Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Well this thread is for the highly discussed topic of "GAAH my FPS is so slow in [insert game]!" While there may be game specific options inside Dolphin there are a few methods to speed things up outside of it other than just over clocking.

The Obvious:
-kill the web browser (Firefox hogs ram like crazy)
-disable active scan anti-virus programs (unless it's the only thing holding your pc together)
-shut down messenger programs (they hog a bit of RAM too)
-end the Explorer.exe process in task manager (only increases FPS by about 2 or 3 but you don't need to look at your hard drive while you play do you?)

Not so Obvious
-Disable DEP - uses the CPU in 64 bit OSs (completely useless unless you like Windows to ask you to block Half Life 2 from going online every time you start it up. Disabling it should give you at least +5 fps)

-Game Booster shuts off unnecessary background processes and frees up RAM

if you have any methods I neglected to mention feel free to do so.

(07-27-2009, 09:38 AM)LHoT Wrote: [ -> ]Well this thread is for the highly discussed topic of "GAAH my FPS is so slow in [insert game]!" While there may be game specific options inside Dolphin there are a few methods to speed things up outside of it other than just over clocking.

Great stuff. Also the buzz now is a build with Watchdog. It allows me to play several tested games in not just a "bullet-time full 60 fps" .. but real time.
A great thread to bookmark is http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/thread-2332.html which also includes a list of how to maximize windows performance.

Another tip: Try different EFB settings whith each games, some runs faster either with copy to RAM, GL texture or by disabling it. Graphics may get glitched for some games though (Zelda TP, SMS...)

I noticed that as well. Would custom openGL drivers speed things up at all?

In Dolphin, on the OpenGL plugin configuration, disable the Auto Scale Option, should give an additional 3 fps, just a little speed up, but can help.