Trying to find the bottleneck...

[Nuwanda]

Hi.

I have been trying to play a game which is supposed to be able to run at full speed (Super Mario Sunshine, in case it matters), but I don't always get 30 fps.

My setup at first was:
* Athlon 64 X2 3600+ @ 1.9 GHz (stock)
* GeForce 9600 GT @ 600 MHz
* 1 GB RAM DDR2 800 MHz
* Windows XP SP3 (32bits)

I'm using Dolphin 2.0.

The CPU was always running at 100% (both cores), the pagefile was < 1 GB, and (according to GPU-Z) the graphics card was very far away from its limits.

So I assumed it was the CPU, and overclocked it (I got to 2.57 GHz). It did improve noticeably, but I still got lower-than-30-fps most of the time (say, 20 fps average).

I then stole my father's Athlon 64 X2 5400+ (2.8 GHz stock) and overclocked it to 2.97 GHz, but I don't see any improvement. The CPU is still at 100% all the time, but doesn't seem to be much better (if any) than with the 3600+ @ 2.57 GHz...

Any clues?

[Glurion]

As long as the CPU is about 2.6GHz+ (dual core or more not that it would do anything) then thats fine, you will probably find it's the RAM, you could do with 2GB. The graphics card should be fine (i had a 9500 running dolphin fine). So yeah i'd say it was the RAM.

[Nuwanda]

Wow, thanks for the fast reply!
I got the feeling that the RAM was not the issue (judging by the info from the Windows task manager), but I'll try buying some more when I have time (it can't hurt).

BTW, I just noticed something: The Dolphin emulation window sometimes says for instance "FPS: 20 - VPS: 60 - SPEED: 100%" (or 98%, or whatever). How can the speed be 100% if the FPS is 20? The game is clearly slower that it should be.
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I tried searching "FPS VPS SPEED" and stuff like that on the forum and found no results...

[admin89]

Config http://www.dolphin-emu.org/configuration...ation.html
Frame limit off ,audio throttle off, vsync off

[NaturalViolence]

For the record (not that you want to do this) if you ever need to figure out if your cpu or gpu is the bottleneck just lower your resolution. If your framerate increases substantially from lowering your resolution or AA then you know the gpu was the bottleneck, if it has no effect then you know the cpu is the bottleneck. Usually the bottleneck is usually either cpu or gpu however as others have stated in this thread in your case it might be ram (capacity not speed) since you have so little memory.

[Diddy Kong]

If you're planning on upgrading anything, do it in this order
(Make sure your power supply has enough juice)
Ram
CPU
GPU

Or just buy a new comp, you can find some sweet deals newegg!
(i'd imagine your motherboard as well as other components not being the best of hardware)

[Nuwanda]

Config http://www.dolphin-emu.org/configuration...ation.html
Frame limit off ,audio throttle off, vsync off

Frame limit off helped a lot, but... it helped too much The game runs too fast, which is not good either v-sync I already had off, and audio throttle off didn't help.

For the record (not that you want to do this) if you ever need to figure out if your cpu or gpu is the bottleneck just lower your resolution. If your framerate increases substantially from lowering your resolution or AA then you know the gpu was the bottleneck, if it has no effect then you know the cpu is the bottleneck. Usually the bottleneck is usually either cpu or gpu however as others have stated in this thread in your case it might be ram (capacity not speed) since you have so little memory.

I tried lowering the resolution, and nothing changed, so this confirmed it's not the GPU.

About the "so little memory", I still don't think it's the issue (the size at least), since Dolphin uses ~500 KB for Mario Sunshine.


BTW, I re-read the Performance guide, and I found that, for the Mario Sunshine game, selecting "EFB Copy to Texture" raises the FPS to 30 or almost 30, like I wanted. Problem is, Mario Sunshine needs "EFB Copy to RAM" Any thoughts on that?

BTW2: All the above (frame limit off, EFB to texture) didn't really make a difference with another game (Smash Bros Melée), in which I'm stuck at ~33 FPS (and since it's a 60 FPS game, it runs at ~56% speed ).


Thanks a lot for all the help!