This is a weird one. I've been noticing some performance discrepancies when launching my benchmarks in Dolphin, and up until now I really thought it was my system that was responsible. But right now, I'm starting to believe it's Dolphin that's causing the issue.
Here's what my test looks like:
1. All minimum graphical settings, 1xIR, no bonus goodies, 640x480, and unlimited game speed with no vsync
2. Load Resident Evil: Remake
3. Start a new game, and skip all cutscenes to the first point you take control of Chris, just after he enters the dining hall
4. Jot down the current framerate
The purpose of this test is to see what the single thread capabilities of my 7700k were, and how much of an impact overclocking had on performance.
I started seeing some weird discrepancies here when doing this, where with the same exact system settings, one run would be 10% slower than another for no explicable reason. First I thought my system was unstable, so I put it all down to stock, even RAM, and saw the same exact 10% swings in performance. Then I remembered all that non-sense about Ryzen getting hit with bad performance without HPET, and thought maybe it was the RTC messing with performance readouts. Nope, it was none of those things.
Then I decided, on a good run where I am hitting 100% of my peak performance, let's make a Save State at my benchmark spot, and see what happens.
Sure enough, during a "bad boot" where I am down 10% performance, loading the Save State immediately boosts me back to my 100% max speed, without resetting the game or Dolphin. Proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS17J470vHQ
You will notice that just by loading a save state from a "good boot" my performance in the exact same point in the game instantly jumps from 93-94 up to 99-100. A roughly 7.5% increase in performance. I've seen better boots than this good boot, and I've seen worse boots than this bad one, where the peak difference is 10% performance gap.
What could be happening under the hood that one time the game runs 10% worse than another time? It can't be due to RTC variation, as if it were then loading the save state should yield the same results. Clearly something is going on with that particular boot of the game, something is going wrong, and it's causing performance to be hampered somehow.
I realize in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter. But I am reaching out to the Dolphin developers as I believe you guys care about your code, and would want to get to the bottom of what's causing this discrepancy. I know I sure do, and I'm not even a coder on this project.
Here are the two save state files for REmake:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/9xtz9qyd9h...eSaves.rar
The first save is a good load, the second is a bad one. They are the ones seen in the video.
I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could take the time to study these two save states and see if they can replicate my results. So far I've seen very little feedback from my in-depth posts like this on these forums, hoping this one will be different because it really bugs me and it speaks on some underlying glitch in the code that causes variable performance for no explicable reason. If there is a better place/way for me to be in direct contact with developers who would be willing to figure this out with me, please let me know where to go. I really want to see this one through.
Either way, I'm just glad to have discovered the Save State test and realize it is not my system or settings that's causing the performance variation. I am quite confident this is a Dolphin thing. One last thing that confirms this is, running various other CPU benchmarks yield consistent results that only vary in less than 1% difference run-to-run. 10% is way outside margin of error, and is a clear indication that something is going wrong.
Look forward to any thoughts on this. Thanks.
Here's what my test looks like:
1. All minimum graphical settings, 1xIR, no bonus goodies, 640x480, and unlimited game speed with no vsync
2. Load Resident Evil: Remake
3. Start a new game, and skip all cutscenes to the first point you take control of Chris, just after he enters the dining hall
4. Jot down the current framerate
The purpose of this test is to see what the single thread capabilities of my 7700k were, and how much of an impact overclocking had on performance.
I started seeing some weird discrepancies here when doing this, where with the same exact system settings, one run would be 10% slower than another for no explicable reason. First I thought my system was unstable, so I put it all down to stock, even RAM, and saw the same exact 10% swings in performance. Then I remembered all that non-sense about Ryzen getting hit with bad performance without HPET, and thought maybe it was the RTC messing with performance readouts. Nope, it was none of those things.
Then I decided, on a good run where I am hitting 100% of my peak performance, let's make a Save State at my benchmark spot, and see what happens.
Sure enough, during a "bad boot" where I am down 10% performance, loading the Save State immediately boosts me back to my 100% max speed, without resetting the game or Dolphin. Proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS17J470vHQ
You will notice that just by loading a save state from a "good boot" my performance in the exact same point in the game instantly jumps from 93-94 up to 99-100. A roughly 7.5% increase in performance. I've seen better boots than this good boot, and I've seen worse boots than this bad one, where the peak difference is 10% performance gap.
What could be happening under the hood that one time the game runs 10% worse than another time? It can't be due to RTC variation, as if it were then loading the save state should yield the same results. Clearly something is going on with that particular boot of the game, something is going wrong, and it's causing performance to be hampered somehow.
I realize in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter. But I am reaching out to the Dolphin developers as I believe you guys care about your code, and would want to get to the bottom of what's causing this discrepancy. I know I sure do, and I'm not even a coder on this project.
Here are the two save state files for REmake:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/9xtz9qyd9h...eSaves.rar
The first save is a good load, the second is a bad one. They are the ones seen in the video.
I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could take the time to study these two save states and see if they can replicate my results. So far I've seen very little feedback from my in-depth posts like this on these forums, hoping this one will be different because it really bugs me and it speaks on some underlying glitch in the code that causes variable performance for no explicable reason. If there is a better place/way for me to be in direct contact with developers who would be willing to figure this out with me, please let me know where to go. I really want to see this one through.
Either way, I'm just glad to have discovered the Save State test and realize it is not my system or settings that's causing the performance variation. I am quite confident this is a Dolphin thing. One last thing that confirms this is, running various other CPU benchmarks yield consistent results that only vary in less than 1% difference run-to-run. 10% is way outside margin of error, and is a clear indication that something is going wrong.
Look forward to any thoughts on this. Thanks.
CPU: AMD 7950x3D GPU: RTX 4090 Founder's Edition Mobo: ASUS B650E-F STRIX RAM: G-Skill 64GB DDR5 6000Mhz PSU: EVGA Supernova 850w Titanium Case: Coolermaster HAF X O/S: Windows 11 22H2 Pro x64