Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone could help me with a problem I've been having, my FPS in Dolphin has been between10-20 and the game speed has been lower than 70% so games have been totally unplayable. I've spent days now scouring the internet for different settings and have tried several different combinations but nothing has had any real effect. My computer has a 2.4 GHz quad core with 8 GB of RAM and my video card is AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB... are these specs just not sufficient to play Dolphin smoothly or can anyone think of why I might be having these problems?

You haven't said which games you're trying to play. Not every game demands the same amount of hardware resources to emulate. Some games are pretty demanding and require overclocked systems (The Last Story, Metroid Prime games to name a few). Others are really lightweight, and your microwave could run on just about anything (Animal Crossing (GC), TimeSplitters 2, Muramasa: The Demon Blade).

You CPU is a bit weak for Dolphin. Again, tell us which games you're trying to play, and tell us which settings your using, and we'll see if anything needs to be changed. Also note, you're using an outdated version of Dolphin. You could download the latest revision from http://dolphin-emu.org/download/, but it's not recommended for OS X users currently. You should try 3.5 (the last stable release) or 3.5-663. OpenGL reverts to software rendering since the GLSL merge on OS X. Apple's latest versions of OS X almost fix it, but they're not quite there yet.

Ultimately, you may get better speed if you run Dolphin on Windows through Boot Camp. Even using a Linux distro would probably be faster due to the way proprietary drivers handle OpenGL.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to try and help me, I really appreciate it.

Okay, the game I am trying to play at the moment is Legend of Zelda Wind Waker. I actually have Dolphin on both OS X and my boot camp partition which is running Windows 7 64-bit and I was having the same problems with both, but I will switch to my Windows version now. I clicked on the link you gave and downloaded Dolphin 3.5 on Windows. My settings are:

General

Enable Dual Core is checked
Enable Idle Skipping is checked
Framelimit is auto
JIT Recompiler is checked

Audio

DSP HLE emulation is checked
DSP LLE and Dump Audio are disabled

Graphics settings:

Internal Resolution is Auto (Window Size)
Anti-Aliasing is none
Anisotropic Filtering is 16x
Scaled EFB Copy is checked
Skip EFB access from CPU and Ignore Format Changes are checked
EFB Copies is set to Texture
Exernal Frame Buffer is disabled

Texture Cache is set all the way to fast

Catche Display Lists, Disable Pre-Pixel Depth, OpenCL Texture Decoder, Disable Fog, Skip Dest. Alpha Pass, and OpenMP Texture Decoder are all selected

And with those settings I am getting around 16 FPS and 33% game speed. Would you say that sounds about right for my processor or am I doing something wrong?

You must install windows 7/8 via bootcamp to use Direct 3D9 back end
Speed and Compatibility : Direct3D9 > Direct3D11> OpenGL
OpenGL is slowest backend , you can't use directx on Linux / OSX

If you still insist to use OSX , you have to make sure 2 things :
_What's your CPU clock speed when Dolphin is running ? 2.4GHz is slow , both i5 and i7 have turbo boost that bump clock speed up . Turbo Boost will not work if CPU overheat ( multi-media laptop usually run hot , MacBook is also multi media laptop )
You should use a software that can read CPU/GPU temp when Dolphin is running

_What's the GPU Dolphin is using ? Intel HD or AMD 6770M
Download OSX app : "gfxCardStatus" to switch the integrated GPU - Intel HD to discrete GPU - AMD 6770M
Select "Discrete Only"

This game overrides your default settings with custom per-game settings. You might get more speed if you change them. The per-game settings for EFB -> RAM instead of texture, which is slower (but more accurate). Here's how you can change it:

Garteal Wrote:Here is how you remove the EFB Copies to RAM override from the .ini settings:

Right-click on the game in Dolphin, then hit properties.
In the window that pops up, hit edit config, which you can find at the bottom-left of the window.

In the ini file that opens, at the bottom, you should see these three lines:

Code:

EFBAccessEnable = True
EFBToTextureEnable = False
EFBCopyEnable = True

Erase them and save the file.

See if that helps any with the speed.

admin89 Wrote:OpenGL is slowest backend , you can't use directx on Linux / OSX

It's usually the slowest of the HW accelerated backends on Windows. On Linux, it's probably on par with Direct3D9, depending on the driver and the GPU of course.

Shonumi, the OS X issue you referred to is specific to the Intel HD 3000, and it'd be running MUCH slower. All other GPUs work flawlessly under OS X, AFAIK.

jj, you have ALL of that shit on the bottom of Graphics > Hacks checked?! Uncheck all of that, that's a good way to have everything break for no reason and it's probably why you're having issues. (They usually don't even give much of a speedup anyway.)

If that doesn't help much, lower the Internal Resolution and the AF to see if that helps any; if it does, your GPU's not getting out of idle clockspeeds, and if it doesn't, your CPU's just slow (but that's less likely). There are a handful of methods of kicking the GPU out of idle clockspeeds that have varying degrees of success, including increasing the texture cache accuracy, increasing the IR/AA/AF, or finagling the drivers until Dolphin runs faster (e.g. disabling power management or putting Dolphin on a high-priority profile or something).

@admin89

Thanks for the help, to be honest, I don't insist on using OSX, I was just trying it on Windows and OSX to see if it would help any since I couldn't think of anything else to do, but right now I am running on a Windows 7 Boot Camp installed partition and using Direct3D9 plus the other settings I listed above and still getting 15-16 FPS and 30-40% game speed. (And thanks for pointing out gfxCardStatus, although I am running Dolphin right now on Windows, that app is going to be really helpful with other things I do in OSX and I have been wanting to find something with that functionality for a while)

@Shonumi and pauldacheez

Thanks both of you for the help, I tried editing the config file, unchecked all the hacks, lowered the Internal Resolution to the lowest setting and the AF to x1, and still getting 13-14 FPS :/

Increasing the texture cache accuracy is the same, that's what's weird is that I can go from the lowest resolution to the highest, I can change texture cache accuracy from safe to fast and it just has no effect on FPS... I would think that at least changing the resolution would help but it runs the same on the highest resolution as the lowest... makes me feel like there is something not right that needs to be fixed but I have no idea what.

if you use Windows , you'll have to repeat the same steps :
1) Use Realtemp to check your CPU clock speed when Dolphin is running . If turbo boost does not work , you will have to force it working with Throtlestop(here comes the guide) . I assume your i7 is i7 dual core 2620M

Quote:The base clock speed is 2.7 GHz but due to Turbo Boost it can reach 3.2 GHz (2 cores active) and 3.4 GHz (1 core active).

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-...108.0.html
Set multiplier = 32 -> 32x99.68 = 3189.6MHz ~ 3.2GHz

2)Download latest AMD 6770M GPU driver , go to AMD catalyst control center (via Control Panel - All items )
Add Dolphin to High Performance


Edit : I forgot to mention :

3) click on the battery icon (on the taskbar) -> More Power Options -> Select a power plan : High performance

Actually I have a Core i7-2760Q quad core, I installed ThrottleStop and set the multiplier on each core to 32 and turned in on but Dolphin ran the same and RealTemp reads 798.21 MHz, and I updated my AMD driver but the Catalyst program wasn't in my control panel but I did set the power plan to high performance. Sorry if I am doing this wrong or making stupid mistakes, I'm not very knowledgeable about this kind of thing, thanks again for the help

Quote:RealTemp reads 798.21 MHz

Your CPU is underclocked for some reasons (I have no idea)
What temp do you get with Dolphin ?
i7 2760QM turbo boost :
_3.5GHz (1 core active)
_3.4GHz (2 cores active)
_3.2GHz (3 or 4 cores active)
Since Dolphin is a dual core app , your CPU should run at 3.2->3.4GHz with Dolphin
If Turbo Boost worked properly , Zelda WW should run full speed all the time