V- sync causes massive framedrop

[Bong_Marley]

Hi there,

First of all I like to thank the developers of Dolphin for this wonderful piece of software. I truly enjoy using it. Sadly I have run into a bit of snag. My problem is that when V-sync is enabled my frame rates drop to around 30 fps in every single game. Disabling it resolves the problem and brings my back fps to around 60 (as it should be). Pretty annoying because it is not really an option to disable it as I experience heavy screen tearing. The question is what to do? I already tried:

-  Disabling the monitor, so that the desktop is only displayed on my TV (I am using a monitor and TV in duplicated mode)
-  Forced v sync through the driver settings

But nothing seems to help. I really appreciate all the help I can get.

ps: I am using Direct3D as backend.

[ExtremeDude2]

Are you sure that your video output is 60hz?

[Bong_Marley]

Both monitors have a refresh rate of 75hz.

[leolam]

What if you force both monitors to 60Hz?

[Bong_Marley]

Already tried that, doesn't solve the problem.

[hoschi80]

Is there an update on that topic? I face the same issue with my new HTPC. Sometimes games start fine and it happens during the game often when changing from menu/map to game e.g. Kirby and sometimes it drops to 30FPS directly after start. I found one workaround, when I switch tab or disable and enable fullscreen the frame rate goes up again. The interesting part is that it only happens on my HTPC with Nvidia Card (750 TI (latest driver) Intel G3258) on my Desktop PC with AMD Card (R9 280x Xeon E3-1231) this never happened. I tried also disabling vsync in dolphin and enabling it via Nvidia control panel but no success. So I'm thankful for any help.

[Helios]

I actually get this sometimes too.

Basically, don't use Dolphin's v-sync. It's very touchy.

I know nvidia has an "adaptive vsync" setting in it's control panel , and I wouldn't be surprised if AMD did as well.

[hoschi80]

Thanks for the tip I did not tried adaptive vsync so far. I will test and report back. But on my AMD system I use Dolphin's vsync without issues, no change in the driver settings.

[Dolemub42]

This is the way v-sync always works if your computer can not maintain a steady 60 FPS. It is not specific to Dolphin. If you actual framerate is less than 60 FPS, say, 58 FPS, with v-sync enabled it will automatically switch to half-refresh hence 30 FPS. This is inherent to the way v-sync works. The only work around is to use a technique called tripple buffering in conjunction with v-sync, which is supported by some PC games and third party apps but not Dolphin. Also, some monitors support an nVidia feature called G-Sync which is a hardware solution hence circumventing the need for software v-sync and its limitations.

What you can try:
1) Play around with settings to give you better FPS overall, which will reduce or eliminate any drops below 60 FPS. This is the best solution. Or upgrade your hardware, specifically CPU.

2) Try the DirectX 12 backend, if your graphics card supports it.

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-dolphin-dx12-backend
or
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-ishiiruka-dolphin-custom-version

3) Adaptive v-sync, which will enable v-sync when 60 FPS is maintained and dynamically turn it off in instances when it drops below 60 FPS. This works well with PC games, but I can not guarantee that it will work with Dolphin. Some programs like RadeonPro allow enabling triple buffering in PC games, but this has never worked well for me with emulators.

[Helios]

By the way, we don't support Ishiiruka nor the experimental backend. Any bugs you run into playing on those will have to go in those threads.