Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Here's a screenshot with monitor utilities running.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22141371/Screenshot%202013-09-17%2020.35.49.png

Your CPU looks like it is pretty close to pegged on the two primary cores, although it's hard to say from the Windows utility. The GPU looks like it is underclocked. I think the core clock on that GPU is typically around 1GHz.

I'd leave the CPU overclock disabled with a stock HSF. I also noticed that your CPU fan is running a little slow. Most run around 3200-3400 RPM. Maybe you have Q-fan control turned on in your BIOS?

Can you post your Dolphin settings? You shouldn't be hitting WW performance slowdowns with your stock equipment.

The GPU is not underclocked, but it's being under utilized, and automatically slows the clock for power management reasons. The CPU is no longer overclocked at all. 2000RPM is the normal speed for the stock HSF. My Dolphin.ini is here.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22141371/Dolphin.ini

Thanks for the help!

rokclimb15 Wrote:I'd leave the CPU overclock disabled with a stock HSF. I also noticed that your CPU fan is running a little slow. Most run around 3200-3400 RPM.

I know very few HSFs that go that high. Most operate between 1500-2500 rpm. 3000-4000 rpm on a 120mm fan is crazy loud. The stock cooler operates between 1000-2500 rpm so 2100 rpm is normal.

@mrhanman

Your GPU is underclocking like rokclimb said and there is no indication of your cpu clock speed anywhere. Take another screenshot this time with cpuz.

You'll need to change the power settings for your gpu to maximum power mode in nvidia control panel to get your graphics card to run at normal 3D clock rates. If you don't want it to run at fullspeed all the time create a profile for dolphin.exe and set it there instead of changing the global settings.

Edit (ninja'd):

mrhanman Wrote:The GPU is not underclocked, but it's being under utilized, and automatically slows the clock for power management reasons.

.....which is underclocking (a.k.a. throttling). Your gpu automatically underclocks based on load as you said. This is why we asked you to check the clock rates. Now we know that its doing what we suspected it was doing. This is a common issue with dolphin.

Edit 2:
I should clarify that the drivers will not detect GPU load correctly while dolphin is running. Dolphins long periods of inactivity on the video thread cause the drivers to think the GPU is under low load even when it isn't and thus underclock it when it shouldn't. This has negatively effected performance on a number of systems.

The CPU clock speed is shown at the top of the AXTU window in the bottom right of the image. 3.5GHz

Have you tried setting the GPU to run at proper 3D clock rates yet?