Why is Dolphin GC emulating slow and how can I fix it?

[mbc07]

Different games have different requirements, so, the GC games you're trying to run are more demanding than the Wii games you played (probably lightweight). Try Wind Waker or TimeSplitters, for example, they'll probably run full speed in your computer and both are GC games. Now, try to run any Metroid Prime game or The Last Story/Xenoblade Chronicles from Wii, even the fastest processors available for Dolphin at moment will suffer some kind of slowdown. Your CPU is weak for the GC games you're trying to run (that probably are demanding since they're from EA), and that's the reason you wrongly think GC emulation is more demanding (it doesn't matter if it's a Wii or GC game, some are demanding, some not)...

crashisgod Wrote:I can run very demanding computer games like Diablo 3 at maximum settings but I can't run old GC games?

Yes, because Dolphin isn't a PC game. Newcomers always come here and think that, and we're sick of answering the same question again and again. For short, PC games need powerful GPU, Dolphin need powerful CPU (specifically, models with higher IPC rates, so, avoid AMD CPUs/APUs at any cost). If you want more complete answers, just go in any other similar thread (we have a loooooot of them)...

(04-27-2014, 02:41 PM)crashisgod Wrote: Either way I don't see how it could possibly be the demands of the game slowing Dolphin down, my CPU is running at 2% and I have a couple unused GB of RAM while the game is running. The fact that it speeds up simply by using a different version tells me it might be how Dolphin was programmed.

Although you hadn't listed the full CPU model, it's probably an old Xeon from an old architecture that have low IPC. Dolphin uses only two (or three) cores, so, having two CPUs and/or 8 cores will not help with speed. You need a better CPU (in fact, even a single i3 4130 processor would outperform your two current Xeon, and is much more cheap).

Since the weak point here is probably your CPU, the only things you can do is overclocking (although I don't know if that's possible on Mac), upgrading your computer or using old Dolphin versions. Old versions = less accuratte, so, in most cases, faster. However, keep in mind that they also have bugs that were already fixed in the latest development versions and because of that, they are unsupported. In other words, if you opt out using anything older than the latest stable release (4.0.2 at the moment), you will get no support from the forums, you will have to deal with any possible issue alone...