Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Ok specs first:
Windows 8 Pro x64 (I suspected this was to blame, however running in XP or 7 compatibility mode doesn't help)
Dolphin: 4.0-0 and 3.5-367
AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz eight-core
G.Skill 32GB (8GBx4) RAM
GTX 660 Ti in 3-way SLI (NVIDIA 3DTV Play activated but disabled, NVIDIA Control Panel settings on/off/low/high/etc)
ADATA 128GB SSD main drive (dolphin installed here)
6TB of HDDs (games are here)

Issues:
Sound crackling (obviously I've read about HLE vs LLE, LLe on thread, etc)
Sound skipping/cutting in and out (different from the crackling)
opening developer animations & cutscenes (interlacing and split into 3 overlapping images, Capt America for sure + others)
random FPS drops for no apparent reason (ie no new polygons being loaded, no explosions, no scene change, no scene pop-ups)

Settings:
I have literally tried over a dozen Dolphin Config & Graphics "these settings are best/work for me" setups. Outside of these, I have disabled 3DTV Play; I have tried reducing NVCP's Manage 3D Settings/Global Settings; I have tried turning off every AA/AF etc enhancement in NVCP's Global Settings; I created a custom Program Setting for Dolphin and have set most everything off/low/medium/etc. I have also tried running in XP & 7 compatibility modes. I have run in OpenGL, DX9 (3.5-367), and DX11. I have tried Dolphin at 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 1800p, and 1890p. Regardless of resolution, I get almost exactly the same fps at those resolutions, which leads me to believe I have a non-hardware related bottleneck. In New Super Mario Bros. I get solid fps at all resolutions with almost zero sound issues. Mostly the same with Mario Kart Wii. I had issues with audio on Just Dance but somehow managed to fix that while trying different audio settings. Regardless of resolution or dolphin settings, I always have issues in Captain America, Goldeneye, and Metroid. Even with no AA/AF and @ 720p w/ all global NVCP AA/AF settings off. In Mario Bros I get 60 fps at 1890p with NVCP FXAA/AF/AA/and Transparency AA. So what the heck gives? I'm so confused about what I am doing wrong. Until I can get this figured out I'm pretty much stuck.

Why I posted in Hardware Forum:
Once I can get several Wii games running, I intend to start a "Dolphin on powerful PC" blog and upload game settings + gameplay videos on youtube/my blog/the dolphin wiki. I own a Wii, a ton of games, and currently have roughly a dozen or so on my PC with intentions of transferring the others (Dolphin 4.0 and balance board games = epic win!) over but until I can get some decent settings figured out I'm done with that headache (btw I love the forum's anti-piracy stance) and am trying to focus on getting this running to a point where I can tweak a couple settings here and there for each game with good results. I currently am working on another blog specifically about optimizing PC games for UHD and 4k resolutions, generally getting great results (50-60 fps avg in 3360x1890 w/ AF and multiple AA settings in NVCP) with those games (3840x2160@30hz isn't so great except with RTS and some RPG games, but 60fps at 1890p on HDMI 1.x is pretty sweet), and I realize that emulating is a whole different beast than running native PC games. That being said, I have hardware that is running: BF3, Crysis 3, Amazing Spider-Man, Batman Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Spec Ops: The Line, Metro 2033, Mirror's Edge, and others at 1890p at 60+ fps averages with AF and multiple AA settings... So even though my specific issues may or may not be OS or software related, the fact remains that I have fairly high-spec PC hardware and am having major issues with Dolphin. Which drives me nuts considering I see youtube videos of gameplay that look and sound great, even though some vids have much older hardware listed in their specs.

Why I'm asking for help:
I want to start a written blog and video blog series about transferring, setting up, and playing Wii games in UHD resolutions with Dolphin, but I can't get consistent enough results myself to warrant doing a blog about it. Please help me to help others not already playing with Dolphin.

1- Crackling/stuttering/whatever-ends-in-ing sound issues are related to the case that emulation´s not full speed.

2- That card won´t be able to hit U-HD resolution, and if that was possible, the CPU is way too weak to handle a processing request that high.

3- We will get confused with all those titles dispersed, so I recommend you to put all your titles in a single list.

4- PC games doesn´t have to do anything with Dolphin, since they don´t work the same way.

5- As mentioned before, the CPU is way too weak for a determined game list (yes, that includes the Metroids). If you´re on a desktop, you will have the chance of overclock.

AMD is not a good choice for the emulator, this is why Intel is the preferred cpu brand for it. Most if not all AMD processor will need heavy overclocking to match the emulation speed that an intel gives at stock clock (for example the 3570k at 3.4ghz). RAM really doesn't matter when it comes to emulation so pumping your system up with RAM will make little to no difference. I think gpu's in SLI don't affect much the emulator, if i'm correct the emulator only uses one, maybe two gpu's. You have to keep into account that no matter what the rest of your components may be, if you have a poor processor you will not get the desired emulation speed, as for the graphics card if you want to play games in ultra high definition even the nvidia gtx titan will struggle with the task. Emulation is nowhere near a normal PC game they are two totally different things with totally different requirements and this is mainly because consoles have specific components for gaming, meaning that for emulation that language in which the console is written has to be translated for a pc cpu to recognize it, this is why it stresses it so much and relies so heavily on the cpu. If you're planning on making videos and tutorials you might want to lower your expectations, your pc is not as high end as you think

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-do...-hierarchy

FX is considered on par with i3 in general. It will run most games on good settings, but not the most demanding games. That is certainly a high-end PC gaming rig, but those games are GPU intensive and do not rely as heavily on the CPU. Eight cores are worthless when you're only using 2 of them. If you OC this to about 5.0 GHz you might be able to get fullspeed on some games. Metroid Prime is fairly demanding, and SMB Wii is not, which explains the difference (not every game has the same requirements).

It's that simple unfortunately. If your plan is to have such a blog, I'd consider retrofitting with a Z87 chipset board and a 4670K plus aftermarket cooling. Everything else you have will work after a Windows reinstall. You could try to OC your current gear first and use the same cooler with a 4670K if you don't achieve the desired performance.

Wow thank you guys for the quick replies. I understand the whole AMD versus Intel single-threaded benchmarks argument. I really do, I'm not an AMD fanboy. I have owned far more Intel chips than AMD. And apart from Dolphin, my 8350 isn't a bottleneck in running PC games in UHD resolutions. Dolphin is different, I get that, I really do. But can someone explain why I can run Mario Bros in 2160p w/ multiple AA (w/NVCP) and AF settings with solid 30 fps (30hz is the max on HDMI 1.x, yes I can't wait for HDMI 2.0 and gen2 4k screens), and also run it at 60 fps solid at 1890p with the same AA/AF settings, yet Captain America w/ no AA or AF is stuttering like crazy (only on developer screens) at 720p and still has sound issues? Keep in mind my minimum fps at 1890p in Mario Kart is 50+ fps w/ multiple AA settings and average is being limited to 60 fps (adaptive v-sync)... Also there is a youtube video with Captain running on Phenom II chip w/o issue. I just don't know what Dolphin distro/build it was running on.

(10-15-2013, 07:22 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]2- That card won´t be able to hit U-HD resolution, and if that was possible, the CPU is way too weak to handle a processing request that high.

It does actually. Very well in fact. See the picture (jpg reduced quality to fit under the forum's 500kb upload limit) for an idea of what it's doing with Mario Bos in Dolphin. Also the card/CPU combo on PC games runs 2160p with multiple AA/AF settings @ 30hz no problems at all (other than 30hz sucks for most games), and at 1890p @ 60hz beautifully. Including Crysis 3 and others I listed in post #1...

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NSMBW is part of the lightweight game family, it will always hit full speed. No matter what you do, the game will always run like a charm.

ADD: Was the Y.T. guy using Dolphin 4.0, or one of those ancient builds (R1xxx/2xxx)?

That impacts the speed too.

Not all games are the same. MP is pretty heavy, for instance.

(10-15-2013, 08:43 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]NSMBW is part of the lightweight game family, it will always hit full speed. No matter what you do, the game will always run like a charm.

ADD: Was the Y.T. guy using Dolphin 4.0, or one of those ancient builds (R1xxx/2xxx)?

That impacts the speed too.

Like I said I'm not sure which Dolphin distro it was, I wish I did. I guess I could dig through YT again and see if I can message him about that video...

But either way what you're saying is the newer Dolphin releases run games at lower fps? I think I still have the install files for 3.0, and I still have 3.5-367 installed currently. Should I try throwing a 3.0 install back on the PC? Also, is Mario Kart a lightweight game? Just Dance? Goldeneye? Those all run great. Well, Goldeneye runs great even with a bunch of baddies on the screen, but then bogs for a few seconds for no apparent reason (non-typical reasons like with PC games like explosions, large rendered items, etc) at higher resolutions.

Also, it ran at 4.8 for a few weeks last year. I went back to stock because the CPU isn't the limiting factor for the work and gaming I do on the pc (the 192-bit limit of the GPUs would be). The chip is water cooled too, so going back to OC isn't out of the question, I just prefer to run cooler case temps during everyday operation.

The reason older builds are slower is that they're less accurate. For many games you won't be able to perceive a difference, but for those that you can, you'll need the newest build you can get your hands on.

Usually the best way to tell how demanding a game is is to try it with the settings for best speed (plus any game-specific accuracy adjustments), and see how it does. The faster it goes, the less demanding it is. We generally only keep track of very light and very demanding games, as these are the ones people complain about/use to argue their system is good enough the most frequently.

Some of the most demanding games (which actually are capable of being played):

The Last Story (Needs EFB copies to RAM, and doesn't even run at constant fullspeed on an actual Wii)
Super Mario Galaxy (1 and 2) (needs LLE audio emulation)
Metroid series (EFB -> RAM) (less demanding than either of the above)
Others that I cannot currently remember.

(10-15-2013, 09:45 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]The reason older builds are slower is that they're less accurate. For many games you won't be able to perceive a difference, but for those that you can, you'll need the newest build you can get your hands on.

Usually the best way to tell how demanding a game is is to try it with the settings for best speed (plus any game-specific accuracy adjustments), and see how it does. The faster it goes, the less demanding it is. We generally only keep track of very light and very demanding games, as these are the ones people complain about/use to argue their system is good enough the most frequently.

Some of the most demanding games (which actually are capable of being played):

The Last Story (Needs EFB copies to RAM, and doesn't even run at constant fullspeed on an actual Wii)
Super Mario Galaxy (1 and 2) (needs LLE audio emulation)
Metroid series (EFB -> RAM) (less demanding than either of the above)
Others that I cannot currently remember.

The reason older builds are faster is that they're less accurate.

I think that´s what you tried to say...