Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Been experiencing some lag on my laptop in Dolphin. Normally when I'd experience lag playing other games, my GPU Monitor widget would show that the usage is at 100%. I'd only expect it to be below 100% if it was reaching a framecap, which it does when Dolphin is running at lower internal resolutions. But it's running at ~40 FPS using only ~65% of GPU.

This is a (large) screenshot showing 40 fps but no maxed out GPU or GPU



I think I'm using mostly default settings...nothing on the 4th page is checked.

Specs:
Lenovo y570
i7-2670 2.2 quad
Nvidia 555m (optimus)
2x 4gb Ramaxel RAM


Is there some sort of bottleneck that wouldn't show up in the CPU/GPU %s, such as RAM? I noticed that on my desktop (8800 gt, i5-760) it would do the same thing if EFB copies was set to RAM, but on the laptop they're set to texture.

Your CPU bottleneck the game , not GPU
Mario Kart Wii run faster with Direct3D11
Also set Anisotropic Filtering= 16x . Even Intel HD can handle 16xAF

There is some legitimacy in these concerns as I have found with my GTX 780 desktop card. Due to the way Nvidia clocks cards adaptively during gameplay, I am seeing GPU related performance problems and I can't get the card to force higher clock rate to compensate for the performance toll. On my old Radeon 5870 I could do 4xNative on D3D11 and never lose a single frame. Now on my GTX 780 I have to use DX9 otherwise my card severely limits performance. Games are still mostly playable but for benchmarking and turning off frame limit, I see a sizable difference going from 1x to 4x native. Considering this is a top tier GPU on the market right now, that should not be the case.

I found that by forcing higher clock rates manually through disabling adaptive GPU performance, I see performance go back to being closer to what I'd expect. But still not quite there.

The optimus issue (using the Intel IGP instead of the nvidia GPU) is different from the throttling issue, which is what you're experiencing.

If all else fails to fix throttling issues you can try changing your idle, 2D, and 3D low clock rates.

Throttling is an issue with HD 7000 and newer cards from AMD and GTX 600 series and newer cards from nvidia.

(07-03-2013, 11:03 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]Mario Kart Wii run faster with Direct3D11

This fixes everything on Mario Kart.

(07-03-2013, 11:18 AM)DaRkL3AD3R Wrote: [ -> ]There is some legitimacy in these concerns as I have found with my GTX 780 desktop card. Due to the way Nvidia clocks cards adaptively during gameplay, I am seeing GPU related performance problems and I can't get the card to force higher clock rate to compensate for the performance toll. On my old Radeon 5870 I could do 4xNative on D3D11 and never lose a single frame. Now on my GTX 780 I have to use DX9 otherwise my card severely limits performance. Games are still mostly playable but for benchmarking and turning off frame limit, I see a sizable difference going from 1x to 4x native. Considering this is a top tier GPU on the market right now, that should not be the case.

I found that by forcing higher clock rates manually through disabling adaptive GPU performance, I see performance go back to being closer to what I'd expect. But still not quite there.

I tried it both globally and only for Dolphin in nvidia settings, but it makes no difference. (The above DX11 switch was the only thing that made a difference)

(07-03-2013, 11:33 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]The optimus issue (using the Intel IGP instead of the nvidia GPU) is different from the throttling issue, which is what you're experiencing.

If all else fails to fix throttling issues you can try changing your idle, 2D, and 3D low clock rates.

Throttling is an issue with HD 7000 and newer cards from AMD and GTX 600 series and newer cards from nvidia.

Optimus doesn't seem to be a problem, if it was the gadget wouldn't be picking up on anything. How would I go about changing the clock rates on an optimus card?

While the DX11 fix worked for Mario Kart, there is no fix for Super Mario Galaxy atm-it still runs under 100% at 30-40 fps. Smash Bros Brawl lags but that is because I have to shift EFB to RAM so that text in the game is displayed properly.

Quote: there is no fix for Super Mario Galaxy atm-it still runs under 100% at 30-40 fps.

Both your CPU & GPU are too weak for Super Mario Galaxy(LLE audio) which require i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz + Nvidia GTX 650

(07-03-2013, 02:47 PM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:there is no fix for Super Mario Galaxy atm-it still runs under 100% at 30-40 fps.

Both your CPU & GPU are too weak for Super Mario Galaxy(LLE audio) which require i5 3570k @ 4.2GHz + Nvidia GTX 650

It works pretty good on the desktop with the i5-760 and 8800 GT (on HLE audio though, 60fps most of the time on 2.5 res). I'm also using HLE on the laptop.

8800GT is faster than GT 555M in Dolphin due to higher memory bandwidth
You can lower Internal Resolution to gain more speed though
SMG demand :
8800GT : 2x or 2.5xIR (I own 9800GT so I know)
GTX 650 for 3xIR
GTX 660 (or GTX 760 which is much faster , cost the same ) for 4xIR
Please note that Dolphin is a dual core application . So i5 will be identical to i7 clock for clock ( I'm talking about same generation i5 ,i7 ) , clock speed does matter
i5 760 has higher turbo frequency . Therefore , i5 760 is a bit faster . You can overclock i5 760 if you want to
i7 2670Qm base clock is too low . Even with turbo boost , it only manage to go up to 2.9GHz with 2 cores active (2.7GHz with 3 or 4 cores active)

(07-03-2013, 11:18 AM)DaRkL3AD3R Wrote: [ -> ]There is some legitimacy in these concerns as I have found with my GTX 780 desktop card. Due to the way Nvidia clocks cards adaptively during gameplay, I am seeing GPU related performance problems and I can't get the card to force higher clock rate to compensate for the performance toll. On my old Radeon 5870 I could do 4xNative on D3D11 and never lose a single frame. Now on my GTX 780 I have to use DX9 otherwise my card severely limits performance. Games are still mostly playable but for benchmarking and turning off frame limit, I see a sizable difference going from 1x to 4x native. Considering this is a top tier GPU on the market right now, that should not be the case.

I found that by forcing higher clock rates manually through disabling adaptive GPU performance, I see performance go back to being closer to what I'd expect. But still not quite there.

Normally a ghost on these forums, but I had the same problem as you and managed to fix it. In the NVIDIA control panel, there is an option set for adaptive performance optimization. On newer cards, this saves energy by throttling clock speeds when not being taxed by a 3D application. However, the drivers are not optimized for dolphin so the adaptive performance monitor throttles the GPU clock speed to idle.

Set it to maximum performance for dolphin and you will see a return to normal stock clock speeds.

(07-06-2013, 03:30 AM)ravexildow Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-03-2013, 11:18 AM)DaRkL3AD3R Wrote: [ -> ]There is some legitimacy in these concerns as I have found with my GTX 780 desktop card. Due to the way Nvidia clocks cards adaptively during gameplay, I am seeing GPU related performance problems and I can't get the card to force higher clock rate to compensate for the performance toll. On my old Radeon 5870 I could do 4xNative on D3D11 and never lose a single frame. Now on my GTX 780 I have to use DX9 otherwise my card severely limits performance. Games are still mostly playable but for benchmarking and turning off frame limit, I see a sizable difference going from 1x to 4x native. Considering this is a top tier GPU on the market right now, that should not be the case.

I found that by forcing higher clock rates manually through disabling adaptive GPU performance, I see performance go back to being closer to what I'd expect. But still not quite there.

Normally a ghost on these forums, but I had the same problem as you and managed to fix it. In the NVIDIA control panel, there is an option set for adaptive performance optimization. On newer cards, this saves energy by throttling clock speeds when not being taxed by a 3D application. However, the drivers are not optimized for dolphin so the adaptive performance monitor throttles the GPU clock speed to idle.

Set it to maximum performance for dolphin and you will see a return to normal stock clock speeds.

I tried that on mine, it didn't make a difference. Would it be memory bandwidth that's slowing me down here?