I'm having this rather annoying problem playing Xenoblade, in that no matter what settings I use, Dolphin insists on crawling along at 20 FPS max during fights. Some basic info:
Windows 7 x64
Intel i5 @3.30GHz
GeForce GTX 560 Ti (2726MB memory)
4GB RAM
Dolphin version: 3.5-269
Xenoblade version: NTSC
![[Image: 0LYnKId.png]](http://i.imgur.com/0LYnKId.png)
My PC is hooked up to a 42'' HDTV so that's my monitor.
So here's what happens. Outside of battles, the game runs pretty much perfectly at 30 FPS. Even if I'm going into a big area for the first time, the FPS only drops for a few moments before stabilizing around 30 FPS. Occasionally the sound will hang and in rare events the emulator will freeze, but from what I've gathered that's par for the course with this game so I can handle that (save often!)
What's really bugging me is that 95% of the time when I enter combat, the FPS plummets to 19-20. Only time this might not happen is if I'm fighting in a really small, enclosed hallway or something. Okay, I thought, maybe I should turn the graphics settings down. I've tried every permutation of settings I could think of, even going so far as to turn off any performance-decreasing enhancements and render the game at 1x Native in a 640x480 window (Like the settings in the sticky). The game looked like ass and it still crawled along at 19-20 FPS during fights. I'm pretty sure I've seen videos of people doing these fights at a steady 25-30 FPS like it should be, so I have no idea what's going on here. I'm actually 35 hours into the game so I've had plenty of time to try different settings. Things I've tried:
- Rendering in Direct3D9, Direct3D11, and OpenGL. No dice (game still freezes on rare occasions too regardless)
- Rendering in various internal resolutions and switching between windowed/fullscreen. 3x/4x starts to lag outside of battles too (though battles are still at 19-20) so 2x is a sweet spot in terms of non-battles.
- Different framelimit settings, all with/without Limit by FPS checked. Here's where I was actually seeing some interesting things happening:
Auto: What I usually use
Audio: Tried it, didn't notice a difference from Auto
Off: This switched things up a bit. Now battles run at 25-27 FPS like they're supposed to, but everything outside of combat is too fast (usually 40 FPS, 35 walking around in huge areas). Cutscenes are all sped-up and anything outside of combat looks like the game is in a sort-of perpetual fast-forward state, which is offputting to say the least.
I have no idea why the emulator seems capable of handling the battles in normal speed while Framelimit is Off but slows them down on Auto. It's like I can't achieve the correct balance; I can't get the battles to run normally like they do with Framelimit Off and have everything outside of combat run normally like they do with Framelimit Auto. I can understand why the game might run too fast without Framelimiting enabled, what I don't understand is why the automatic setting isn't working the way you'd think it would.
So I'm stumped. Any suggestions?
Windows 7 x64
Intel i5 @3.30GHz
GeForce GTX 560 Ti (2726MB memory)
4GB RAM
Dolphin version: 3.5-269
Xenoblade version: NTSC
My PC is hooked up to a 42'' HDTV so that's my monitor.
So here's what happens. Outside of battles, the game runs pretty much perfectly at 30 FPS. Even if I'm going into a big area for the first time, the FPS only drops for a few moments before stabilizing around 30 FPS. Occasionally the sound will hang and in rare events the emulator will freeze, but from what I've gathered that's par for the course with this game so I can handle that (save often!)
What's really bugging me is that 95% of the time when I enter combat, the FPS plummets to 19-20. Only time this might not happen is if I'm fighting in a really small, enclosed hallway or something. Okay, I thought, maybe I should turn the graphics settings down. I've tried every permutation of settings I could think of, even going so far as to turn off any performance-decreasing enhancements and render the game at 1x Native in a 640x480 window (Like the settings in the sticky). The game looked like ass and it still crawled along at 19-20 FPS during fights. I'm pretty sure I've seen videos of people doing these fights at a steady 25-30 FPS like it should be, so I have no idea what's going on here. I'm actually 35 hours into the game so I've had plenty of time to try different settings. Things I've tried:
- Rendering in Direct3D9, Direct3D11, and OpenGL. No dice (game still freezes on rare occasions too regardless)
- Rendering in various internal resolutions and switching between windowed/fullscreen. 3x/4x starts to lag outside of battles too (though battles are still at 19-20) so 2x is a sweet spot in terms of non-battles.
- Different framelimit settings, all with/without Limit by FPS checked. Here's where I was actually seeing some interesting things happening:
Auto: What I usually use
Audio: Tried it, didn't notice a difference from Auto
Off: This switched things up a bit. Now battles run at 25-27 FPS like they're supposed to, but everything outside of combat is too fast (usually 40 FPS, 35 walking around in huge areas). Cutscenes are all sped-up and anything outside of combat looks like the game is in a sort-of perpetual fast-forward state, which is offputting to say the least.
I have no idea why the emulator seems capable of handling the battles in normal speed while Framelimit is Off but slows them down on Auto. It's like I can't achieve the correct balance; I can't get the battles to run normally like they do with Framelimit Off and have everything outside of combat run normally like they do with Framelimit Auto. I can understand why the game might run too fast without Framelimiting enabled, what I don't understand is why the automatic setting isn't working the way you'd think it would.
So I'm stumped. Any suggestions?
