I'm creating this thread for anyone desiring to play Twilight Princess using Intel integrated graphics, i.e HD 4000, 4400, 4600, 5000, and is experiencing severe frame rate lag in Hyrule Field.
The culprit is a change in to the code in latest versions of Dolphin, which in my testing produce very low frame rates in Hyrule Field, especially towards the end of the game, even with the Hyrule Field Hack enabled. This apparently has something to do with how Intel graphics cards render line-width geometry, which has been modified in Dolphin in the past few months.
On my Microsoft Surface Pro 2 with an Intel i5 4300U @ 1.9-2.9ghz with revision 4.0-6163 I am able to get only 7 fps in Hyrule Field at the very end of the game, when the entire map has been opened up and is accessible. No amount of configuring improves this performance. However, after rolling back to revision 4.0-4674, the performance is completely fixed, with my tablet getting a stable 30fps at 1x internal resolution using OpenGL throughout the entire game.
Dolphin revisions prior to 4699 have the older, less accurate method of calculating line-width geometry shaders, according to this blog post by the Dolphin developers. Revision 4699 introduced a new method which the devs say should lead to less bugs and graphical aberrations.
Unfortunately for Intel graphics users, performance of this new implementation is very poor on integrated graphics. I don't know why, exactly, but changing video drivers doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. Practically, this means that for certain games you should use a revision prior to 4699, in my case 4674. Twilight Princess is one of the games affected, where Intel graphics chips are able to render Hyrule field at a much more playable speed, without any loss in image quality, using the older line-width geometry implementation.
Metroid Prime likewise has a similar issue, only to a lesser degree, when rendering the three-dimensional map screen. Revisions prior to 4699 don't completely fix the framerate issues in that game relating to the map screen, but they make it more playable than using the latest version. I started this thread on the issue, documenting my findings.
For those using laptops and tablets, the older revision does tax the processor a bit more than 6163, so 15w Ultra-low voltage chips might have to stick to 1x internal resolution to avoid thermal throttling.
If anyone else using Intel graphics is experiencing considerably worse performance in the recent revisions where you saw better performance in older ones, please post your findings here as I am curious what other games are affected by the change to these line-width geometry shaders, if any.
The culprit is a change in to the code in latest versions of Dolphin, which in my testing produce very low frame rates in Hyrule Field, especially towards the end of the game, even with the Hyrule Field Hack enabled. This apparently has something to do with how Intel graphics cards render line-width geometry, which has been modified in Dolphin in the past few months.
On my Microsoft Surface Pro 2 with an Intel i5 4300U @ 1.9-2.9ghz with revision 4.0-6163 I am able to get only 7 fps in Hyrule Field at the very end of the game, when the entire map has been opened up and is accessible. No amount of configuring improves this performance. However, after rolling back to revision 4.0-4674, the performance is completely fixed, with my tablet getting a stable 30fps at 1x internal resolution using OpenGL throughout the entire game.
Dolphin revisions prior to 4699 have the older, less accurate method of calculating line-width geometry shaders, according to this blog post by the Dolphin developers. Revision 4699 introduced a new method which the devs say should lead to less bugs and graphical aberrations.
Unfortunately for Intel graphics users, performance of this new implementation is very poor on integrated graphics. I don't know why, exactly, but changing video drivers doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. Practically, this means that for certain games you should use a revision prior to 4699, in my case 4674. Twilight Princess is one of the games affected, where Intel graphics chips are able to render Hyrule field at a much more playable speed, without any loss in image quality, using the older line-width geometry implementation.
Metroid Prime likewise has a similar issue, only to a lesser degree, when rendering the three-dimensional map screen. Revisions prior to 4699 don't completely fix the framerate issues in that game relating to the map screen, but they make it more playable than using the latest version. I started this thread on the issue, documenting my findings.
For those using laptops and tablets, the older revision does tax the processor a bit more than 6163, so 15w Ultra-low voltage chips might have to stick to 1x internal resolution to avoid thermal throttling.
If anyone else using Intel graphics is experiencing considerably worse performance in the recent revisions where you saw better performance in older ones, please post your findings here as I am curious what other games are affected by the change to these line-width geometry shaders, if any.