What's the ideal backend to use for dolphin?

drhycodan · 05-17-2018, 03:50 PM #1

Dolphin currently has vulkan, open gl, and d3d11. Which of these backends is ideal for dolphin if cpu and gpu requirements are not an issue?

**mstreurman** · (This post was last modified: 05-17-2018, 04:07 PM by mstreurman.)

(05-17-2018, 03:50 PM)drhycodan Wrote: Dolphin currently has vulkan, open gl, and d3d11. Which of these backends is ideal for dolphin if cpu and gpu requirements are not an issue?

Any of them. They are all feature identical and it is impossible to tell which one is the "fastest" because that depends on the game, settings and hardware your use.

I myself use Async Ubershader on an nVidia GPU, I like per pixel lighting in the games that support it, thus Vulkan and OpenGL are out of the question. Vulkan is very slow in a lot of games with these settings and OpenGL has annoying freezes, this is all because of the way Dolphin and the nVidia drivers handle the Ubershaders. That is why I am on DX11.

**Helios** · 05-17-2018, 04:13 PM #3

I just use GL. it works fine

drhycodan · 05-17-2018, 05:23 PM #4

They are not identical feature wise, for instance, OGL is the only backend that can run Sonic and Knuckles wad. Vulkan has graphical issues with Castlevania The Adventure Rebirth.

**Kurausukun** · 05-17-2018, 07:58 PM #5

Isn't OGL not recommended if you're using Ubershaders due to the drivers being unhelpful or something?

**mstreurman** · 05-17-2018, 08:25 PM #6

(05-17-2018, 07:58 PM)Kurausukun Wrote: Isn't OGL not recommended if you're using Ubershaders due to the drivers being unhelpful or something?

Yeah, same with Vulkan, but only if you're using an nvidia GPU

drhycodan · (This post was last modified: 05-18-2018, 12:28 AM by drhycodan.)

Uber shaders work fine on my 980 ti. Where did you read nvidia gpus can't use Uber shaders on ogl or vulkan?

**JosJuice** · 05-18-2018, 12:55 AM #8

(05-18-2018, 12:24 AM)drhycodan Wrote: Uber shaders work fine on my 980 ti. Where did you read nvidia gpus can't use Uber shaders on ogl or vulkan?

The problem isn't that they don't work per se, it's that hybrid ubershaders stutter about as much as if you hadn't been using ubershaders. (But maybe Nvidia has fixed that at this point if we're lucky? I don't know...)

drhycodan · 05-18-2018, 03:10 AM #9

I use synchronized Uber shaders which only uses ubershaders and no stuttering here

**JosJuice** · 05-18-2018, 03:15 AM **#10**

(05-18-2018, 03:10 AM)drhycodan Wrote: I use synchronized Uber shaders which only uses ubershaders and no stuttering here

Yes, the Nvidia problem is specifically about asynchronous shader compilation, so it makes sense that you're not getting any stuttering if that's what you're using.