Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

So, I'm working with the latest master branch revisions so I can get the Dolphin Manual in shape (It's coming along MaJoR ) and I'm also testing for regressions. To my surprise, SMG2 ran like a charm on the latest revisions, even with LLE. This is notable because I'm actually underclocked from the suggested speed for an i5-2500K (should be around 4.4GHz, but I'm at 3.8GHz). Compared to previous revisions (3.0-4XX - 3.5-12XX) I couldn't get it to run this smooth. I would get some pretty notable drops on certain levels and at certain specific points. Now they're gone, and it runs almost as well as 3.0 did, which didn't need me OC to 4.4GHz either.

Now, I am using the VBeam Speed Hack (it certainly helps, speedwise), but even using this same setting between older revisions and the latest, I still get some notable slowdowns 3.0-4XX through 3.5-12XX (I kinda stopped compiling the latest revisions at 3.5-12XX, until now that is). Now on the latest, it's almost constantly fullspeed. The worst it got was ~54 FPS for brief moments (when shooting from Lumas that turn into those star-shaped hoops, beginning scene with Bowser jumps from 54 to 58) but that's still a lot better than it used to be. As such, LLE audio is perfectly playable for me (although I don't really play this game a lot...)

I am using Fast Depth Calc and the Vertex Streaming Hack as well, but still I'm getting some pretty significant speedups. Skip EFB Access from CPU is disabled, but I don't get a speedup with it on. I'm just curious if anyone else is able to run SMG 1 and/or 2 with LLE audio more or less fullspeed most of the time without hitting the numbers that get thrown out there a lot: 4.4~4.5GHz for Sandy Bridge, 4.2~4.3GHz for Ivy Bridge, 4.0GHz for Haswell (at least that's what I remember everyone would tell people). Perhaps recent improvements in Dolphin have made these numbers inflated? Or maybe I'm just using too many hacks?

Either way, I'm pleasantly surprised that SMG2 plays so well without having to change my current OC (really I'm just too lazy to create another OC profile in my UEFI )

Actually this is pretty normal. Speed has gone up since 3.5 (especially the middle 3.5 era), even ignoring the DSP HLE change that turned the world upside down. See, performance isn't ignored!

*We're talking about performance. Neobrain will come and pop the bubble of happiness. Wait for it....*

Quote: so I can get the Dolphin Manual in shape (It's coming along MaJoR Wink)

It better be!

lol. Sorry I can't help. The -TR guide, school picking back up, things have just been NUTS. I'll try to work on it later this week.

I know speed has gone up in many areas of Dolphin, but I never expected the net effect to be so great. I mean, SMG with LLE could easily be accomplished with a Haswell i5-4670K with no overclocking. The important thing here is that we keep telling people they need to heavily OC for these games, but that may no longer apply. That's why I'm asking people to check out if it's the same for them as it is for me. It's a pretty big deal, at least when it comes to the collective advice we give out daily (especially in the Hardware forum).

I'm not in school anymore, and in fact work slows down around September for me, but I'm still fielding multiple projects. The Manual is one of them, I only have time to work on it at night. I'll blaze through as much as I can this week.

Most games run a little bit faster than they did in 3.5. If it wasn't for the Shader-UID-Awesome Merge, it'd be even faster. If you go right before that was merged, you'll see the fastest dolphin has been in a while. Then again, Neobrain fixed 90% of that performance regression. Neobrain, fixing a performance regression. Let that sink in.

If someone gives me an EU savegame for SMG1, and the settings they want it run with, I can say whether or not a 4670K needs overclockign to run it.

For me, Dolphin ran easily at 60 fps with revision 3.5.144 (The last revision with the marvelous speed hack for old nvidia video cards) but in last revisions the speed is slow as hell , I cannot reach more than 45 fps with native resolution

That's because you're using an old integrated GPU.

(09-05-2013, 01:42 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]That's because you're using an old integrated GPU.

Wrong, I'm using an old Geforce GT220 with 1GB of RAM xDDD, yeah, it's old but it works perfectly fine with DOlphin 3.5.144, I got 60fps in Mario Galaxy almost all the time, the lower fps that I got in the game is 50 fps I think in Linux using that revision

If you're getting that speed with LLE, then you're lying about your processor.

His signature says he's using integrated graphics so he probably never updated it. His profile lists no hardware information at all.