the minimum requirement to run game at 480p (require Intel HD 3000 or faster GPU)
You have GPU bottleneck even at 480p
If you have $100 to spend , get a new shiny EVGA GTX 750Ti or RX 460

[misko1311]

Yeah I would use 5.0 if I had 64-bit but I am not really into reinstalling the OS as I don't have a backup HDD and I don't want to accidentialy lose some or even worse,all of my precious files in the process.

admin89: eBay is really not an option in my country...

EDIT: It also lags in newer versions like 4.0,4.0.2 or the final x86 version 4.0-1609.

[Admentus]

(08-29-2016, 12:44 AM)misko1311 Wrote: Yeah I would use 5.0 if I had 64-bit but I am not really into reinstalling the OS as I don't have a backup HDD and I don't want to accidentialy lose some or even worse,all of my precious files in the process.

Sorry to hear, but you should try to fix that yourself. Buy a hard disk for example (it does not need the best of the best, 1 TB is not that expensive anymore) If you want to use Dolphin for an enjoyable experience you should upgrade to a 64-bit system and start at Dolphin 5.0. If not, you just have to deal with the imperfections of Dolphin 3.5. There is nothing else that can be done then for you, older Dolphin versions are simply not supported anymore.

It is 2016 after all, we are in the age of 64-bit. Newer released native games are often 64-bit only. So having a 32-bit system does not limit Dolphin but also native PC applications and games. These days, there aren't any games made for DirectX 9 anymore. Only D3D11, D3D12, OpenGL and Vulkan primarily.

As a side note, the 64-bit version of 4.0.2 is faster than the 32-bit version. So 64-bit always win . But as admin89 said, upgrading to 64-bit alone would not be enough. You need a more powerful system. My recommendation is just to buy a complete new system with Windows 10 and 64-bit included or assemble it yourself as your current system is just too old. Start with looking for an Intel i5 CPU and a GPU such as the GTX 750, GTX 750Ti or GTX 950 if you are on a budget. I still would recommend Intel and NVidia above AMD.

[misko1311]

Yes,I understand that 32-bit is barely used now,but I don't know why the guy who was fixing my PC after it broke didn't install 64-bit right away so I wouldn't have to deal with it now but anyway,what can the problem be? Is it my system or the emulator? Because as I said,it's a little weird that one day,I am playing the game at like 50% speed (maybe a little more,I don't know because the speed indicator is a little weird sometimes) and the other I am playing it at 100% (or so Dolphin says,it's completly unplayable).

And also admin89,I know my PC is kinda crap but can you be less "rude" (or how should I call it?) please?

EDIT: What do you mean by "reset your Dolphin 3.5 folder"? Like,re-download it? I might just try that...