Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I'm pretty sure my rig is fast enough to play most anything at full speed, yet I'm having issues in several different games that I was previously able to play flawlessly. I have a newer video card since I last played, but it's much better than my last, so I don't think that could be it. I'm having problems with Wind Waker mostly. At least, it's the one I've spent the most time trying to fix. I've set everything according to the wiki, yet it still won't run full speed, even at lower resolutions. The strange part is, when I first start it, it is full speed (or near it), then it slowly gets worse as I play, until it bottoms out around 50%. I've seen the same behavior with Xenoblade. Time Splitters 2 runs at about 70% most of the time. Monster Hunter Tri runs about 70% in town. The Last Story barely hits 10FPS on the title screen. Pandora's Tower starts out fine and then slowly drops performance over a few minutes, even when standing still. I could rip more games to try, but I'm not sure what that would help. I've tried the latest revision, and even deleted all configs and started over, but nothing I've tried so far has helped. Changing the IR, AA, and AF has no effect on the framerate at all that I can tell. It's probably something simple, but I can't for the life of me figure it out. Please help!

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
CPU: Core i5-2500K @ 4.4GHz
VGA: eVGA GTX 760 SC
RAM: Corsair/G.Skill 4/4GB
REV: 3.5-2418

EDIT: Looking at my CPU clock, it doesn't seem to be going all the way up to 4.4GHz. It's bouncing around 2.9 and 3.1. I think this might be the issue, but how do I fix it?

Have you disabled Turbo Boost? Typically with an overclock you would lock your clock rates at a fixed value and avoid dynamic adjustments. Are you sure it's a 2500K? I think the base clock is 3.3 GHz on that model, so it shouldn't be that low unless you underclocked it. Have you checked your temps? I'm pretty sure it shuts down cores before downclocking, but it's possible.

Holy crap! My CPU temp is hitting nearly 200F when Dolphin is running! That might explain the problem.

Indeed

Thanks for the help. I never dreamed my temp was that high. Guess it's time to clean out my HSF.

I'd guess a more pervasive issue than that. Is your fan even running? What is the ambient temp in the room? At that temp, your thermal paste has probably congealed. I'd inspect for dust and clean that, but it wouldn't cause 200F. Remove and clean thermal paste and reapply. What kind of cooler do you have? I'd also config your BIOS to temp shutdown before that point if you can. It'll make sure you don't get here again without warning.

It's the stock fan, and it was quite dusty. The ambient temp in the room is around 75F, I'd say. Fan speed is fine, and the MB does have a temp shutdown feature. I would have thought it'd trigger before then.

Am I right in thinking that this hardware should run Wind Waker at full speed, even at stock CPU Speeds?

Yes. #fivecharacterminimum

I removed the overclock and temps are around a much more acceptable 55-56C range. Still, Wind Waker refuses to run faster than 60%. What else can I check?

EDIT: I deleted Dolphin.ini, and that seems to have helped quite a bit. If Link is standing still, it can maintain 30fps, but as soon as I start running around, it drops to 25 or less. Enabling DSP LLE (I dumped the DSP ROM from my Wii) drops the frame rate to around 15fps. The Last Story is only getting 7fps on the title screen.

Check your clock rates for both your CPU and GPU while WW is running.