Taz:wanted help(fps drops)

[anghi22]

Hey, sorry for bothering but I am having problems playing the game Taz:wanted, specifically fps drops(from 60 to 30/40 and even below sometimes). I have managed to play both time splitters 2 and future perfect at 60fps stable without any problems(except some drops in FP when there were explosion effects involved) but, for the life of me, I cannot manage to find the settings to play this game decently, I have tried every setting possible but the performance has always remained the same, even when I tried changing the backend. These are my specs: i7 3770k, gtx 1080ti, 24gb ram ddr3 1600hz. I usually play at 1080p. Here are also the settings of my Dolphin 5.0:

https://i.imgur.com/OMNKAcW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/pcBASTi.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/mTKjEo4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ssGu2bP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AwfTUgE.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/jOZ6tth.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lrBt9BZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/g90X0ok.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/emVmNP7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lEqf2N3.jpg

sorry for the multiple links but imgur didn't allow me to upload more than 1 picture at a time for unknown reasons
Thanks in advance for the replies

[Peter Njeim]

Hey, sorry for bothering but I am having problems playing the game Taz:wanted, specifically fps drops(from 60 to 30/40 and even below sometimes). I have managed to play both time splitters 2 and future perfect at 60fps stable without any problems(except some drops in FP when there were explosion effects involved) but, for the life of me, I cannot manage to find the settings to play this game decently, I have tried every setting possible but the performance has always remained the same, even when I tried changing the backend. These are my specs: i7 3770k, gtx 1080ti, 24gb ram ddr3 1600hz. I usually play at 1080p. Here are also the settings of my Dolphin 5.0:

https://i.imgur.com/OMNKAcW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/pcBASTi.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/mTKjEo4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ssGu2bP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AwfTUgE.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/jOZ6tth.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lrBt9BZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/g90X0ok.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/emVmNP7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/lEqf2N3.jpg

sorry for the multiple links but imgur didn't allow me to upload more than 1 picture at a time for unknown reasons
Thanks in advance for the replies

Please please PLEASE use the latest dev build. I know it sounds scary the way they say that version 5.0 is "stable" but really most dev builds are just as stable. There are MASSIVE performance enhancements in the latest dev builds. Also, if you still want to stay on dolphin 5.0 for any reason, x8 SSAA is very demanding, even for a 1080 Ti, and at 1080p there is no point in doing 8x SSAA, even 2x SSAA is enough. if you make that setting lower it should help. Also, Fullscreen resolution should be set to auto, and aspect ration should also be auto, if the game is 4:3, you would use widescreen hack to make it 16:9. Since you have the crop option enabled, it should already be exactly 16:9. I understand your monitor might be higher than 1920x1080, so instead of changing fullscreen resolution, change internal resolution from Auto (Window Size) to 3x Native (For 1080p). It will look much better that way.

V-Sync should also be off, remember, this isn't like normal PC games, if emulation is below 100%, V-Sync will make it even MORE under 100%. I also keep render to main window checked, because you can full screen it from the menu bar, it's just less windows to mess around with, but this doesn't change performance.

External Frame Buffer (XFB) should be Disabled unless in Dolphin's wiki article for this game that you should set it otherwise.

For even more performance, disabling Per pixel lighting helps, and barely even changes how the game looks, which is nice.

However, I think the issue you are facing is called shader compilation stuttering. To fix this, you need to use a recent dev build of Dolphin (latest one will work) and there will be an option in the graphics settings called Ubershaders. Setting this to Exclusive will stop any stuttering issues that aren't performance related.

I hope these settings will help you, if they don't then using the latest dev build should help you as your specs should be powerful enough to play any title on Dolphin.

[JosJuice]

External Frame Buffer (XFB) should be Disabled unless in Dolphin's wiki article for this game that you should set it otherwise.

Virtual is also fine. But you really should avoid Real unless a game specifically requires it, because it reduces both the performance and resolution.

[anghi22]

Please please PLEASE use the latest dev build. I know it sounds scary the way they say that version 5.0 is "stable" but really most dev builds are just as stable. There are MASSIVE performance enhancements in the latest dev builds. Also, if you still want to stay on dolphin 5.0 for any reason, x8 SSAA is very demanding, even for a 1080 Ti, and at 1080p there is no point in doing 8x SSAA, even 2x SSAA is enough. if you make that setting lower it should help. Also, Fullscreen resolution should be set to auto, and aspect ration should also be auto, if the game is 4:3, you would use widescreen hack to make it 16:9. Since you have the crop option enabled, it should already be exactly 16:9. I understand your monitor might be higher than 1920x1080, so instead of changing fullscreen resolution, change internal resolution from Auto (Window Size) to 3x Native (For 1080p). It will look much better that way.

V-Sync should also be off, remember, this isn't like normal PC games, if emulation is below 100%, V-Sync will make it even MORE under 100%. I also keep render to main window checked, because you can full screen it from the menu bar, it's just less windows to mess around with, but this doesn't change performance.

External Frame Buffer (XFB) should be Disabled unless in Dolphin's wiki article for this game that you should set it otherwise.

For even more performance, disabling Per pixel lighting helps, and barely even changes how the game looks, which is nice.

However, I think the issue you are facing is called shader compilation stuttering. To fix this, you need to use a recent dev build of Dolphin (latest one will work) and there will be an option in the graphics settings called Ubershaders. Setting this to Exclusive will stop any stuttering issues that aren't performance related.

I hope these settings will help you, if they don't then using the latest dev build should help you as your specs should be powerful enough to play any title on Dolphin.

Hey, thank you for your reply! I decided to try the newer version(latest nightly) of dolphin with the settings you suggested and I noticed that the game looked much smoother during the loading screens and some of the cutscenes, also the textures looked much better. Still, the problem persisted and it also got worse. Even though when I don't have drops the game looks smother than before, when I do have drops they spike below 30 fps more frequently than before(basically 3 out of 4 times). I also tried to set every graphical setting to the minimum possible, such as disabling AA and per pixel lighting and changed the backend too, but I didn't notice any change, unfortunately. I thought that perhaps it was my hard drive that was causing the problem, so I tried moving the emulator onto my SSD but that also made no difference. Any idea what it might be? Thanks again for your time
edit: the game required XFB real for cutscenes(even though now it doesn't in the most recent build, it seems)

[anghi22]

Virtual is also fine. But you really should avoid Real unless a game specifically requires it, because it reduces both the performance and resolution.

the game requires XFB real for cutscenes(even though now it doesn't in the most recent build, since the option for it is no longer there in the settings and the tooltip just says "playable")

[Peter Njeim]

the game requires XFB real for cutscenes(even though now it doesn't in the most recent build, since the option for it is no longer there in the settings and the tooltip just says "playable")

Yes, there was recently a very big change to how XFB emulation functioned, which is explained here in their Dolphin's latest article: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/11/19/hybridxfb/.

If you even tried ubershaders, then I simply think there is an issue with your game. Either the ISO might be corrupted or Dolphin cannot properly emulate something from the game.

I was doing some research and it seems there is a video of someone playing the game at 60fps all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjm_Aitefk. When looking at the comments, you'll see that EVERYONE has a problem with this game, no can get it to run at 60fps and no one knows what settings to use. Someone asked and the owner of the channel replied with a link to his generic Dolphin setup video, which is obviously not helpful.

The only thing I can recommend is finding another download of the ISO file, or sometimes disabling dual core might help. It will not help with speed, but I believe your CPU is capable or running games in single core mode and it usually causes fewer glitches and crashes and it might fix your problem, this is just a guess of course.

[Helios]

The only thing I can recommend is finding another download of the ISO file, or sometimes disabling dual core might help. It will not help with speed, but I believe your CPU is capable or running games in single core mode and it usually causes fewer glitches and crashes and it might fix your problem, this is just a guess of course.

quoting just in case they decide to edit their post

[anghi22]

Yes, there was recently a very big change to how XFB emulation functioned, which is explained here in their Dolphin's latest article: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/11/19/hybridxfb/.

If you even tried ubershaders, then I simply think there is an issue with your game. Either the ISO might be corrupted or Dolphin cannot properly emulate something from the game.

I was doing some research and it seems there is a video of someone playing the game at 60fps all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjm_Aitefk. When looking at the comments, you'll see that EVERYONE has a problem with this game, no can get it to run at 60fps and no one knows what settings to use. Someone asked and the owner of the channel replied with a link to his generic Dolphin setup video, which is obviously not helpful.

The only thing I can recommend is finding another download of the ISO file, or sometimes disabling dual core might help. It will not help with speed, but I believe your CPU is capable or running games in single core mode and it usually causes fewer glitches and crashes and it might fix your problem, this is just a guess of course.

I had already seen that video but I was hoping someone else would have found out the settings maybe on his own without posting them there. Anyway, I tried the single core mode without any success and then tried other ISOs and what I found out is this: the best backend is direct3d11, which speeds up the loading times by almost 3x; the other thing is this: the USA version of the game runs at a stable 60 fps but drops quite frequently without any particular reason, while the EUR version runs at a stable 50fps(why this number and not 60 I don't know) and still has drops, but never below 25fps and they are far less frequent. Also I noticed that even though I have ubershaders set to Exclusive I don't get anymore the loading screen for them when I start up the game, while yesterday I had to wait 1/2 minutes for the ubershaders to load everytime I loaded up the game, is this normal?

edit: I tried monitoring my cpu, and disk usage just in case: my cpu didn't even work at 10% while the disk usage was basically 0 so I think that the problem mus be software related

[anghi22]

quoting just in case they decide to edit their post

Already tried but no luck unfortunately  for newer info read my last post

[mbc07]

[...]
The only thing I can recommend is finding another download of the ISO file, or sometimes disabling dual core might help. It will not help with speed, but I believe your CPU is capable or running games in single core mode and it usually causes fewer glitches and crashes and it might fix your problem, this is just a guess of course.

[...] Anyway, I tried the single core mode without any success and then tried other ISOs and what I found out is this: the best backend is direct3d11, which speeds up the loading times by almost 3x; t

Downloading games is against the rules.