Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(01-20-2014, 09:02 AM)pauldacheez Wrote: [ -> ]FYI, forum support people, it doesn't take that much effort to pin down which i5 it is if you know what kind of Mac it is, what it's clocked at, and what GPU goes along with it. There's websites (e.g. everymac.com) and a mix of cross-platform/Mac-only apps (e.g. Mactracker) around that can tell you this. http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i5-3.2-27-inch-aluminum-late-2012-specs.html

OP: The 3470 shouldn't be *too* bad for Dolphin, but all the OpenGL buffer upload methods that give massive speed boosts (e.g. VSH, pinned_memory, buffer_storage) aren't available on OS X, so there's an inherent performance impact just from using OS X's GPU drivers. Nvidia's drivers on Windows/Linux will give you better results if you're willing to install one of those. (Make sure to use a current development build too, buffer_storage was implemented a short while ago.)

If all else fails, you could upgrade that 3470 to a 3570 or 3770 (I doubt the K models are any better, considering you can't overclock) for ~$200 or ~$300... if you follow a 60-step guide. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2546+CPU+Replacement/15764
I've taken apart my poor old iMac (late 2006, e.g. the last white 17" one) a few times and I've taken apart a slightly-older-than-yours 27" iMac once (for a neighbor whose son inadvertently stuck an SD card in the optical drive), and I do *not* recommend it unless you love taking apart crazy things like this that the guys at iFixit hate and have to write 60-step guides for. Personally, I love stuff like that, but it likely sounds like living hell to most.

But it's easier for us to have them tell us what they have, then us trying to guess from what little they give us

I did the same thing to an old iMac '06 17" also. pauldacheez is not exaggerating, it's not something to do if you don't know your way around how a Mac is built

(01-20-2014, 02:52 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]You should be able to play those games at a reasonable speed.
Post pictures of your graphics config tabs.
Also make sure you have framelimit set to auto and DO NOT have limit by fps checked under the config tab

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the info thus far and sorry for the late response. I've attached all the settings I've been playing with via attachments. If there is anything else I should upload for anyone to take a look at let me know and I'll post it up.

Thanks again!

Please tell me that under Graphics > General you don't have software rendering as your actual backend that you're using. If you are, please, for the love of God, switch back to OpenGL.

If that's just a messed up screen shot, and you actually are on OpenGL (which I think is the case, due to the other pics), then don't set the Internal Resolution to Window size. Set it to like 3x (which is a safe general area to be in for your card, since it's pretty close to my GTX 770M).

If you still have issues, try one of two things:
1) Use a dev build
2) Use Boot Camp to install Windows 7 or 8.1 (your preference), and then use that to play games