Windows 10 broke my Dolphin, i think?

05-17-2016, 04:08 AM #1

First off, please excuse me if this is a thing. I tried searching and couldn't find anything like it on the forums or the google.

So, pre-Windows 10, I could run a couple games (namely Windwaker and Thousand Year Door, those are the most important to me :p) just fine. WW had a little bit of a stutter and wasn't perfect, but it was completely playable. And TTYD ran buttery smooth. So, fast forward to me upgrading to Windows 10 a while back, and then recently I get a bug up my butt to play some of my old favorites again. Except... I'm struggling to stay above 30 FPS on the games I used to be able to run fine. On the exact same build and revision, with the exact same configurations, that I had pre-Windows 10 upgrade. I know it's the exact same cuz I hadn't touched the program til just the other day. So I figure the build I was using was just old and not very compatible with 10 or whatever, so I switch to the latest dev build, and... Bam. Still Getting terrible FPS (though admittedly better -- TTYD can hit 45 at max and Mario Superstar Baseball is at an almost playable 30!)

So, I'm curious what I'm messing up that's causing these problems. Specs are

Processer: Intel Core i7-4700MQ
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M
8GB of RAM
and using build 4.0-9327x64, because I can't find an x84 version and I swear to God if that's my problem I'm gon' cry.

**Helios** · 05-17-2016, 04:21 AM #2

Hmm, I see three possibilities here:

1. Your Dolphin config could have a bad setting

Solution for this, close Dolphin, go into Documents/Dolphin Emulator/config/ and delete dolphin.ini, and reopen dolphin. Test your games. Is it slow? If no, go into Graphics > Enhancements, turn up your Internal Resolution how you like it. Is it slow?

If that solution doesn't work...

2. Windows 10 screwed up your GPU drivers

Solution: Go download the latest nvidia driver for your system

3. your system is in a power saving mode. Go into Windows Power Options and set it to high performance

Korados · (This post was last modified: 05-17-2016, 04:36 AM by Korados.)

The 32-bit version was canceled. Interesting, you have almost the same specs as I do! Is it an Alienware 17 you're playing on?
I'm still on Windows 8.1 but I experienced some problems with Wii Sports Resort lately. I set the resolution to a fixed integer,
that is 3x Native. Then the stutters went away. Maybe this helps you, too. In the recent versions of Dolphin, the Auto resolutions seem
to be messed up. At least for me.

05-17-2016, 04:58 AM #4

The config thing definitely sped it up! Though the only game hitting constant 60 is Mario Baseball -- which is fine, it's the reason I pulled Dolphin off the shelf again :p I can probably look up game specific threads for stuff now, I guess, to get it working better.

Also @Korados, yes, I am using an Alienware 17. I'll try out the resolution thing, too, once my drivers finish updating. Although maybe you can tell me what you mean by "fixed integer that is 3x native" because I'm, like, half-tech-stupid.

**Helios** · 05-17-2016, 05:07 AM #5

Cool.

This sort of thing happens often enough that I kind of want to implement a "Reset settings to default" function in Dolphin.

The most common setting that kills users seems to be v-sync. It will decimate emulation speed if you cannot maintain a perfect emulation speed for any particular game.

Korados · (This post was last modified: 05-17-2016, 07:09 AM by Korados.)

(05-17-2016, 05:07 AM)Helios Wrote: This sort of thing happens often enough that I kind of want to implement a "Reset settings to default" function in Dolphin.

You can say that again! I suggested this a couple of times but they told me that I just should delete the dolphin.ini.
But this is very inconvenient in my opinion.

In the graphic settings, you can set the Internal Resolution either to Auto or to a fixed number. Most games
work with the Auto settings but they are a few games where they can cause slowdowns. When you set it to 3x Native,
Dolphin renders the game at 1080p, which is the default resolution for the Alienware 17.

**Helios** · 05-17-2016, 07:18 AM #7

We default to 1x native now.

**admin89** · 05-17-2016, 12:43 PM #8

Quote:I'm struggling to stay above 30 FPS on the games I used to be able to run fine. On the exact same build and revision, with the exact same configurations, that I had pre-Windows 10 upgrade. I know it's the exact same cuz I hadn't touched the program til just the other day. So I figure the build I was using was just old and not very compatible with 10 or whatever, so I switch to the latest dev build, and... Bam. Still Getting terrible FPS (though admittedly better -- TTYD can hit 45 at max and Mario Superstar Baseball is at an almost playable 30!)

Windows 10 x64 itself is not faster than Windows 7/8 64bit
Directx12 (latest Dolphin dev) is the main reason why people want to upgrade to Windows 10 . So if you're using the exact same config as mention above (ether Dx11 or OpenGL) , obviously you won't get any improvement at all
Also , make sure you read the performance guide
https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#my-laptop-new-gpu-not-performing-well-it-should

Korados · (This post was last modified: 05-18-2016, 01:45 AM by Korados.)

I just looked it up, the 765M is compatible with DirectX 12. Maybe I should also upgrade but I hate the new interface a lot.

**Helios** · 05-18-2016, 02:03 AM **#10**

I'm on Windows 10 and I like it for the most part. But I like the interface, so, YMMV.

D3D12 has performance benefits for most games. From user reports it's a fair bit buggier than our D3D11 and OGL backends right now (haven't gotten too many complaints after the latest D3D12 merge though!) but if you're needing better performance in games to reach full speed or turn on more eye candy (SSAA is super nice), D3D12 is worth a try. As far as I know it's now feature parity with the other backends as well?