Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I decided to hack Resident Evil Zero, one day, and thought I should hack Rapid Fire. I slowed the emulator down with Cheat Engine and switched back to the emulator. What I found out was that the game did not slow down...rather, the FPS increased!

Noticeably, I saw a 10 frame difference in half of normal speed. So I decided to test this speed hack for the 10fps areas in Zelda: Legend of the Twilight Princess. I found out that this speed hack trick actually works! All 10fps areas ran at a smooth rate of 30 fps. However, my FPS score keeps moving around 50fps to 60fps; although the game did not render that well.

Nonetheless, this is break through information for me. Could it be that the emulator ran too fast that it missed on a few instructions? Or was it that Dolphin itself could improve on the coding to catch all instructions on-time?

Strangely enough, slowing down the speed of the Emulator dramatically increases the FPS. Who knows, if the Dolphin team can integrate this idea soon, we might have a complete Emulator within months.

This test is done on:

Windows XP Service Pack 2
AMD Athlon X64 +6400 3.2Ghz (Factory Setting)
ATI Radeon HD4870 512MB (Factory Setting)
3.5GB 1022Mhz RAM (Factory Setting)

Game: Resident Evil Zero (USA) 20fps->40fps, Zelda: Legend of Twilight (JAP) 10fps->30fps

One final notice: All emulators seem to have noticeable increased FPS when slowed down with a speed hack of some kind. Mame, PCSX2, ePSXe, etc...

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With further testing, I found an option that would stop this trick from working...If "Copy EFB to System RAM" is on then this trick will be rendered useless. I'm no programmer so I can't explain this happening. Use "Copy EFB to GL" Texture instead and the trick works flawlessly.

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With a bit more of in-depth testing, if the options are right, this speed hack trick would only benefit little. However, if your options are not correct, this speed hack would most definitely increase the fps to a more playable rate.

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Scratch the PCSX2 speed hack trick. I've just tested PCSX2 with this speed hack trick and it worked as it supposed to. Slowing the emulator down would only serve to slow down the game.

Test: PCSX2 with Monster Hunter at Speed 0.5

I've beginning to doubt my own findings. However, the speed increase in Dolphin still confuses my mind as to how it was able to do so. Strange...but I leave this trick up to people to figure out whether it is a benefit or not.

(05-06-2009, 11:55 AM)deacc Wrote: [ -> ]With further testing, I found an option that would stop this trick from working...If "Copy EFB to System RAM" is on then this trick will be rendered useless. I'm no programmer so I can't explain this happening. Use "Copy EFB to GL" Texture instead and the trick works flawlessly.

maybe cheat engine acceses the video cards memory (which is where the images get copied to when "Copy EFB to GL Texture" is used)

Ok, really not a big mistake, but.... Zelda: Legend of the Twilight Princess? WTF????!!!! That's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess though it also makes sense the way you called it. No problem, never mind.

It's Japanese version, everything may happen

(05-06-2009, 03:08 PM)Palanai Wrote: [ -> ]Ok, really not a big mistake, but.... Zelda: Legend of the Twilight Princess? WTF????!!!! That's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess though it also makes sense the way you called it. No problem, never mind.

LOL let's make the responses more useful next time.

An idea popped up after a bit of more testing...when slowing down the emulator, the processor may be able to process a lot more of what the emulator is giving off. That would only mean that the emulator would miss out less on the information that passes through its "translation protocols."

This whole theory is entering complex boundaries and my limited knowledge of programming is really not making things easier.

here's a thought that i had, it could just be that the emu is sending too much information to the cpu (processors slow down when too much information is passing through, even though they're designed to do that kind of stuff), so in the process the pc emu slows down

Are you using a laptop? Under certain circumstances, doing something could cause the processor to switch to a higher "speed step". You should check your battery and power menu and make sure the power plan is set to "High Performance".

LuisR14 have you tested this yourself or has only this guy tested it.

nope i haven't tested it yet (yea i know, shouldn't make assumptions before trying )

Yes, things have become quite interesting here. But I believe I have offered all that I can offer. The rest is for those who are interested to test this theory for themselves.

LuisR14, it could be that Dolphin may need a bit of recoding if Dolphin is overflowing the cpu with information. But since I am no programmer, I can't help there.