Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I have read the wiki page about improving performance, but it hasn't worked. I'm trying to play MH Tri, but I'm only getting about 13-19 FPS.

Thanks.

These ideas get thrown around a lot, and they're pretty proven to work:

1) Upgrade the CPU
2) Overclock the CPU

In all seriousness though, you CPU is very weak for MH3. MH3 is a somewhat demanding game to play, and your system is bottlenecked by the CPU. Turning down the IR aka "the graphics" will not result in a speed up, since that's handled by the GPU. I have the same GPU, so I can safely say that unless you have the IR and AA turned up fairly high (4x IR + various amounts of AA), you won't bottleneck the GPU ordinarily.

Now, you can use the very latest Dolphin revisions. They've been speeding things up recently. If you do, update to the latest Nvidia driver as well; this will let Dolphin do some magic when using OpenGL that may improve overall speed. So upgrade Dolphin, your drivers, and give OpenGL a try.

(01-16-2014, 03:22 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]These ideas get thrown around a lot, and they're pretty proven to work:

1) Upgrade the CPU
2) Overclock the CPU

In all seriousness though, you CPU is very weak for MH3. MH3 is a somewhat demanding game to play, and your system is bottlenecked by the CPU. Turning down the IR aka "the graphics" will not result in a speed up, since that's handled by the GPU. I have the same GPU, so I can safely say that unless you have the IR and AA turned up fairly high (4x IR + various amounts of AA), you won't bottleneck the GPU ordinarily.

Now, you can use the very latest Dolphin revisions. They've been speeding things up recently. If you do, update to the latest Nvidia driver as well; this will let Dolphin do some magic when using OpenGL that may improve overall speed. So upgrade Dolphin, your drivers, and give OpenGL a try.

Hi.
Is there a PPA/DEB for the latest Dolphin? I just added a PPA that I found with Google.
My CPU is one of the fastest available for this socket type (FM2/FM2+). It's actually not a 'very weak' CPU at all (although it's obviously no i5/i7..), and it's overclocked @ 4.4Ghz.

What exactly is IR? Do you mean Infra Red? How does that relate to the graphics?

P.S. Is this any help? (and please excuse the fact it looks like I'm humping the pig..><)

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]Is there a PPA/DEB for the latest Dolphin? I just added a PPA that I found with Google.

https://dolphin-emu.org/download/

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]My CPU is one of the fastest available for this socket type (FM2/FM2+). It's actually not a 'very weak' CPU at all (although it's obviously no i5/i7..), and it's overclocked @ 4.4Ghz.

No, your CPU is still very weak for Dolphin. Allow me to elaborate. Dolphin relies heavily on single-threaded IPC (instructions-per-cycle) for its CPU-bound performance. Althlon X4 CPUs have generally low single-threaded IPC, relative to other options that are available. Even though your CPU is clocked very high, its single-threaded performance is weak in comparison to an i5-2500K clocked at the same frequency (or for that matter, an i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz, yes the gap is that large when talking about Dolphin). AMD CPUs generally have terrible single-threaded IPC in comparison to Intel's three most recent hardware generations (Haswell especially). We've done benchmarks proving this. See this thread for reference: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-th...-benchmark. Note Dolphin is a dual-core application under most normal conditions, so higher core counts do not factor into the equation significantly.

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]What exactly is IR? Do you mean Infra Red? How does that relate to the graphics?

IR stands for Internal Resolution in Dolphin slang. This determines the level of visual fidelity (described in multiples of the GC/Wii native resolution, e.g. 1x IR = 640x528). Many people mistakenly think Dolphin is just like any other PC game and turn down the "graphics" e.g. IR and AA (anti-aliasing), when in fact their systems are bottlenecked by the CPU, not the GPU. I was trying to dispel that notion in case you had tried that as a solution.

(01-16-2014, 05:18 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]Is there a PPA/DEB for the latest Dolphin? I just added a PPA that I found with Google.

https://dolphin-emu.org/download/

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]My CPU is one of the fastest available for this socket type (FM2/FM2+). It's actually not a 'very weak' CPU at all (although it's obviously no i5/i7..), and it's overclocked @ 4.4Ghz.

No, your CPU is still very weak for Dolphin. Allow me to elaborate. Dolphin relies heavily on single-threaded IPC (instructions-per-cycle) for its CPU-bound performance. Althlon X4 CPUs have generally low single-threaded IPC, relative to other options that are available. Even though your CPU is clocked very high, it's single-threaded performance is weak in comparison to an i5-2500K clocked at the same frequency. AMD CPUs generally have terrible single-threaded IPC in comparison to Intel's three most recent hardware generations (Haswell especially). We've done benchmarks proving this. See this thread for reference: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-th...-benchmark. Note Dolphin is a dual-core application under most normal conditions, so higher core counts do not factor into the equation significantly.

(01-16-2014, 05:04 PM)Nuji Wrote: [ -> ]What exactly is IR? Do you mean Infra Red? How does that relate to the graphics?

IR stands for Internal Resolution in Dolphin slang. This determines the level of visual fidelity (described in multiples of the GC/Wii native resolution, e.g. 1x IR = 640x528). Many people mistakenly think Dolphin is just like any other PC game and turn down the "graphics" e.g. IR and AA (anti-aliasing), when in fact their systems are bottlenecked by the CPU, not the GPU. I was trying to dispel that notion in case you had tried that as a solution.

Ah I see. Yes I know that the Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller CPUs/APUs have pretty crappy single-thread performance compared to Intel. That said, in most PC games the GPU is usually the bottleneck at 1080p gaming, but that's a different subject. I assumed that Dolphin was multi-threaded after some things I had read. My bad.
Anyway, would upgrading my GPU help at all? I have been looking at possibly a AMD R7 260X, but from past experience I know that AMD's Linux drivers are utterly crap.

Also, my FPS for Dolphin is much worse on Windows 7 Home x64 for some reason..

P.S. That link only contains DEBs for 13.04, and I'm using 12.04 LTS. Any 4.0 DEBs for 12.04?

Nuji Wrote:Anyway, would upgrading my GPU help at all? I have been looking at possibly a AMD R7 260X, but from past experience I know that AMD's Linux drivers are utterly crap.

Not really. Like I said before, it's not the bottleneck in this case. The two chief ways to bottleneck Dolphin on the GPU are 1) raise the IR too high and/or 2) raise the amount of AA too high. If you're not doing this, then you don't have to worry about the GPU. You have a CPU bottleneck, so only a better CPU will help. Personally, I would wait a while before upgrading to an AMD GPU if you're primarily a Linux user. They have gotten a great deal better than ATI ever was, and they're more or less stable nowadays, but I'm hoping SteamOS urges them to get things up to Nvidia and Intel's level. Again, just opinion, and for the record, I have never used AMD GPUs on Linux, so there's your grain of salt :p

Nuji Wrote:Also, my FPS for Dolphin is much worse on Windows 7 Home x64 for some reason..

That's because Linux rocks. Digressing, remember that you're still using two separate drivers on Linux vs. Windows, even though you have the same piece of hardware (GTX 550 Ti). I've heard (there's that grain of salt again) that Nvidia's OpenGL performance on Linux generally tops Windows' performance. If you're using the latest revisions, OpenGL is generally getting faster than D3D as well, so that may account for the difference. Plus, Linux rocks.

(01-16-2014, 05:36 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]

Nuji Wrote:Anyway, would upgrading my GPU help at all? I have been looking at possibly a AMD R7 260X, but from past experience I know that AMD's Linux drivers are utterly crap.

Not really. Like I said before, it's not the bottleneck in this case. The two chief ways to bottleneck Dolphin on the GPU are 1) raise the IR too high and/or 2) raise the amount of AA too high. If you're not doing this, then you don't have to worry about the GPU. You have a CPU bottleneck, so only a better CPU will help. Personally, I would wait a while before upgrading to an AMD GPU if you're primarily a Linux user. They have gotten a great deal better than ATI ever was, and they're more or less stable nowadays, but I'm hoping SteamOS urges them to get things up to Nvidia and Intel's level. Again, just opinion, and for the record, I have never used AMD GPUs on Linux, so there's your grain of salt :p

Nuji Wrote:Also, my FPS for Dolphin is much worse on Windows 7 Home x64 for some reason..

That's because Linux rocks. Digressing, remember that you're still using two separate drivers on Linux vs. Windows, even though you have the same piece of hardware (GTX 550 Ti). I've heard (there's that grain of salt again) that Nvidia's OpenGL performance on Linux generally tops Windows' performance. If you're using the latest revisions, OpenGL is generally getting faster than D3D as well, so that may account for the difference. Plus, Linux rocks.

Linux/Ubuntu is ok. I've used it on and off since 2008 when Vista screwed everyone lol. AMD's drivers as of about 3 months ago were still crap for Ubuntu 12.04.

Hey, I switched to Linux too in 2008 (July/August) for the same reason :p I did it (and stll am doing it) full-time. Moving away from Debian based systems really helped my experience (I hate their packaging system personally).

Anyway, I've yet to have an issue with Nvidia on Linux. Their Optimus tech needs a lot of work, but their desktop GPUs are solid. I've had this system for over 2 years, and not a single driver related issue (and I play a lot of emulators and games).