Wii gaming in 4k

[Titannous]

I have recently acquired a 4k tv and then I stumbled upon dolphin.
I was looking for some games to play to break in the monitor and realized I have missed the entire wii/late gamecube cycle (skyward sword, Galaxy 1&2, etc.).

So obviously I am excited to venture into the process of playing dolphin in 4k, however there does not seem to be any post about how things will function with this new technology.

I was hoping that I could get some advice on theoretical problems I could run into.

I also am curious where my bottleneck is going to occur. It takes A LOT of power to run 4k and while most games pull from the GPU I know that dolphin is very CPU intensive.
Does the CPU power needed become higher at higher pixels? I know in most gaming cases it is almost the opposite with CPU bottlenecks happening at lower resolutions.

Like I said I am a emulator newbie and would love any help i can get with getting Skyward sword 100% in 4k, Thanks

[KHg8m3r]

Good news for you: you have basically the ideal computer hardware setup for Dolphin.

Dolphin heavily relies on CPU single-core performance. Which means that the i5-4670k and i7-4770k will perform the same when it comes to the CPU side. Your benefit is that all your other programs can take advantage of that hyper-threading that Dolphin doesn't use. And you already overclocked, good job

When it comes to raising the resolution of games, the vast majority falls onto the GPU. And you have a really good card . Using the OpenGL backend with the Vertex Streaming Hack will give you the best speeds. Go to the Nvidia Control Panel, and set Dolphin to a high performance profile to have your card running at max.

Now, to optimize:
1) Update drivers, Windows updates, DirectX Web updater, and latest version of Visual C++ (some components may be missing)
2) Make sure under Power Management in Windows you're running in High Performance.
3) Use the OpenGL backend on one of the latest dev builds, as it is faster than D3D. The dev builds have speed improvements that 4.0.1/4.0.2 don't have (but they have some extra bugs that are being fixed before the next major release). The current dev build is 4.0-612 (which actually makes the default backend OpenGL).

For Skyward Sword, you need a REAL WIIMOTE PLUS. Go get one, get a sensor bar (USB cable or wireless, your preference), and then follow this guide: https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/guides/configuring-controllers/#Real_Wiimote

[kinkinkijkin]

(01-15-2014, 01:40 PM)KHg8m3r Wrote: And you have the best (besides a Titan).

WOAH

STOP RIGHT THERE

EXPLAIN TO ME HOW 760 OUTCLASSES EVERYTHING UP TO TITAN

[Titannous]

Thanks man I was wondering how to get the Open GL running right! I'll give that a try, it will take a while to optimism my settings. Here is a little taste of 4k if anyone was curious what the difference it looks like. http://imgur.com/b48fIgS 4k vs 1080p and http://imgur.com/dNH1lO5 will probably need to zoom on the second one to notice the difference.

---

"WOAH STOP RIGHT THERE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW 760 OUTCLASSES EVERYTHING UP TO TITAN"

I don't think it does he might have thought I had the 780

power ratings go:
780 TI
Titan
780
770 4Gb
770 2Gb
760 4Gb
760 2Gb<mine

However I am currently "borrowing" this 760 for testing 4k but will try a 770 tomorrow.
If either of these 2 card are not strong enough will probably either get the 780 Ti or wait for 800 series

[KHg8m3r]

(01-15-2014, 02:51 PM)Titannous Wrote: "WOAH STOP RIGHT THERE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW 760 OUTCLASSES EVERYTHING UP TO TITAN"

I don't think it does he might have thought I had the 780

Curse you tiny screen on my phone. That's exactly what happened

[Shonumi]

@kinkinkijkin - Please avoid CAPS-Lock posts. They're annoying and you can certainly get people's attentions without them.

[admin89]

In order to have the best graphic , i always use Internal Resolution (IR) which is set to be higher than native resolution
Due to downscalling , the image / graphic will look much better / sharper than using the default resolution
For Example :
_2.5 -> 3x IR (1600x1320 ~ 1320p -> 1920x1584 ~ 1584p) for 1366x768 display
_4 -> 6xIR (2560x2112 ~ 2112p -> 3840x3168 ~ 3160p) for 1080p display
Since you have a 4k monitor , you will need insane IR level which is way beyond 4k resolution to get sharpest graphic quality as possible . I doubt a GTX 760 or a GTX 770 could handle that IR
Btw , you can get the same result by using anti-aliasing . 3xIR + 4x SSAA = 6xIR (SSAA is way more intensive / demanding than MSAA and other AA )

[Titannous]

@admin89 - Interesting thoughts on IR. I have actually noticed a performance increase by around 10fps when I change from auto window size to 3xIR. My assumption is that with a 4k window size im already getting a higher IR then 2560x2112. I do go from 60% GPU load to around 80% when I go to 4x SSAA and I lose around 40Fps! Do you know if 4xSSAA also increases CPU load?

I had some interesting results in testing FPS. I was hoping the new dolphin devo version would be faster. Which while it is it still is not as fast as Direct3D9. Is this an expected result?

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Dolphin 4.0-612
Open GL: 61fps
Direct3D: 51fps

Dolphin 4.0.2
Direct3D9: 70fps
Direct3D11: 53fps
Open GL: 47

[Titannous]

I ended up overclocking to 4.5Ghz and picking up a GTX770. Direct3D9 ended up being the fastest by about 10-20 frames. I get 45-50 frames in skyward sword with everything enabled except like you said I cannot do SSAAx4 or x6. When I do my GPU spikes from 60-70% to 99% and the memory fills up to. I'm debating overclocking the GPU to see if that helps but I don't think it will be possible. I am not sure if even a 780 or 780 TI could do SSx4 at 45 fps (what do you think?), and honestly at 4k i'm not sure I can see the difference between using SSAAx6 or not. I am pretty happy with the results and when I auto lock frames i get a constant 30fps which is perfectly 100%. Thanks for the help!

[Shonumi]

Just to nitpick, there's no such thing afaik called 6x SSAA. The next step up from 4xSSAA is 9xSSAA. 4xSSAA generates an image that's twice the width and twice the height of the original image before doing any shrinking, thus you generate an image with 4 times as many pixels. 9xSSAA generates an image with 9 times as many pixels as the original, likewise. Trying to do 6x IR in combination with 4xSSAA (which is what you tried to do? It isn't clear) would force your GPU to generate an image at 12x IR (7680x6336) so it's no wonder you're chugging along (I'm not sure any GPU can do this currently). 6x IR alone should achievable though (3840x3168).