What is my bottle neck?

[comp666]

I'm trying to play pokemon battle revolution but it seems to lag during battles to 40-50 fps. I have an i7 2600k, 8 gigs of ram, and no graphics card. The turbo boost kicks the cpu up to 3.6 ghz when I'm running this game but not to the 3.8ghz max. Does this mean that my cpu is not the bottleneck and I should be investing in a graphics card? I had thought the emulator only depended on the cpu.

Dolphin settings are identical to this guys': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orn8Tk-LK84

I'm unsure if the cpu fails to fully turbo boost because it doesn't need to or because it's running too hot/other problems. The temps on load are reasonable at around 70C. What do you think, will getting a gpu help my fps?

[Starscream]

Turn the internal resolution option to 1x and see if that helps raise the speed. Either way, you need a real video card. You also should list the name of the on-board graphics you're using now.

[Shonumi]

i7 2600K, and no graphics card?

Just adding on to what Starscream said, there's an easy way to test when your GPU is the bottleneck. Turn off AA and set your IR to 1x. Note the game speed and frame rate. Try it at 1.5x, note the speed and frame rates. Rinse and repeat. When you notice a drop in performance, that's when the GPU is bottlenecking your hardware. At any rate, the i7 2600K is a beast, especially when OC'ed, so you're better off getting yourself a decent GPU regardless.

Iirc, Pokemon Battle Revolution is a surprisingly demanding game to get full-speed in, though you should be able to get it with a better GPU.

[comp666]

Turn the internal resolution option to 1x and see if that helps raise the speed. Either way, you need a real video card. You also should list the name of the on-board graphics you're using now.

The onboard graphics is Intel HD3000, I've updated my profile.

I forgot that the guy in that video had his on 720p. My 40-50 fps occurs on 480p. For 720p it drops to 40-45 fps. At 800x600 its about the same as the 640x480.

The only reason I'm reluctant to get a graphics card is because I don't game, other than dolphin and yahoo pool. I wish there was a tool in dolphin that could average ur fps over a time period, right now I'm just eyeballing

[Shonumi]

The only reason I'm reluctant to get a graphics card is because I don't game, other than dolphin and yahoo pool. Do you think a nice gpu can bump me up 10 fps?

Heh heh, yeah I don't game much either (well, I am on Linux, but there's still Xonotic...) but you need a decent dedicated GPU for Dolphin. The GPU helps with things like internal resolution and anti-aliasing. Having a good GPU allows you to play games in higher definitions than the original consoles with Dolphin. Right now, Intel's HD 3000s can get away with 1x in most games, but not all of them, as you've found out. So yes, get yourself a good GPU.

[comp666]

The only reason I'm reluctant to get a graphics card is because I don't game, other than dolphin and yahoo pool. Do you think a nice gpu can bump me up 10 fps?

Heh heh, yeah I don't game much either (well, I am on Linux, but there's still Xonotic...) but you need a decent dedicated GPU for Dolphin. The GPU helps with things like internal resolution and anti-aliasing. Having a good GPU allows you to play games in higher definitions than the original consoles with Dolphin. Right now, Intel's HD 3000s can get away with 1x in most games, but not all of them, as you've found out. So yes, get yourself a good GPU.

Alright sounds good. Thanks!

[eatmagnetic]

If you don't want to spend that much money, and don't care about other games (like PC games!) - you may just get an AMD HD6850 or HD6870. If you want to perform even better on other games too with your CPU then get a GTX560 Ti or a HD6950 - since your CPU performs quite awesome you will probably only see impacts in picture quality like High-Resolution and AA (SSAA, MSAA etc.) or AF, sine these are only GPU-limited, and you're CPU can't do anything about it.

[Shonumi]

since your CPU performs quite awesome you will probably only see impacts in picture quality like High-Resolution and AA (SSAA, MSAA etc.) or AF

For high internal resolutions and high levels of anti-aliasing, yes, you need a good GPU. Most cards, however, will have no problems with high levels of anisotropic filtering when it comes to Dolphin. Afaik, it's not nearly as expensive in terms of computing resources as the other two. At least, even the measly GMAX3100 in my laptop suffers no performance decrease if AF is set to 16x instead of 1x.

[comp666]

I'm actually conflicted again. I did some research and someone mentioned that you can't get to the full 3.8ghz turbo boost when using 2 cores. I had thought it wasn't fully turbo boosting because it didn't need to (meaning cpu is not the bottleneck), but apparently it isn't fully turbo boosting because I'm using 2 cores.

Unfortunately, I purchased the h67 motherboard because I never thought I would be overclocking so I can't even overclock it.

As Shonumi suggested, I compared the fps of 640x480 and 800x600 and the difference is negligible. Another indicator that CPU is still the bottleneck.

The question: should I get a new P67 motherboard and overclock or get a new gpu. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Shonumi]

Yeah, I think the full turbo boost occurs if all but one core is disabled. The next best turbo boost happens when all but two cores are disabled, at least that's generally what I've heard.

Definitely stick with getting a dedicated GPU as an upgrade. I'm still running at stock clocks over here on my 2500K, even though I've got water cooling and a Z68 mobo. I'm gonna OC later, once I rip some of my more demanding games. For now though, I'm doing great, and I imagine you'd do just fine yourself without having to OC. If you want SMG on LLE, then yeah, you'd need to OC, but otherwise you're good for a vast majority of the games Dolphin plays.