Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Somebody knows some tricks to speed up dolphin in linux?

I don't mean the typical stuff like changing settings in dolphin. I switched from WinXP to Linux64 and get an average of 20fps on my netbook now. In windows 20fps was the maximum!

In XP I can set affinity and priority of processes in task manager to raise speed. Does something like this exist in linux as well? What's about memory-related things? E.g. are there ways to run dolphin-only without KDE? I bet it would increase performance as well.

But most important: Where can I get the legendary SVN-6515-version for linux64 and SSSE3? According to the threat it must be a lot faster than other builds. Unfortunately only for windows. Tried it in XP and indeed got better performance - however still slower than linux.

System: ATI Radeon HD6300,
AMD-E350 Dual-Core 1,6Ghz
WinXP32Bit, Ubuntu-64Bit
2GB RAM
SSD-HD

I just need 4 frames more per second to play games in endurable speed. Would be glad for help.

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Found this site for older SVN-builds - unfortunately all windows-only: Lectrode's Site

I did mistaken - I am searching for a Linux64-SSE4A-version of dolphin-6515.

So...instead of just tweaking the graphics-settings I want:

-High-priority-usage of both cores
-64Bit-usage (done)
-Removing as much background-progs as possible to maximize CPU. (should be possible well in linux - maybe with some no-gui-distro)
-Usage of SSE4A
-Usag of fastest build
-more ideas

I think a raise in performance should be possible this way. Please help.

Found another tweak:

PAL-games shall run faster than NTSC-games (60fps-50fps=10fps more speed). Anyone has more ideas?

Well i think you can run the X server like the following commands, startx or xinit. If you were to go in and modify the startup files to not run the gui and run the X server itself, you could go into the x server configs for startx and remove all the xterms and place dolphin.
^ NEVER DO THIS. EVER!!! System could fail to boot up and might need reinstall ^

Use pal games for cheap speedup.

Getting a faster processor.

SSE4a only provides 4 more instructions to the processor so theres not much help there.

Use Speed up Disk Transfer Rate.

Memory doesnt matter much for speed.

Make sure dual core is enabled?

(11-27-2011, 12:45 PM)gamax92 Wrote: [ -> ]Well i think you can run the X server like the following commands, startx or xinit. If you were to go in and modify the startup files to not run the gui and run the X server itself, you could go into the x server configs for startx and remove all the xterms and place dolphin.
^ NEVER DO THIS. EVER!!! System could fail to boot up and might need reinstall ^

You can use xinit to do that without touching your config.
It's not going to help with performance anyway though unless he's running compiz with all kinds of weird effects turned on.

(11-27-2011, 12:45 PM)gamax92 Wrote: [ -> ]Speed up Disk Transfer Rate

Don't advice stuff if you have no idea what you're talking about. The option you mentioned is already enabled for all games which have no problems with it. Also, it doesn't really help much with performance, it just improves loading times.

@OP: Try what's suggested at http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=2444 with the CONFIG_HZ=1000 stuff.
You should be able to check if that's already enabled by (z)grep'ing your kernel config in /proc.

I've seen the post but didn't understand what they were doing. Isn't this an option for kernel-compiling?! If not, how do I set it up? My /proc/-folder seems to be empty.

Quote:Getting a faster processor.

SSE4a only provides 4 more instructions to the processor so theres not much help there.

Use Speed up Disk Transfer Rate.

Memory doesn't matter much for speed.

Make sure dual core is enabled?

-It propably gives better performance if SSE was supported and of course it should be in highest possible version.

-With SSD I don't worry about disk-speed and as gamax mentioned, it's propably turned on by default.

-It's not about memory, it's about CPU-usage. In process-list, Xorg needs as much as Dolphin does.

-Dual-core should be enabled by default. However, I don't know how to make sure.

Is there some way to set process-priorities in Linux? Maybe dolphin can get forced to use most CPU-power.[/quote]

If you can, buy an Nvidia GPU. AMD drivers are really shitty on Linux (slow and unstable). I've got better FPS on a Core Quad @ 2.8GHz + Nvidia 8800GTS than on a Core i7-920 @ 3.2GHz + AMD6770.

Using the ALSA audio backend instead of Pulse in Dolphin settings tends to help too, even if ALSA is configured to forward audio to Pulse on your system. No idea why this is the case though, and YMMV.

As mentioned above, I'm playing on a netbook. CPU- and Graphics are not upgradeable. However, Linux still keeps being tweakable.

(11-27-2011, 09:42 PM)spacepilot Wrote: [ -> ]As mentioned above, I'm playing on a netbook. CPU- and Graphics are not upgradeable.

Technically they are. (At least the CPU is) Just like their desktop counterparts, embedded processors CAN be swapped for a faster or multicore sibling with the same pin arrangement.

Unfortunately the things are soldered directly to the motherboard rather than placed in a holder. So if you're REALLY good with a soldering iron, they can be upgraded.



Have you considered making your netbook part of a Beowulf cluster?

(11-27-2011, 07:42 PM)spacepilot Wrote: [ -> ]I've seen the post but didn't understand what they were doing. Isn't this an option for kernel-compiling?! If not, how do I set it up? My /proc/-folder seems to be empty.

Yes, it's a compile-time kernel option. Unfortunately you really have to recompile your kernel to try this out.
However, glennrics (the guy who suggested using CONFIG_HZ=1000) should be reliable in that regard, so it's probably your best bet.
As far as I can tell, Ubuntu uses CONFIG_HZ=250, whereas openSUSE 11.4/12.1 use CONFIG_HZ=1000 by default. Maybe you can install one of those on an external HDD to test Dolphin performance there?