Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Ok so I've been playing my Wii games on Dolphin for a few months now, excellent emulator. In the general configuration I've always had the framelimit set to 'auto,' and never messed with it before. It was frustrating to only be able to play the Mario Galaxy's, etc... at only 1.5x-2x IR w/ LLE, limited AF, and no AA and still have slowdown, because I feel I have a pretty powerful system.

Last night I messed around w/ the framelimit setting in hopes of "unleashing" my system, and boy did it ever. I was really blown away by the difference. By changing the framelimit to off, and then 60 for NTSC, I was able to run Super Mario Galaxy 2 w/ DSP-LLE @ 4x IR w/ 16x AF and 4x, and even gave 8x AA a shot, and the game basically ran flawlessly. Occassionally there would be a brief audio 'click' or a 2-3 fps drop, but nothing very noticeable. It was leaps and bounds better than playing on 'auto,' which I had been playing up to this point @ 1.5x IR w/ low AF enabled to make the FPS good. I played a couple of levels w/ the new settings w/ no problems whatsoever. Surely improving performance can't be this easy, and I must be sacrificing some stability or something?

P.S. - I am using the latest dev build as of last night.

Probably the better explanation is that auto was doing something wrong

(02-12-2014, 03:43 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: [ -> ]Probably the better explanation is that auto was doing something wrong

Yeah you could be right, as I looked through the performance guide and it doesn't even go into a detailed explanation regarding the framelimit setting. It's just set at 'auto' and that's that. I didn't even think of tweaking it. I wonder what it could have been... as I originally started playing Dolphin on an i5-2500k w/ Radeon 6970HD and Windows 8.1, and now I'm on an i5-4670k w/ GTX 780 and Windows 7. Both setups have different motherboards... so I was getting a similar problem of 'auto' framelimit bottlenecking the performance on two different hardware setups. Oh well, kinda stinks to figure this out after I beat SMG1 and am 60% through SMG2, but better late than never. I'm just happy that games look amazing now. I think this means I'll have to go back through and beat each one w/ Luigi on the higher settings

Comparison screenshots showing fps/vps measurements please.

^+1. Changing the framelimit has always sounded like placebo to me.

Also, the framelimit options (and how it works internally) are gonna be changed very soon.

pauldacheez Wrote:Also, the framelimit options (and how it works internally) are gonna be changed very soon.

It's broken as it is on Dev builds, thanks to that weird Vsync bug.

(02-12-2014, 01:43 PM)pauldacheez Wrote: [ -> ]^+1. Changing the framelimit has always sounded like placebo to me.

In my experience, the framelimit has always been a big deal for Xenoblade Chronicles. The wrong combo would either result in drops during attacks, or no drops but slightly faster audio. The default (Auto and the old Limit by FPS option unchecked) worked perfectly for me, but others claimed they needed some black magic and fiddling around with the framelimit. That's what they claim though. Still, I essentially agree with you; changing the framelimit, over my two years of playing Dolphin, has not given me any noticeable boosts in speed (though it's a great way to accidentally half your FPS...)

(02-12-2014, 12:42 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Comparison screenshots showing fps/vps measurements please.

I don't know why or how, but now when I change back to 'Auto' framelimit, it does not have the limiting effect as it had before. I now basically get the same FPS regardless of what it's set at. I don't see what has changed. Changing it the one time seems to have just fixed it. I was getting nowhere near this performance before changing it. I played through all of SMG1 w/ LLE, and at 2x IR w/ low AF on the Dusty Dune level w/ all of the tornadoes and other levels like the Bowser lava levels w/ a lot of stuff on screen the game was basically slow motion. I haven't made any other major changes to the computer either. I also didn't mess w/ any other settings in the graphics tabs. Very weird. I did take a couple of screen caps of the game though as you requested.

Game Settings: 4x IR, 16x AF, 4x AA w/ LLE (Open AL)
'Auto' Framelimit

60 framelimit

It would be best to take pictures in the same spot

(02-12-2014, 11:37 PM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: [ -> ]It would be best to take pictures in the same spot

True, I actually did the first time I took the two screenshots, but then realized it didn't show the FPS/VPS. My worknights are busy, and I didn't want to take the time to go back to Toy World . that first part of SMG1 on the rocket ship by the grand star counter is extremely demanding, and so is the toy world galaxy when I played through it. If I have time tonight I will take 2 more screenshots at the main part of the rocket ship, and use the 4.0.2 official build, and see if that brings the framelimit auto problem back.