Using all ressources?

[Xevailo]

Hello everyone

I have just installed Dolphin 4.0.1 and used the settings mentioned in your performance guide ( https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?t...ance_guide ), and whilist Tales of Symphonia runs smooth, Time Splitters Future perfect and Metroid Prime tend to stutter when launched.
The thing is: The Measures on my second screen show, that Dolphin doesn't use the whole ressources my system provides.
The GPU-Clock stays at mere 500 MHz, and the load never goes above 30% (Both in D11 and OpenGL Mode). Also the CPU-cores used by Dolphin are at 85% at max.

I know that Dolphin can't use all cores but I wonder why the GPU-Load and -Clock aren't increased when the game doesn't run smoothly. Or do I have to choose different settings for my machine?

My system:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 @ 8 x 4.000 MHz (not Overclocked)
GPU: AMD/ATI Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X 3 GB @ up to 1.050 MHz (auto-clock but no OC)
RAM: 4 x 4 GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 @ 1.333 MHz
All details: http://www.sysprofile.de/id175431

Thanks in advance,

Xevailo

[cosmoruski]

I just tested DonkeyKong Country Returns for Wii with a Radeon HD 7870 set to 3x Naitive Resolution and my card also stays @ 300Mhz Core Clock most of the time, sometimes goes up - and the load ist somewhere around 25% (see screenshot)
As your Card is even faster, i think it does not need to crank up the clockrate for dolphin

You can set a high IR + AntiAlising so give the Cards something to do

[NaturalViolence]

You can force the card into high performance mode by making a profile for dolphin.exe in catalyst control center and changing the power setting to maximum performance.

As far as cpu load goes that's normal. Windows moves the dolphin threads around a lot which creates the illusion in task manager that the cores aren't being fully used (because task manager doesn't update fast enough to show it).

What performance are you getting in these games?

[Xevailo]

I just tested DonkeyKong Country Returns for Wii with a Radeon HD 7870 set to 3x Naitive Resolution and my card also stays @ 300Mhz Core Clock most of the time, sometimes goes up - and the load ist somewhere around 25% (see screenshot)
As your Card is even faster, i think it does not need to crank up the clockrate for dolphin

You can set a high IR + AntiAlising so give the Cards something to do

I could increase the graphical settings to keep my 7970 busy, but that's not really my point. I don't understand how / why the games mentioned lag and stutter although my system hasn't reached it's limitations yet.

You can force the card into high performance mode by making a profile for dolphin.exe in catalyst control center and changing the power setting to maximum performance.

As far as cpu load goes that's normal. Windows moves the dolphin threads around a lot which creates the illusion in task manager that the cores aren't being fully used (because task manager doesn't update fast enough to show it).

What performance are you getting in these games?

Yes, but that would leave the GPU even less busy. Catalyst increases the clock to 1.050 MHz autmatically when needed. Thus the fact that it stays at 500 MHz means that dolphin doesn't give the GPU something to do. -But yet it lags. And that keeps me confused.

-Or could that mean that all visual/graphical elements are rendered and the lagging is caused by other calculations the game does?

Do you mean FPS? Or what else? -And what monitoring method do you prefer then?

[KHg8m3r]

GPU drivers don't recognize dolphin as a program that needs a lot of horsepower to run it, even though it does. Devs are working on that....

So what you have to do in the meantime is set up a profile manually in Catalyst Control Center to make your GPU run Dolphin in high performance mode

The FPS and VPS are used to determine how well a game runs.

[cosmoruski]

Well I have only one game you mentioned: Metroid Prime
And the first sequence of it, where you see the pirate space station just before samus arrives - this scene runs shitty even on a i5 4770

For comparison here are the results of the dolphin benchmark
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...Fa1E#gid=0
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-ne...e-required

So the problem is not the GPU, but the CPU, which is just overchallenged with dolphin
An encouragement though: There is no CPU (yet) which can run all Games on Dolphin fullspeed all the time

[neobrain]

GPU drivers don't recognize dolphin as a program that needs a lot of horsepower to run it, even though it does. Devs are working on that....

Are we? :O
(or "are they?", if you are talking about the driver developers)

[NaturalViolence]

Most likely OP just has a cpu bottleneck and doesn't realize it. This is a very cpu intensive game.

I don't understand how / why the games mentioned lag and stutter although my system hasn't reached it's limitations yet.

Because it HAS "reached its limitations". One or more of the cpu threads is being bottlenecked by your cpus per core performance. Use task manager again only this time lock dolphins thread affinity to just cores 1 and 4. You'll see what I mean.

[Anti-Ultimate]

@OP: You're using a AMD FX-8350 which has low "Instructions per Cycle", a newer Intel processor will always be faster in single-threaded applications. Dolphin has both things it does on two seperate cores, so that's where the problem is. Your FX is pretty slow compared to an i5/i7 in most applications.

There isn't really a software fix for that. But I think I heard something about disabling the 4 other cores so you make the FX go 4 Core. I don't think it speeds it up but in theory it should (Since 2 cores share one module and they fight over ressources). Also, you WILL need to overclock.

If nothing helps, get an i5 and overclock that. Seeing as you got so much RAM why didn't you just go with 8GB RAM and the i5?

EDIT: Follow this guide: https://teksyndicate.com/forum/cpu/exper...ies/124202

[KHg8m3r]

GPU drivers don't recognize dolphin as a program that needs a lot of horsepower to run it, even though it does. Devs are working on that....

Are we? :O
(or "are they?", if you are talking about the driver developers)

Driver developers. BatJoe recently posted in another thread about (Nvidia at least) increased performance from drivers: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-pi...#pid316853