Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

So, I discovered about this emulator yesterday and I've been busy setting it up for quite some hours now, without all too much success though.

I'm mostly just concerned about getting Harvest Moon: Animal Parade to work on it, but I've run into some issues that I can't seem to fix.

The game starts, runs fine in the menu, though it drops to about 40% in the opening scene, but it goes up to 100% without problems once I actually have control inside of my farm.

However, whenever I step outside, the FPS dips instantly and hovers around 50-60%. I've already tried a multitude of options recommended on the forums (such as turning fog off, changing the graphics settings around a few times and some other stuff that went beyond me).

I'd highly appreciate any hints as to what I can possibly do to improve. I just want to be able to play this game smoothly (not even too concerned about any audio bugs or small things like that).

Thanks in advance!


Computer Specs:
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor/CPU: AMD Athlon II x3 445 @3.10Ghz
Video Card/GPU: ATI HD6850
Memory/RAM: 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz Geil
Dolphin Revision Currently Using: R87954 3.0-587-dirty 64-bit

First of all: Pls post your settings (screenshot)

And: Is there a possibility to overclock your CPU? Overclocking is the best way to gain more FPS.

(04-08-2012, 03:28 AM)DefenderX Wrote: [ -> ]First of all: Pls post your settings (screenshot)

And: Is there a possibility to overclock your CPU? Overclocking is the best way to gain more FPS.

Sorry for the late response. Here's a screen-shot with my current settings (I think I mostly went back to default settings, since nothing seemed to really work.)

Set the backend to Direct3D9 and check OpenMP Texture Decoder. Besides, you can try Skip EFB Access from CPU.

The rest looks fine to me.

Your CPU won't cut it . Athlon and Phenom ain't good at overclocking compare to Intel
If you overclock it to 3.5ghz , you might get 75% at best

(04-08-2012, 05:41 PM)DefenderX Wrote: [ -> ]Set the backend to Direct3D9 and check OpenMP Texture Decoder. Besides, you can try Skip EFB Access from CPU.

The rest looks fine to me.

Thanks a lot! It's now at least running at a steady 20fps, which feels playable enough in the game. Though, I'd still like it to be 30fps, but I'm afraid that my PC just won't do. Never thought emulators were this taxing, considering I can play the newest PC games at max without problem =P.

(04-08-2012, 05:45 PM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Your CPU won't cut it . Athlon and Phenom ain't good at overclocking compare to Intel
If you overclock it to 3.5ghz , you might get 75% at best

My CPU is already slightly OC'd I think. With my stock cooler I don't think I can push it any further. Time to save up and get a PhenomII X4 with an aftermarket cooler I guess

Well, you can try my ICC optimized builds (your CPU supports SSE3). They might be faster than regular builds.
Just click on the link in my signature