Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey friendly people out there


I'm trying to get Zelda - Skyward Sword and Monster hunter Tri to run smoothly and fail horribly.
It's running but the fps are somewhere between 9 and 15, but my CPU usage is around 80% and my GPU at around 30%.

Specs:
Acer Aspire 5755G Laptop
Intel i5-2450M 2.5GHz (Intel Boost up to 3.1)
NVIDIA Geforce GT630M, 1GB VRAM
4GB DDR3 RAM
Windows 8

Dolphin Version 3.5-269
Playing with a wii remote and motion plus and nunchuk.
Dolphin 4.0 for some reason doesn't seem to be able to detect the nunchuk.

Settings:
Dual Core enabled, Idle Skipping enabled, JITIL experimental recompiler (the recompiler doesn't seem to affect the fps), DSP HLE with DSound/XAudio2 backend
Graphics:
Direct 3D9, 1366*768 Resolution, internal Resolution set to 1x native, no AA, AF 1x, scaled EFB Copy enabled, ignore format changes checked, EFB copies in texture, disabled external frame buffer, cache display lists checked, OpenMP texture decoder checked

Thanks in advance

Are you on AC power? Are you getting 3.1 GHz during gameplay? How are your temps?

Does 4.0 provide better framerate? You won't get much support for an old version like that, so you might be better off working on the nunchuk issue rather than performance problems on an old version.

Yes I am on AC power and also energy saving mode is turned off. Well since I only get to the loading screen I can't really tell.
GPU temp varies around 75°C. Probably because my Laptop stands on a wooden surface.
No idea of the CPU core temps though. Will measure it the next time I'm starting it up.
Any idea on the Nunchuk thing?

Edit: Nunchuk works now after I changed the audio settings. I'm still at 15 FPS and the sound is glitching. CPU cores go up to 75 - 85 °C.

Edit2: Changed to the experimental compiler in 4.0 and now got to 17-22 fps. Sound is glitchy though and the cpu temp goes up to 95°C.
Is a better cooling the solution to all of this? Is Windows preventing to use the full cpu power to save it from overheating?

That's too hot. I bet they're throttling your clock. Get CoreTemp and check your clock speed when the temps hit that range.

https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#my-laptop-new-gpu-not-performing-well-it-should
3.1GHz is single core turbo (only 1 core is used) . With an app like Dolphin , your CPU can boost up to 2.9GHz
Btw , your CPU isn't fast enough to emulate Zelda SS fullspeed

Ok thanks for that.
Well it goes to 20*99,77, so somewhere around 2GHz according to Throttle stop.
So I either upgrade my rig or be happy with half an hour of 20 fps gaming?

There's really not much joy in playing a game at 60-65% of its full speed (that is if the game is playable at that fps) and at those temperatures it is definitely not worth it (your pc shouldn't be able to boil water) so the general recommendation is for you to upgrade it, mostly get a desktop or for better results build one yourself. You can get a decent Dolphin desktop for $700, laptops are not recommended as they tend to have overheating problems, not to mention that if you want a laptop that can run most dolphin games you will have to spend over $3000. Tell us your budget and we can help you build a desktop

2GHz is too low. You're hitting a thermal limit. I'd recommend cleaning it out and replacing the thermal paste with AS5 or something similar. admin89 is right though. Even at your full clock you won't be able to run that game full speed. MHT you might be able to.

FYI, 3.5-269 is a known buggy/broken version of Dolphin. Don't use it. Either use 3.5, 4.0, or something in between that isn't 3.5-269. https://dolphin-emu.org/download/

The PCIe slot on my motheboard is broken, so I switched on my Laptop for gaming. Guess I'' leave it be and save up some money.

@rokclimb15 I don't feel skilled enough to do that on a Laptop. Never changed anything beside the hdd and the RAM.

@pauldacheez I got 4.0 working now.

Thank you all for your answers