Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi

I installed dolphin yesterday, since I absolutely wanted to play The Wind Waker and Metroid Prime. But the hours I spent on dolphin were not for playing, but for tweaking. Indeed, the fact is that it's really hard for me to get a smooth game. On Metroid Prime for instance, even at the lowest configuration ( native resolution, no enhancement like AA, etc ... ) the fps drops on something like 40 on big places ( with the game fixed at 50 fps, it's pretty annoying. On Zelda TWW, it's better, the game seems pretty stable and smooth on 1.5x native resolution.

As I said, I spent several hours to fix that, finding informations and tutorials on the internet, trying to get the best performance/quality settings, but that's the best I can get. Still, i'm new to this program and I know there must be a way, something to do to improve that, since my specs are not that bad : ( they are in my profile but I'll put them here, so it will be easier for you )

I'm on a Lenovo laptop, a Z580 more precisly. The specs are :


- Windows 8 64bits
- Intel Core i5 3210m, 2.5Ghz
- Nvidia G635m, 1Go of Video Ram
- 4Go of Ram memory ( soon 8Go )

I think that config can do much better, isn't it ? I know I'll will not be able to play games on huge resolutions with AAx32 ... I just want to know if my laptop can do better than that

( I've got also a problem with sound, there are little "pops" the occurs pretty often, and changing the sound configuration doesn't change anything. And my laptop is not powerful enough to run LLE compilation ).

Thanks in advance for the response, and please forgive my english, I'm French.

Metroid Prime is a demanding game. Your CPU is too weak for this game and for demanding games in general.
Zelda WW is a "light" game. That's why it works pretty fine

Thanks for the quick answer. So if I understand well, I will never be able to play demanding games, whatever is the dolphin configuration ?
Also, what can I do for the sound problem ?

You can play them, but you won't run them at fullspeed. If you can deal with slow-motion and stuttering sound (in the latest revisions, older builds have asynchronous audio) then some demanding games might be bearable to play.

Obviously, when I said "play", I was implying "playing in good conditions" ^^.
So the sound problems come from my low specs too ? Even in Zelda ?

(06-19-2013, 01:28 AM)AquaManYeah Wrote: [ -> ]So the sound problems come from my low specs too ? Even in Zelda ?

Zelda WW needs LLE. And you know that your CPU is too weak for LLE.
For other games (most other games I should say): if you use latest builds you need to run them full-speed to get the sound to work properly (because of new AX-HLE)

Ok, so I guess I'm sc*ewed
Well, I'll play with some slow-mo and stuttering sound, then !

Thanks for the help

(06-19-2013, 01:50 AM)AquaManYeah Wrote: [ -> ]Well, I'll play with some slow-mo and stuttering sound, then !

You can also use Dolphin 3.5 (stable version). You won't get any stutterings since new AX-HLE hadn't been added yet. But you'll get sound issues in a lot of games

(06-19-2013, 01:28 AM)AquaManYeah Wrote: [ -> ]Obviously, when I said "play", I was implying "playing in good conditions" ^^.

And obviously "playing in good conditions" is subjective. I remember when I had a weak machine, I was happy to play games at 50~75% speed, but for some people that's absolutely unacceptable.

Note, you can try something called the VBeam Trick; it will sometimes prevent LLE audio from stuttering, though it won't help with slow-motion. Accurate VBeam Emulation (right click a game, go to Properties) has since been renamed VBeam Speed Hack, but they should be the same option. To try the VBeam Trick, do the following:

1: Enable Accurate VBeam Emulation/VBeam Speed Hack & Enable Idle Skipping
2: Enable Accurate VBeam Emulation/VBeam Speed Hack & Disable Idle Skipping
3: Disable Accurate VBeam Emulation/VBeam Speed Hack & Disable Idle Skipping

I've already got Dolphin 3.5 ... When you say "stable version", does it means there's multiple 3.5 versions ?

I totally agree with you, it's very subjective. I know a friend who can play games on 20 fps and he doesn't even notice that it's not smooth. Worse, he doesn't see the difference when he plays the same game on 35 fps, haha. I guess it's just a matter of habbit then.

And thanks for the trick, I'll try it and tell you if it works. For now, I'm on HLE, the sound is correct but I can always here little "pops". I don't know how to explain it in english, but it's not very audible and it sounds like footsteps ( I say that because at first I though it was footsteps, but then I heard it everywhere I go, even when I don't move, so ... ^^ ).

[EDIT] : I didn't saw that there was another version, in fact, my version is precisely the 3.5-367, so I'll take the 3.5 and tell you if it works