What is slowing me?

[angeldgm]

Hello there, i have used dolphin since early 2013( when my wii died), and i have a question, the OS have influence in the emulator speed?, i was using windows7 x64 last year, but i changed to windows8.1 pro, since then i have noticed that some games that i used to run smoothly dont run as usual, there are something wrong with the OS?, they are some specific settings?, i just wanna play some ssbb

This are my specs:

Cpu: Intel i5 k 655 3.2 GHz
Gpu: Nvidea Geforce GT 640
Ram: Kingston 3,960 mb.
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro

Any help would be appreciated

[Shonumi]

Most people I talk to notice that Windows 8 and 8.1 are actually faster than Windows 7. Having never extensively used Windows 7 myself, I can't say. If you were using a 64-bit version beforehand and are somehow using a 32-bit version of Windows 8.1, that would explain the difference.

Also, if you happened to have used an older version of Dolphin (3.0-xxx or 3.5-xxx) and are now using a newer version (4.0-xxx) that could also explain the speed difference, although Dolphin should be pretty fast in the latest development revisions. In your case, however, it might not be fast enough to make up for the "slowdowns" in recent changes however.

Anyway, your system's bottleneck is the CPU. Your CPU, though clocked fairly high, is outdated by several generations of Intel hardware. Sandy Bridge (one generation after Westmere, where you i5-655K falls in) really packed a noticeable punch when it came to Dolphin, and Haswell now does the same (Haswell is usually 20~30% faster than Sandy or Ivy Bridge when it comes to Dolphin. We've benchmarked this several times). In short, your CPU is showing its age.

[angeldgm]

Thank you for responding

I believe that all windows 8 are 64 bits, well mine is, i was using dolpin 3.0, now im using 4.0.2, if i change to a older version may my speed go up?

If i would have to change CPU which one you would recomend me, im new when it comes to Specs, a noob you may say xD, could you recomend me a budget cpu (i dont have so much money right now).

[KHg8m3r]

An older revision is faster because it doesn't properly emulate some parts, and is full of bugs. If you run into one of said bugs, you won't get any support in the forums besides use a newer version.

An i5-4670K and a z87 motherboard will cost you about $350. You can probably reuse your case, power supply, RAM (if its DDR3), hard drive, fans, and GPU. You might want to get a new cooler (about an extra $40-60 depending on how good it is).

An i3-4340 and a h81 motherboard will also be vastly superior to what you have, and cost about $200, again reusing everything you can.

[admin89]

His CPU is an unlocked i5 version and his CPU is a monster at overclocking (3.2GHz-> 4.0GHz->4.5GHz)
@OP you should do some research about Clarkdale overclocking . You will be able to gain much more speed for free

[Shonumi]

How much speed will it amount to though? I mean for SSBM and SSBB, overclocking will help since they don't require a lot of CPU power, so OCing would definitely be a solution, but Clarkdale just isn't fast enough for Dolphin anymore in many games, some of which are classified as average by our standards.