Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Specs:
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64x w/SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 3.06GHz
MEM: 4GB DDR2 6400
HDD: WD 320GB 5400RPM SATAII
VID: NVIDIA EVGA GT640 DDR3 2GB
Graphics Driver: 12/19/13 (Latest a few weeks ago straight from Nvidia.com)
Dolphin Version: 4.0.2


Story:
I have a media center PC (specs above) hooked to my 55" LCD TV VIA HMDI. I originally played NES/SNES/N64 games on an old Radeon X900 PCIe card without any lag. I wanted to move towards more platforms and more games so I went the next step up, Nintendo Gamecube. I could play Gamecube games on the X900 with a bit of lag, but it was bearable on a select few games. I then upgraded to an Nvidia EVGA GT640 DDR3 2GB PCIe 16X video card. All Gamecube games run flawlessly, I was playing on the old Doplhin v3.5 emulator at the time. I then tried Mario Kart Wii on Dolphin v3.5 and it played decent with a tiny bit of lag only on cut scenes. I then obtained more Wii games, USB Bluetooth Adapter, Wiimote, and upgraded to 4.0.2. Since then any Wii game, even the same Mario Kart Wii lags REALLY BAD! Even a 2d side scroll-er such a A Boy and His Blob lags really bad. I have used the stock setting and followed this guide: ( https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?t...ance_Guide ) with no difference. The only thing I should try with a no-brainer is downgrading to v3.5. Besides that does anyone have suggestions or ideas for me and my setup?

EDIT: I did as suggested for myself and tried Dolphin V3.5 again. Every Wii game plays really well, tiny bit of lag but day and night difference from v4.0.2. A Boy and His Blob doesn't lag at all(most light weight game I have).

Try these:
1) Update drivers, Windows updates, DirectX Web updater (some components may be missing), and latest version of Visual C++
2) Make sure under Power Management in Windows you're running in High Performance, and have a high performance profile set up under Nvidia Control Panel (Read this: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-un...ance-guide)
3) Use the OpenGL backend on one of the latest dev builds, as it is faster than D3D. The current dev build is 4.0-705 (Also try build 4.0-614 with OGL and the Vertex Stream Hack)

Just so you know, your CPU is a bit outdated when it comes to Dolphin. See if you can overclock it (use Google to see if your motherboard supports overclocking, and how to overclock)

That cpu is far too slow for many of the popular wii games. I would suggest you upgrade.

Dolphin is not reliant on your video card, it's reliant on your cpu. Your cpu is bottlenecking right now so you need to either overclock or upgrade to see performance increase.

(01-25-2014, 02:11 PM)yl-smash Wrote: [ -> ]Dolphin is not reliant on your video card, it's reliant on your cpu.

Saying it like that makes it seem like Dolphin doesn't use your GPU at all (which is only true if you use Software Rendering, which is basically a non-option for anything other than debugging).

Dolphin does rely on the GPU, but generally not nearly as heavily as it relies on the CPU. The GPU is responsible for Internal Resolution and anti-aliasing (and other stuff, to be sure). While most people have GPUs sufficient for their chosen settings, Dolphin still relies on the GPU for performance, just not in the same way as it relies on the CPU.