Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi All

I was hoping some pros can give me some advice, I want to speed up Dolphin and am a bit consfused as it seems to run slow. I've bought wiimotes and that side is perfect. The emulator is amazing.

I have 64bit Vista, 8GB Ram, Intel 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @2.4GHz.
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX

For the Graphics I use Dolphin Direct3D9 (OpenGL was missing textures when rendering in MarioKart).
I think Direct3D9 is better suited.

I have fullscreen selected at 1280x720 (however systemwise I use 1980x1080 not playing games on a 48" lcd). I have no idea what the max res the Wii kicks out, somewhere I thought I read 720p? First off is this a good setup.

In Direct3D TAB:
I have no Anti-Alias.
Safe Texture Cache is unchecked.
Enable CPU -> EFB access is checked.

In Enhancements TAB:
Force bi/trilinear is unchecked.
Enable 16x anisotropy filtering is unchecked.
Enable hires texture loading is unchecked.
EFB Scaled Copy is checked.

In Advanced TAB:
Disable Fog is checked.
Enable EFB copy is checked with radio 'to texture' selected not RAM.
Overlay FPS counter is checked.
Enable Hotkey is unchecked.
Enable Wireframe is unchecked.
Dump textures is unchecked.
Dump Frames to User/Dump/Frames is unchecked.
All Debugging tools are unchecked.

Now although most games run between 90 - 100% speed, games like Mario Galaxy I get 25-30 FPS, with 50-60 on the cutscenes.

I can imagine Wii Games being a huge resource emulated, but I cant understand why it feels the games are running slow as there not bad system specs?

Any advice on the graphics setup to improve speed would be welcome.

Thanks Chris

I have no idea what the max res the Wii kicks out, somewhere I thought I read 720p? First off is this a good setup.

The wii's limit is 480p. On Dolphin there is no limit.

can imagine Wii Games being a huge resource emulated, but I cant understand why it feels the games are running slow as there not bad system specs?

Not always, it depends on what parts of the emulator the game utilizes more, e.g. some graphical techniques the games are using are simply much slower on Dolphin. SMG1/SMG2 are pretty slow games. If the games are supposed to run at 60FPS, you NEED 60FPS for the games to run fullspeed. Frameskipping might speed them up slightly though. For emulation you need a very strong CPU, and Dolphin utilizes only 2 cores. Some faster options:
Use DList Caching (can give graphic bugs)
Don't use safe texture cache (or set it to "fast")
Set EFB copy to texture (or disable, gives graphical glitches in some games)
In Dolphin configuration > wii tab, deselect "Use EuRGB60 Mode" (If your games are PAL they will run at slightly lower framerate at fullspeed)

Thank you for the advice KHRZ.
With your settings I noticed improvements.

Its a shame that Dolphin will only use 2 of the 4 cores.
Chris

Overclock your Q6600 to 3.2GHz. 2.4GHz is considered low for dolphin with a core 2 series cpu.