Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi everyone.

I was wondering if you know how to find the bottleneck of a pc.

I do have a problem with Mario Tennis 64 (Nintendo 64 version, running on dolphin 3.0-751 master branch).

I am not able to reach 100% speed all the time, so I am searching if dolphin is CPU or GPU limited in my case. I have already followed the performance guide.

My specs are in my profile (CPU : Intel 3820QM, GPU : AMD 7970M).

If I trust the windows' task manager, the whole CPU is only used at maybe 25% (and no core is use at 100%) and if I trust GPU-Z, the GPU is only used at 5% (?).

So I was wondering if someone had some advice to understand what's going on, since it doesn't seem to make any sens .

Thanks in advance.

Please note that English is not my native language, and you will probably find mistake(s) in my sentences.

Oh, if you're wondering why I am using dolphin with a N64 game, it's because dolphin is the only one, as far as I know, which can emulate it perfectly.

Y u no use project64? -> http://www.pj64-emu.com

This is a very good N64 emulator.

As I say, no N64 emulator can emulate Mario Tennis 64 correctly (mostly missing effects).

But please, stay on subject, which is to help to understand how to find if the bottleneck is CPU or GPU related.

CPU. Your only solution is to buy a desktop.

Sigh...

Ok, let's get over it.

1)My CPU is quite good, even including the desktop CPU. It is for example far faster than a Q6600...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Proc...436.0.html

2)It's not the point of my thread. I want to know if I can trust the windows task manager and GPU-Z. I want to know how I can see the bottleneck (another software maybe?) (i.e. seeing a 100% usage somewhere).

Maybe I shouldn't have given the context, since it's not relevant to my question.

Edit : sorry if I sound aggressive

Quote: 1)My CPU is quite good, even including the desktop CPU. It is for example far faster than a Q6600...

Why are you comparing your CPU, which is a fairly new CPU, to a CPU from 2007?
Ofcourse your CPU will be faster.

But that's not the point. Your CPU is great, very good for a laptop CPU if I have to say so myself.
The problem however, is that your CPU only turbo boosts up to 3.6GHz on two cores.
And since you already have one of the best CPU's for a laptop, the only solution is to look into getting a desktop should you want that 100% constantly.

Other things you can do is try the game with Dolphin 3.0, with the "fastest settings for Dolphin" config. (Link is in my sig)

Quote: 2)It's not the point of my thread. I want to know if I can trust the windows task manager and GPU-Z. I want to know how I can see the bottleneck (another software maybe?) (i.e. seeing a 100% usage somewhere).

Yes you can trust them. You won't ever see a 100% usage from Dolphin because it only utilizes two CPU cores; three when you enable LLE on Thread.
You have 4 physical CPU cores and 4 virtual CPU cores, which comes to a total of 8 CPU cores. So the 25% reading is correct.

It is not that simple...
As I said before "the whole CPU is only used at maybe 25% (and no core is use at 100%)".

I should have post a screen-shot.

Here it is.
http://hpics.li/bef7a91

As you can see, dolphin uses more than 2 cores (because I use the openMP option, it seems to be faster in my case).

And as you can see, no thread seems to be at 100%.

edit : here is another screen-shot without the openmp option
http://hpics.li/19e8f97

edit 2 : I expected what at least one thread go to 100%, is it a false assumption?

What about other games? I mean with "Real" GC/Wii games. What performance do you get?

Quote:You have 4 physical CPU cores and 4 virtual CPU cores, which comes to a total of 8 CPU cores.

1. No. It has 4 physical cores and 8 logical cores. I don't know where this common notion about counting cores in HT came from but it's wrong. There are two logical cores per physical core with HT, each logical core/hardware thread in the physical core is identical as far as both the physical structure and OS are concerned. There is no way to identify one as "real" and one as "fake".

2. If someone were to ask how many cores it has you would say it has a total of 4 cores because that question always refers to physical cores by default unless otherwise specified.

3. While many people substitute the term "virtual cores" for "logical cores" it is not technically correct. Virtual cores refers to the "fake" cores created by VM software. For example you can have a dual core VM hosted on a single core physical machine.

If you want to learn more: http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread...73&page=11

Quote:It is not that simple...
As I said before "the whole CPU is only used at maybe 25% (and no core is use at 100%)".

I should have post a screen-shot.

We know, he answered your question.

Quote:edit 2 : I expected what at least one thread go to 100%, is it a false assumption?

If you have lock threads to cores off then yes.

@NaturalViolence
I think I begin to understand. But I may have misunderstood your last sentence. I do have lock thread to cores off. It is pretty obvious to everyone (including me!) that I am in this case CPU limited. So shouldn't I see a 100% usage in at least one logical core (please see the screen-shots)? If not (seems to be the case here), please tell the criteria to know when the CPU is at its limit.

@LordVador
No problem at all (1920x1080, x3-4 internal resolution, AA8x, audio LLE etc...)