Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I'm trying my hardest to get Super Smash Bros. Brawl (and even Melee!) to run at a somewhat smooth framerate on my secondary PC (runs beautifully on my i7). I don't even need super fancy graphics, I just want it to run at full speed. I apologize for creating yet another one of these threads but I have yet to find a nice, compiled list of all of the recommended settings/hacks to use to get the most out of Brawl. Here are the current specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93Ghz)
3GB Ram
Radeon HD5570 Video card
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Dolphin 3.0 Release

Linked below is a screenshot of every single one of my Dolphin settings. Currently if I use Native Resolution x1, I get less than 30FPS on both Brawl and Melee. It surprises me that I get such low framerates on Melee being a Gamecube game. This is why I wanted to have someone look over my settings before I go buy new hardware again.

One note, if I drop the Native Resolution down to the lowest settings (x0.375 or x0.5), I can get about 40-45 fps which is someone playable, but the 0.375 looks terrible obviously, and that's on the PictoChat level which seemed the least graphic intensive. Any tweaks I could make here or is hardware my only choice? Tried Direct3D11 too, no help.

End goal is to have it running in a homemade arcade cabinet, so "just running it on Wii" isn't an option for this project. Any and all help is appreciated!

http://i.imgur.com/g2pmM.png

(I got these settings from another thread but never heard if they were optimal or not)

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Am I blind or is there no edit button?

Forgot to mention that during all of my test plays, the CPU is 100% slammed on both cores, so I'm reasonably sure the graphics card is fine at this point.

Something is very wrong here. You should not be getting such poor performance on that hardware with those settings except in multiplayer.

Check your cpu temperatures first and make sure it's not overheating and down throttling. Make sure no other programs are running while dolphin is running.

The fact that dropping your internal resolution is improving your performance would seem to suggest that the GPU is the bottleneck yet a 6570 should easily be able to handle 1x so that doesn't really make sense either.

Also thank you for posting all of the required info., it means a lot not having to ask for it.

You've got me thinking now. I downloaded "RealTemp" and tried to monitor the temperature of the CPU cores, but both of them were at a steady 41 degrees. Too steady, actually. It didn't budge from 41, up or down, at all. So that was weird.

RealTemp also is saying my processor is 1600Mhz? Even though its like 2.96Ghz. Weird. So I hopped over into the BIOs. It lists the processor as 2.96GHz on the banner area, but it says the Processor speed is 0.40Ghz? This seems strange. I have tried a couple of different CPUs at this point with similar results, so I don't think anything is wrong with any of these CPUs. I wonder if something is wrong with my motherboard? Or maybe I need a BIOs update...

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Two things to point out though... I am playing 4 player matches to test the framerate (because that is my end goal), and you mentioned the GPU as 6570, but its 5570. Just FYI.

Quote:Two things to point out though... I am playing 4 player matches to test the framerate (because that is my end goal)

4 players as in you and 3 CPU enemies
or
4 players as in 4 real players (sorry I don't actually play super smash bros. so I'm not sure how the game is set up)

Well my tests are me and 3 CPU players, but I sort of assumed it would play the same whether it was CPU players or real players. End goal will be real players.

Try it with 2 players (1 cpu) and tell me if the performance improves (I'm willing to bet that will fix it).

it sounds like your cpu is at minimal speed
set the battery performance to max speed
than your cpu should clock higher

Quote:battery performance

He's using a desktop.

So I just went through and tried a 2-player match (sorry for the delay), and it ran super smooth and full speed. While that should be a good thing, it is very disappointing for me because my end goal is 4-player.

On one hand I'm curious if there is something up with my machine that is causing my CPU not to clock at full speed. The motherboard (and BIOS) are not very good.

On the other hand, I think I'm at a point where I would rather upgrade the whole machine than just trying a new motherboard and hoping for the best. So I have two outstanding questions..

1. Should my Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 ideally be capable of running 4-player SSBB at full speed?

2. If I were to upgrade, what is an affordable CPU to base the system on to get good FPS on Wii games? I know the Intel i series of processors are amazing (I'm running an i7 on my main machine and its awesome), but they are a bit pricey for this project. The 100% ONLY purpose for this second machine is emulation, so if an affordable AMD processor is suitable I'll go that route. I can get a AMD Phenom II X4 840 for $60 which is an amazing price. Would that be suitable?

Thanks again for the help.

1) Nope
2) Overclock your E7500 . You're downgrading to AMD x4 840 !
Dolphin mainly uses 2 core and that AMD is not good at overclocking