Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi there,

I'm using the latest version of Dolphin x64 (r7358)

The only game I play on this is Super Smash Bros. Melee, with my mates.

My problem is I'm getting some weird bugs and smoothness problems when playing.

For instance, if I play the game using the D3D9 or D3D11 (Which I prefer to use), I'll get some odd lag spikes during gameplay, sometimes when nothing is really happening (No explosions, nothing but movement, etc.)

I tried to remedy this by changing the root of most problems it seems, the Dual Core and Idle Skipping.

Here are all of the cases where I encounter problems:



D3D11:

Dual Core Disabled - Idle Skipping Disabled

>Runs at 60 FPS, game runs slowly however at half the speed it should, random lag spikes

Dual Core Disabled - Idle Skipping Enabled

>Runs at 60 FPS, game runs slowly, however at half the speed it should, random lag spikes

Dual Core Enabled - Idle Skipping Disabled

>Runs at 60 FPS, game runs normal speed, very bad lag spikes

Dual Core Enabled - Idle Skipping Enabled

>Runs at 60 FPS, game runs around 3/4 speed, very bad lag spikes



D3D9:

All Cases

>Runs at 60 FPS, random pestering lag spikes



OpenGL

All Cases

>More or less runs smoothly, some random smaller lag spikes



Note that in all cases of lag spikes, the sound stutters with the game as well

My graphics settings are default, no AA or AF on. I'm running it full-screen in 1080p, with Progressive Scan option turned off, and no Widescreen.

My hardware is as follows:

Nvidia GTX 480 (Latest Drivers)
6 GB DDR3 RAM
Intel i7 930 (Quad-Core @ 2.8 GHz)



I don't think the game should run as poorly as it does where I'm on a clean install of Windows 7, with drivers that are up to date.

If anybody can help me remedy the lag spikes, it'd be very appreciated!

Try toggling "Lock threads to cores" and disable "audio throttle".

The audio throttle when enabled in the menus makes the framerate go insane, in game it lags again. I'm starting to think the D3D9 plugin is more realistic to use than the D3D11 which seems more buggy.

Locking the threads didn't really seem to do much all in all, nothing I could notice anyways.

At this point I'd be happy if I could just get the D3D9 plugin running smoothly :\

EDIT:

Regardless of what plugin I'm using, I get random stuttering, very small, but noticeable. It doesn't however, reflect at all in the framerate. The FPS stays at a constant 60 when the stuttering occurs. The best way I can describe the stuttering is almost like its skipping frames, but it does this when idle skipping is disabled in the best running plugin, OpenGL, which should be slower than the D3D9

It would be easier if you posted pictures of all of your configs rather than me just telling you one at a time what to change, but make sure efb to texture is set. Other than that, try older revisions.

My configs are default for the most part, the only thing I changed graphics wise was the EFB > Texture like you said, which did alleviate some stuttering in OpenGL, but its far from perfect on D3D9 which should be faster.

Other than that, settings are completely vanilla, I can upload pics but I'm not sure if its worth the time to

The only other idea I have for you is to disable hyper threading on your cpu. Some say that solves some issues and others say that not using lock threads to cores also works.

Use a revision from the svn discussion section of the forum instead of the revisions on the main site.
I know it's a bit out of date but try this build: http://cid-b8ece3275d590dda.office.live....%207120.7z

Turn off "use fps for limiting" set the framelimit to 60 and turn on v-sync in the graphics plugin.

Alright, so I'm still unsure as to the root of the problem, but I've merged both of your ideas together, and got it working (Finally!)

I did a combination of Enabling V-Sync, Setting Frame Limit to 60, and disabling Audio Throttle.

It still has VERY small hiccups now and again, but for the most part seems to be working quite well, at least for the D3D9 plugin. The D3D11 plugin needs some more work I think, no matter what I do the FPS actually drops 10-15% per character playing if there's anything at all happening. 4 people playing it makes it go to ~15-20 FPS, no-frills :3 (The muti-enemy levels make the game drop to nothing)

Now, what I find really odd is that an older version of Dolphin 2, aside from a shadow problem, seems to work. I'm not sure the exact release, but I found this release on my backup HDD. This has absolutely no problems whatsoever with speed. The folder was created Sept 4, 2010, and the folder is called "dolphin-2.0.win64", which doesn't match the current Dolphin 2 release which the program's folder is just called x64.

If anybody remembers around which revision this was (There are far too many to keep track of), it'd be great if you could let me know!

And thanks for the help guys! I really appreciate it!

5186 was 2.0 RC
5350 was 2.0 release

And yes the d3d11 plugin is generally slower than d3d9. And the stuttering is a well known issue that didn't begin until somewhere between 5900-6500.