Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

hi, here are my specs



I have cores 4 and 5 disabled on my CPU, which means it's basically a Quad core now but I was able to OC to 3.6Ghz because of that. But I have the NTSC version of Xenoblade but I can only get about 21-23 frames, sometimes even lower. I haven't tested further than the first tutorial battle. This is annoying because the gameplay and sound is very choppy. It's like that in the opening cutscene too with the 2 giant things fighting.

Here are the settings










Anything I can do to make it work?

A few things you can try:

1) Use 4.0 or above and use HLE audio. LLE audio is no longer necessary, and is less taxing on your CPU.
2) Set your Framelimit to Auto and leave Limit by FPS unchecked.
3) Try to OC even further (invest in a relatively inexpensive fan?).

If you use 4.0 or above it'll greatly increase the performance of this game vs. 3.5 or below.

Generally you don't need higher than 3.00 GHz for Xenoblade with 4.0. Mine runs it fine at 2.66 GHz atm (Had to go back to stock speed for my i7 920 because higher OCs would make it unstable, even the slightest OC. I guess my PSU is dying out and can't handle the higher voltages anymore).

(11-10-2013, 07:59 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]A few things you can try:

1) Use 4.0 or above and use HLE audio. LLE audio is no longer necessary, and is less taxing on your CPU.
2) Set your Framelimit to Auto and leave Limit by FPS unchecked.
3) Try to OC even further (invest in a relatively inexpensive fan?).

I'm on 4.0.1 using HLE and Audio Framelimit, works better than Auto for me. I managed to OC to 3.7ghz, I was still getting about 21-23 frames. Then I enabled OpenCL texture decoder and I'm getting a steady 25 frames now. However, it drops to about 23 when I use arts or when there are big explosions.

I'll grab the PAL version and see if it's playable because it runs at 25 fps.

(11-10-2013, 09:14 PM)xRyudo Wrote: [ -> ]If you use 4.0 or above it'll greatly increase the performance of this game vs. 3.5 or below.

Generally you don't need higher than 3.00 GHz for Xenoblade with 4.0. Mine runs it fine at 2.66 GHz atm (Had to go back to stock speed for my i7 920 because higher OCs would make it unstable, even the slightest OC. I guess my PSU is dying out and can't handle the higher voltages anymore).

Well, you have an Intel CPU which works much better with emulators.

mizugi_moderu Wrote:I'm on 4.0.1 using HLE and Audio Framelimit, works better than Auto for me. I managed to OC to 3.7ghz, I was still getting about 21-23 frames. Then I enabled OpenCL texture decoder and I'm getting a steady 25 frames now. However, it drops to about 23 when I use arts or when there are big explosions.

You sure you switched to HLE audio? The screenshots you posted show LLE audio; that you could switch to HLE audio and not get a speed-up (even with additional oveclocking) doesn't make sense. You're not bottlenecked by your GPU since your settings show you're at the minimum basically (1x IR, no AA).

If you can run this game fullspeed, having your Framelimit set to Audio causes drops like you mentioned when using Arts. Auto gets rid of any drops, but I'm basing my experiences on running this game fullspeed at 30 FPS :p It's probably different when you're below that.

Last resort: right-click this game in Dolphin, go to Properties and check the VBeam Speed Hack. Sometimes this setting can perform magic, it's worth a shot. If nothing else works, your CPU really is too slow to run this game.

xRyudo Wrote:Generally you don't need higher than 3.00 GHz for Xenoblade with 4.0. Mine runs it fine at 2.66 GHz atm (Had to go back to stock speed for my i7 920 because higher OCs would make it unstable, even the slightest OC. I guess my PSU is dying out and can't handle the higher voltages anymore).

1. Your i7 920 at 2.66 GHz is roughly equivalent to a phenom II at 3.6 GHz in dolphin. Your cpu performance should be roughly equivalent even without overclocking.
2. You're using the PAL version which is about 15% less demanding than the NTSC version.

(11-11-2013, 04:05 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]

' Wrote:I'm on 4.0.1 using HLE and Audio Framelimit, works better than Auto for me. I managed to OC to 3.7ghz, I was still getting about 21-23 frames. Then I enabled OpenCL texture decoder and I'm getting a steady 25 frames now. However, it drops to about 23 when I use arts or when there are big explosions.

You sure you switched to HLE audio? The screenshots you posted show LLE audio; that you could switch to HLE audio and not get a speed-up (even with additional oveclocking) doesn't make sense. You're not bottlenecked by your GPU since your settings show you're at the minimum basically (1x IR, no AA).

If you can run this game fullspeed, having your Framelimit set to Audio causes drops like you mentioned when using Arts. Auto gets rid of any drops, but I'm basing my experiences on running this game fullspeed at 30 FPS :p It's probably different when you're below that.

Last resort: right-click this game in Dolphin, go to Properties and check the VBeam Speed Hack. Sometimes this setting can perform magic, it's worth a shot. If nothing else works, your CPU really is too slow to run this game.

I did and you're right, I get about 10 more frames when using HLE.


And it looks like the Vbeam hack improved it a little bit as well because I'm able to reach 30 fps now. I played past the first battle and during the battle with the crab thing the fps doesn't drop at all even if I use arts.

That means it only gets ugly when there are many enemies.

(11-11-2013, 05:56 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

xRyudo Wrote:Generally you don't need higher than 3.00 GHz for Xenoblade with 4.0. Mine runs it fine at 2.66 GHz atm (Had to go back to stock speed for my i7 920 because higher OCs would make it unstable, even the slightest OC. I guess my PSU is dying out and can't handle the higher voltages anymore).

1. Your i7 920 at 2.66 GHz is roughly equivalent to a phenom II at 3.6 GHz in dolphin. Your cpu performance should be roughly equivalent even without overclocking.
2. You're using the PAL version which is about 15% less demanding than the NTSC version.

I'll try to find a PAL copy and see if it's more playable since I'm getting around 25 fps during the Mechon battle at the start.

Try unchecking Synchronize GPU Thread. That causes unnecessary slowdowns for me. Some people use it to avoid random crashes, but I haven't had random crashes for a long time in this game (since the FIFO-BP merge actually). If it turns out you need it, then leave it on, but try to see the difference first.

(11-11-2013, 07:25 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Try unchecking Synchronize GPU Thread. That causes unnecessary slowdowns for me. Some people use it to avoid random crashes, but I haven't had random crashes for a long time in this game (since the FIFO-BP merge actually). If it turns out you need it, then leave it on, but try to see the difference first.

Ok I unchecked it. I tried running the PAL version and it's working very well now. There game is fully playable with only minor frame drops but without the annoying choppy audio. I'll be sticking to this one.

Thanks for the help.