Wind Waker super low <30 FPS

[arcanise]

ok to start it off my computer specs are as follow
core i7 965XE @~3.4Ghz
12 GB Corsair Gold
2 Nividia GTX 465's
2 HDD's 1TB each
1 SSD 64GB

my dolphin settings are as follow

~~~~~General~~~~~
Dual core speed up - yes
Enable Idle Skipping - yes
Enable cheats - no
Framelimit - Auto
Advanced setting
-JIT recompiler-
Force console as NTSC-J - no

~~~~~Audio~~~~~
DSP Emulation Engine - HLE
**everything else default**


~~~~~Graphics~~~~~
Diirect3D11
Adapter = Geforece GTX 465
Fullscreen reso - Auto
Aspect Ratio - Auto
V-sync - off
fullscreen - off
Show FPS - on
***all else off***

all other settings default



now my issue is that wind waker is unbearably slow, like it sticks around ~28 FPS when not doing anything, but if i got sailing or if i encounter an enemy or even start to just do obstacles my FPS drops to ~10 FPS and my audio become very badly chopped and un-playable

these issues do not occur in ANY other game, i can play sunshine at full 60FPS with no issues, pikmin 2 with ~40FPS and smash bros with similar results

anyone have any ideas on how to improve my stuff, would burning my iso to a dvd help in any way?

[Shonumi]

This game uses LLE audio by default (it overrides your settings in Config -> Audio) so you're probably not using HLE audio like you think you are. Right-click Wind Waker in Dolphin and go to Properties -> GameConfig. Make sure that you check the box for HLE audio. Note that HLE audio has some issues even though it's faster, see the wiki for details and solutions: https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?t...ay_Screens namely set your Framelimit to Auto or 60.

i can play sunshine at full 60FPS

Super Mario Sunshine is a 30 FPS game. Running it at 60 FPS will make the game run twice as fast as it's supposed to (the FPS and gamespeed are linked, see Frame Dependent Motion in game programming). Wind Waker is a 30/60 FPS game for NTSC versions (it runs 60 FPS sometimes, like when the Nintendo logo appears, rest of the game is 30) and 30/50 for PAL versions. 30 FPS is your target for most of Wind Waker. Look at the % at the bottom of Dolphin when playing in Windowed Mode to get your game speed.

[arcanise]

thank you shonumi that actually fixed my issues, and when i say i can run a game beyond its 30FPS normal rate i mean with no frame limit my computer will try to run it at 60+ FPS, but yeah now wind waker is a solid 30FPS thank you

[pauldacheez]

Note that LLE is forced on for Wind Waker for a reason – HLE causes occasional hangs (black/white/greyscreens when going through doors or before/after cutscenes or other transitions) and has a handful of audio issues. Save often with regular memory-card saves. Avoid using save states; loading a save state that was made before your current memory card save and attempting to save again will corrupt your save file. (Yeah, you could just continue saving with save states, but then you're stuck with HLE, and if you end up hitting one of those hangs and you can't get past it after multiple tries, you're fucked.)

As one of the two people responsible for the LLE change (tl;dr, I was tired of people running into the above issues, so I asked if someone could force LLE for Wind Waker, and RachelB did just that), I think it'd be better to just overclock so you're getting full speed (or at least close) with LLE. If it's close enough that you don't notice the speed issues but the stuttering audio gets on your nerves, use the OpenAL audio backend.

[arcanise]

my CPU is already OC'd i need better cooling for going above my current set up, and i have yet to run into any issues with HLE, any idea what causes the issues with HLE?! maybe a fix for the HLE problems is in order

[pauldacheez]

We're well-aware of the cause (the audio processing being done asynchronously from the CPU, thus minor timing discrepancies make the CPU miss an "audio stream ended" signal from the DSP – this is actually also why "LLE on Separate Thread" causes these same exact issues), the issue is that it'd be a lot of work/restructuring to fix and nobody really wants to do it. delroth, the guy who rewrote the HLE for the audio µcodes that the vast majority of non-first-party Nintendo games use, quit Dolphin partly (though probably not mostly) because of idiot users who preferred the old, extremely-buggy, a-fucking-wonder-it-ever-worked-at-all HLE (whose output I once managed to mistake for SNES music) just because it played music at full speed whether they were running the game at full speed or not. I'm sure that in this case the users would complain less (because they're currently using LLE for most Zelda µcode games, which is my fault and kostamarino's), but I doubt delroth cares, nor will he ever want to rewrite the Zelda µcode HLE.