Thanks to 5.0, Metroid Prime finally became playable on my PC.

[pajicadvance]

Metroid Prime and its sequels are one of the few games which suffer from microstuttering, which you probably already know. I always wanted to play this game but the microstuttering and slowdowns in Dolphin 4 made the game unplayable. Then 5.0 got released, and I decided to give it another go.

This is amazing. The game runs constantly at 60fps and slows down just a little bit in some specific areas and the map screen. And the thing that surprised me even more, is the fact that the widescreen hack works almost flawlessly in this game. Textures tend to disappear on the far left and right edge, but that really doesnt bother me much. Im so fucking happy. Good job guys.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Either you're playing with fully native graphics settings and have an insanely fast CPU, or I am missing something here. I still get horrendous microstutters from shader compilation all the time on the latest builds. Yes, once all the shaders are cached the game runs pretty smoothly, but getting to that point is downright painful. And that's with native graphics; if I increase the IR and use per-pixel lighting (I personally feel this is a must as it is such a huge improvement to lighting) then the stutters grow significantly worse to the point of the game being unplayable.

Now my machine is kind of dated, but it's by no means the worst rig that Dolphin has seen. I'm not sure how much of an improvement something like a 6700k at the same clocks would have in this stutter department, but I know that once the shader compilations are done, my CPU is able to play this game at 250-350% normal speed, so I highly doubt it's my system.

[pajicadvance]

Either you're playing with fully native graphics settings and have an insanely fast CPU, or I am missing something here. I still get horrendous microstutters from shader compilation all the time on the latest builds. Yes, once all the shaders are cached the game runs pretty smoothly, but getting to that point is downright painful. And that's with native graphics; if I increase the IR and use per-pixel lighting (I personally feel this is a must as it is such a huge improvement to lighting) then the stutters grow significantly worse to the point of the game being unplayable.

Now my machine is kind of dated, but it's by no means the worst rig that Dolphin has seen. I'm not sure how much of an improvement something like a 6700k at the same clocks would have in this stutter department, but I know that once the shader compilations are done, my CPU is able to play this game at 250-350% normal speed, so I highly doubt it's my system.

Wow, really? My PC is actually nothing too special and absolutely out of date, but I assure you, I have played the game 3 hours already and the experience is still the same as I described in my first post. I have an i3 2100 and an AMD Radeon HD 6770.

I didnt mess with the settings too much, Im playing on 2x native and on 720p without antialiasing or anisotropic filtering, and I changed the renderer to DX11. I left every other option on its default. Maybe you screwed up something in the settings? I dont know.

[pajicadvance]

Either you're playing with fully native graphics settings and have an insanely fast CPU, or I am missing something here. I still get horrendous microstutters from shader compilation all the time on the latest builds. Yes, once all the shaders are cached the game runs pretty smoothly, but getting to that point is downright painful. And that's with native graphics; if I increase the IR and use per-pixel lighting (I personally feel this is a must as it is such a huge improvement to lighting) then the stutters grow significantly worse to the point of the game being unplayable.

Now my machine is kind of dated, but it's by no means the worst rig that Dolphin has seen. I'm not sure how much of an improvement something like a 6700k at the same clocks would have in this stutter department, but I know that once the shader compilations are done, my CPU is able to play this game at 250-350% normal speed, so I highly doubt it's my system.

Just out of curiosity, are you playing the Wii version (the trilogy) or the original Gamecube version? Im playing the Gamecube one, and if you are playing the Wii version, maybe you should try out the GC one and see if there is any difference?

[DaRkL3AD3R]

I have a GameCube copy. I only play the first game. I have an Nvidia GPU and I use OpenGL. Maybe that's what's different? Do you have an SSD?

[pajicadvance]

I have a GameCube copy. I only play the first game. I have an Nvidia GPU and I use OpenGL. Maybe that's what's different? Do you have an SSD?

Nope, no SSD, just your basic sata 5400rpm drive. You should try changing to dx11 (or dx12 if you have win10)

[drgn]

same here. I tried metroid prime for gc on dolphin 5.0 and it's running perfectly. You should choice dx11. Opengl just sucks.

[OldWornSynchros]

My experience with MP1 is that OpenGL struggles with some features that DirectX does not; for example, keeping all settings constant, the charge beam animation causes a framerate drop when using OpenGl but not when using DirectX11. Additionally, frame rates seem to be overall higher for me with DirectX (though there are likely many factors at play here which I don't fully understand).

It may be situational, but I've seen OpenGL have some issues with MP1 that DirectX did not. Definitely give DirectX a try, hopefully it'll help.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

I thought OpenGL is the better API for Nvidia? I've found that DX11 and DX12 both see significantly lower overall performance for the most part, aside from a few select GPU intensive scenes which don't get the frame-rate drops that OpenGL does.

Some examples would be Mario Sunshine where OpenGL will get ~130-180 fps, DX11 gets 60-100 fps. Wind Waker OpenGL 120-150 fps, DX11 70-110. It's just always slower. Until I get to a spot that really makes my GPU sweat in OpenGL, like the room with all the dekku shrub things in Forest Haven. My FPS drops hard there in OpenGL down to like 45, but DX11 and 12 both go up to lower 100s. It's really weird.

Metroid Prime does the same thing. I get far higher overall performance in it, but yeah the stuttering is really bad. Once the shaders get compiled it's almost perfect. I just hope those UBER shaders turn out to be a good fix for this. It's a shame because the emulator is so freaking good, near flawless for many games, but man that shader compilation means I could never show my friends the emulator and how far it's come because they'd all point at the horrible stuttering and say, "see! this is why we play native on the console instead!" I hope one day I can show them the emulator without there being any flaws, only positives to prove emulation is superior. If there's any team out there who can emulate a console to that level of perfection, I know it's the Dolphin team. I've been watching them grow for nearly a decade and it's been nothing but spectacular. Things have come so close to perfection, I can't wait to see it get there.

[walfo1]

Personally I've seen better results all round with DirectX 11, I would recommend you use that. I run a 970 and i5-6600K. The shader compilation stutter is destroyed due to the fact I'm using the Ishiiruka build in the development discussion thread. Ishiiruka is better for me, I'd recommend you guys try that. https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-un...om-version