Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi, I don't know why, but I'm getting bad performance on every game I tried to play.

Super Mario Galaxy: Stays between 40 and 50 fps (it should run at 60).
Xenoblade: 17-25 fps (I have the path to run the game at 30 fps).
Dragon Quest Monsters Battle Road of Victory: 22-26 fps (it should run at 30).
Zelda Twilight Princess: 20-27 (it should run at 30).

The odd thing is that those games stays at the same framerate regardless of the settings. It doesn't go up nor down.


It doesn't matter if I put Native resolution and all settings for "best performance" or X4 resolution, EFB copies to RAM, DSP LLE audio, 8x anisotropic filtering, 4x AA. THE FPS STAYS THE SAME. It's like they are limited by some magic force.

Here are my specs:

Windows 7 ‎(X64)

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz (Overclocked by AMD Overdrive to 4.0 GHz)

4 GB DDR3 RAM

AMD Radeon HD 5750

I've tried Dolphin 3.0, 3.5 and 3.5 2440. The FPS were the same in all those versions. And I've used a lot of different settings, but they didn't improve anything.

Can someone tell me what is happening here?

PS: Sorry for my English, it is not my first language.

When the game is running, hold down the Tab key. Let us know if the game speeds up with the tab key held down.

Are your games from the NTSC or PAL region? If they are PAL region, it is normal at 25 or 50 fps.

(09-21-2013, 11:56 AM)skid Wrote: [ -> ]When the game is running, hold down the Tab key. Let us know if the game speeds up with the tab key held down.

Are your games from the NTSC or PAL region? If they are PAL region, it is normal at 25 or 50 fps.

The Tab key does nothing. I tried it on the 3 versions of Dolphin. What should it do?

Dragon Quest is NTSC-J, the others are PAL. But they all feel really slow. I played those games on a real Wii, and on Dolphin the slowdown is evident.

I even put the Framelimit option to off. But the framerate stays the same.

Ok, this is super strange. A friend has a laptop with these specs:

Windows 7 64 Bits
Intel Core i5 2410M - 2.30 GHz
4 GB Ram DDR3
Intel® HD Graphics 3000


And the same games runs much better than on my PC:

Twiligt Princess: 28-30 FPS
Super Mario Galaxy: 30-35 FPS
Xenoblade: 30 FPS
Dragon Quest Battle Road of Victory: 30

The Super Mario Galaxy case is odd, because even if the game run at less FPS on his laptop, it seems much more stable than on my PC. The other games runs at 100% speed on his laptop.

So, this is nonsense. How can it be that his shitty laptop can run dolphin at much more FPS than my PC?

Please guys, tell me what is happening here!

That phenom is not the best CPU to run demanding games like SMG or Xenoblade

that is the magic force behind all this.

(09-22-2013, 11:04 PM)omega_rugal Wrote: [ -> ]That phenom is not the best CPU to run demanding games like SMG or Xenoblade

that is the magic force behind all this.

i used to have a 955 @ 4.0ghz... it wasnt even for 3.0 in late revisions.... Now 4.0 ?

im sad to say but the amd processor is just weak with how accurate the emulator is.

his intel is better overall in single threaded performance which is why it plays better.

I suggest you look into upgrading your platform to an intel build... best atm would be a 4670k and a z87 chipset mobo.

(09-22-2013, 11:04 PM)omega_rugal Wrote: [ -> ]That phenom is not the best CPU to run demanding games like SMG or Xenoblade

that is the magic force behind all this.

Ok, but why it runs much better on my friend's laptop?

My specs are way better than his.

(09-23-2013, 04:17 AM)icewind Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-22-2013, 11:04 PM)omega_rugal Wrote: [ -> ]That phenom is not the best CPU to run demanding games like SMG or Xenoblade

that is the magic force behind all this.

Ok, but why it runs much better on my friend's laptop?

My specs are way better than his.

His laptop runs the games better because his cpu is better than yours. As Venomx1 said above. Dolphin relies on single threaded performance and the phenom ii is pretty low on single threaded performance.

However, this guy can run Xenoblade at 100% speed with an AMD Phenom II x 4 ~3.4ghz, that is less powerful than mine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx4rHGENSSM

It has to be something else.

Perhaps he is using one of the old hle patched versions. They ran better with lower end CPUs. I considered it playable on my old 1100t, but certainly not 100% speed all the time.