Why is dolphine not fully using CPU and GPU?

[arboboo]

I am a newbie of Dolphin. My Dolphin version is SVN R 4771. I tried both of 64 bit and 32 bit version. I played the super Mario, most of the time I only get 20 ~25 fps.
The CPU usage is always about 50%, and all of 4 core is used. GPU usage is about 25%, I use EVGA Precision to monitor the video card.

My PC:
Asus P5K SE, Intel Q6600, Asus 8800GT 256M, 4G DDR2 800
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.


Thanks.



Why doesnt it use it all to gain more fps.

[James333]

Dolphin only uses two cores( or should , the threads could sneak to the other cores). And dolphin is not GPU dependent so It won't use a lot of it

[Runo]

Well, if you have a 64-bit system, then you should use the 64-bit version of the emulator. What game exactly you tried to run? Because Dolphin run both Gamecube and Wii games... Also, make sure the "dual core" option is enabled in the Options window, and let us know what graphics plugin you are using as well...

[boogerlad]

maybe you should tweak your settings. The default settings have broken throttle (in that version), use efb to ram which is slow, and many other settings which make it slow

[Ocean]

Dolphin tends to be heavier on CPU than the GPU.

Even if rendering a game like twilight princess at highest possible details and AA on 1080p, gfx card still goes only to maybe 60-65 celsius at maximum (I tested on nvidia gtx 280 and a radeon 4000 series card on other pc). Yet the cpu can go even up to 60 or more which is pretty high for emulation.

For comparison, playing a game like Mass effect 2 on the pc with max details can easily rocket the gpu to like 82-85c in an hour or two depending on fan settings

[thaCASHdude]

try a newer rev too......

[skid]

Yeah, if you turn on the "lock threads to cores" option, you'll find that one of your cores is hitting 100% usage. That is where the bottleneck is. Without that option enabled, Windows is swapping the threads between the cores and making it look like 50%.

[arboboo]

Sorry for the picture layout, I don't know how to set the size of them in this forum.

(04-04-2010, 01:57 PM)thaCASHdude Wrote: try a newer rev too......

The game I played is:



Yeah, the new 2.0 rc1 32 bit works fine. I have to set it to "run as administrator". And then I got about 40~50 fps at 640 x 480. But I can only get 30 fps in the 64 bit version. In fact I have overclocked the CPU to 400 * 8 = 3.2 GHz. It seems that Dolphin need a better CPU.


My settings:





If I disabled the "efb to ram", I am able to get 60 fps, but the screen like this:





Skit is right, thanks. After I checked "lock threads to cores", 2 of cores is running at 100%, the other 2 cores are only 10%. For the new 2.0 version, the GPU usage is almost zero.

[Ocean]

Black background/map is an issue of older revisions.

Also your settings are ok, just tweak with setting framelimiter to off/auto, switch audio throttle on/off so it's not too fast or too slow. Locking thread to core can speed up too like dev. said

[thaCASHdude]

or try the dx9 plugin