Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey guys,
i'm new in the forum, however i've been browsing here for a while now.

I have had performance issues for a while now on my samsung series 7, even though it was a quad core i7 and had a good graphics card.
i searched the forums but could not find anything that helped me get a playable frame rate. ( i was getting 20fps even on windwaker, and even less on battle moments.)
I read that dolphin only uses 2 cores, so the quad core setuo was kind of useless right?
anyways, i checked on taskmanager that dolphin was using only 25% of my cpu, and still was not fast enough. surely it would cap at 50% if used 2 cores fully right?
then it hit me: my i7, as many other laptop and desktop processors from intel, has HYPERTRHEADING. which basically splits the 4 cores into 8 "virtual cores".
so the reason it was capping at 25% was because dolphin was "seeing" 2 of my virtual cores and using only those, leaving me with lots of unused CPU power, and bottlenecking my performance.

I then went into my BIOS and switched off hyperthreading, and voila! 30fps constant, and 100 percent of the speed even in cutaways, since dolhpin is now utilizing fully 2 of my 4 cores.
since i didn't find this tip on the forum, i've decided to post, in case it helps someone else too.

cheers! and keep on gaming!


PS. big thanks to the DEV team for making this awesome piece of software. you guys rock!

I believe it has sth to do with turbo boost
i5 and i7 has turbo boost function which bump up CPU frequency automatically
Don't know exactly your i7 model but i7 2765QM doesn't exist in Intel mobile CPU list
If your CPU has turbo frequency = 3.0GHz or close to that , you should be able to run Zelda WW full speed (because
my CPU can do the same without having to disable HT)
I believe your CPU turbo boost couldn't work properly before
You can verify this by using "Realtemp" (check CPU frequency) when Dolphin is running (before / after you disable HT)

(07-22-2013, 12:47 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]I believe it has sth to do with turbo boost
i5 and i7 has turbo boost function which bump up CPU frequency automatically
Don't know exactly your i7 model but i7 2765QM doesn't exist in Intel mobile CPU list
If your CPU has turbo frequency = 3.0GHz or close to that , you should be able to run Zelda WW full speed (because
my CPU can do the same without having to disable HT)
I believe your CPU turbo boost couldn't work properly before
You can verify this by using "Realtemp" (check CPU frequency) when Dolphin is running (before / after you disable HT)

sorry, i must have mistyped: its 2675QM

i7 2675QM stock : 2.2GHz . Turbo frequency :
_3.1GHz (1 core active)
_2.9GHz (2 cores active)
_2.7GHz (4 cores active)
When Dolphin is running , CPU frequency should be at 2.9GHz

Eddy85 Wrote:leaving me with lots of unused CPU power, and bottlenecking my performance.

It doesn't work that way at all. Your cpu uses 2 physical cores for dolphin either way. The only difference is the utilization reported by task manager since it bases its measurements off of logical cores.

You shouldn't see much if any speedup from turning off HT as a number of other forum users have confirmed. Either you were using an old build or something is wrong with your OS/BIOS settings.

(07-22-2013, 05:55 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Eddy85 Wrote:leaving me with lots of unused CPU power, and bottlenecking my performance.

It doesn't work that way at all. Your cpu uses 2 physical cores for dolphin either way. The only difference is the utilization reported by task manager since it bases its measurements off of logical cores.

You shouldn't see much if any speedup from turning off HT as a number of other forum users have confirmed. Either you were using an old build or something is wrong with your OS/BIOS settings.

.... I've seen Dolphin use my HT cores as well.

Of course. And those are logical cores.

I also object to using the term "HT cores" as there is no such thing and this shows a great misunderstanding of how HT works. HT simply maps two logical cores to each physical core instead of one. The two logical cores for each physical core are identical to each other and there is no way to determine which one was "added".

Sorry wrong thread...