Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I know my rig's beginning to show its age amongst new PC releases, but I'd swear that it'd be enough for Dolphin no problem. Heck, PCSX2 seems to have no issues whatsoever with my computer.

Mobo: Gigabyte Z86-A-D3H-B3 Revision 1.0
CPU: Intel i5 2400 (3.1 GHz Quad-core, not OC'd)
GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 560 (1GB GDDR5) (Driver Version 332.21)
RAM: Crucial 4 GB (2x 2GB DDR3, 1333 MHz)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Dolphin Version: 4.0.2 x64

The last straw for me was when Punch-Out simply refused to go above ~75-80% speed when much of anything was going on. The character select screen is the first speed drop, and when Glass Joe goes down, the speed drops to about 70% during the count.

Setup:
Dual Core Rendering & Idle Skipping On
Framelimit set to 60, was at Auto
CPU engine: JIT recompiler
Audio: HLE, Xaudio2 backend
EuRGB60 is OFF

1x Native resolution, no AA, anisotropic at x1, Scaled EFB copy off, no per pixel/texture filtering/etc

Hacks: Ignore Format Changes, EFB Copy to Texture, texture accuracy all the way to "fast", XFB disabled, OpenMP texture decoder, Fast Depth Calculation

It's not limited to Punch-Out, though. Skies of Arcadia Legends is just as bad, none of the Resident Evil games I've tried play nice without a ton of effort, and Eternal Darkness slows to a crawl the moment more than one monster is on screen. Some games work fine. SoulCalibur 2 gives me no issues, Mario Sunshine seems okay, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle's alright, it seems utterly random.

I don't think it's any of my background processes sucking up all the horsepower, either. Even when I exited Steam, closed down my email notifier, disabled Avast for a while, nothing seemed to make a difference.

I would solemnly admit defeat, but all the threads I see on this forum, whether through Google or by searching, seem to point to my setup being enough to get full speed with just about anything! What's the big deal?

Turn off idle skipping

But idle skipping helps doesn't it? and yeah @OP, yer CPU will not reach fullspeed on some games but you can afford to crank up your visuals a bit.

(02-22-2014, 05:25 AM)Torcularis Wrote: [ -> ]I would solemnly admit defeat, but all the threads I see on this forum, whether through Google or by searching, seem to point to my setup being enough to get full speed with just about anything! What's the big deal?

I don't know where you saw this but it's very wrong, maybe you're viewing emulators as PC games. PC games rely more on your graphics card, and you have a great one by the way, but emulators rely on processing power, and yours won't cut it. The recommended CPU is the Intel i5-4670k.

(02-22-2014, 07:30 AM)Zee530 Wrote: [ -> ]But idle skipping helps doesn't it? and yeah @OP, yer CPU will not reach fullspeed on some games but you can afford to crank up your visuals a bit.

For Punch-Out, it is recommended to turn it off: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-wii-punch-out

But since Idle-skipping is recommended for almost everything else, you want to only turn it off for Punch-Out. Right-click on the game, go to properties, and click the box labeled idle skipping to empty (off position)

What Zee530 is true, your CPU, while still ok for Dolphin, is not the best.

(02-22-2014, 07:30 AM)Zee530 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know where you saw this but it's very wrong, maybe you're viewing emulators as PC games. PC games rely more on your graphics card, and you have a great one by the way, but emulators rely on processing power, and yours won't cut it. The recommended CPU is the Intel i5-4670k.

I saw it, for one, in the stickied threads at the top, namely the "Dolphin CPU Hierarchy" thread.

Quote:Category 1: Extremely Fast
When overclocked these cpus can run nearly any game at fullspeed even with LLE audio. Without overclocking most games will still run well with LLE audio.
-Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition
-Intel Core i7
-Intel Core i5

(emphasis mine)

I think I've seen similar things elsewhere, but I'd have to search for them.

With this in mind, does that mean I'd have to Overclock to get much more? I don't think I've got the cooling capability for that.

EDIT: In regards to Idle Skipping, I turned it off and it had no noticeable effect on speed.

That thread only gives a very cursory look to the types of CPUs. if you have a low power i3/i5/i7, it wont be near playable sppeds at all. And older models aren't as fast as the latest and greatest models.

Look and see if you have a motherboard that supports overclocking. If not, then you cant do anything. If you do, since you don't have an unlocked k model CPU, your overclocking options are very limited.

Did you try turning off idle-skipping for Punch-out?

Also switch over to the OpenGL backend, and enable the Vertex Streaming Hack. Its an OpenGL only speed-up

(02-22-2014, 08:18 AM)Torcularis Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-22-2014, 07:30 AM)Zee530 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know where you saw this but it's very wrong, maybe you're viewing emulators as PC games. PC games rely more on your graphics card, and you have a great one by the way, but emulators rely on processing power, and yours won't cut it. The recommended CPU is the Intel i5-4670k.

I saw it, for one, in the stickied threads at the top, namely the "Dolphin CPU Hierarchy" thread.

That thread has been created by an individual who isn't involved in development, plus it looks like the last update to the first post in that thread was made in August 2012. Requirements have changed, hence I unsticked the thread and made it clear that it's not an official guide.

(02-22-2014, 09:35 AM)neobrain Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-22-2014, 08:18 AM)Torcularis Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-22-2014, 07:30 AM)Zee530 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know where you saw this but it's very wrong, maybe you're viewing emulators as PC games. PC games rely more on your graphics card, and you have a great one by the way, but emulators rely on processing power, and yours won't cut it. The recommended CPU is the Intel i5-4670k.

I saw it, for one, in the stickied threads at the top, namely the "Dolphin CPU Hierarchy" thread.

That thread has been created by an individual who isn't involved in development, plus it looks like the last update to the first post in that thread was made in August 2012. Requirements have changed, hence I unsticked the thread and made it clear that it's not an official guide.

Ah well. This thing has caused me enough trouble as it is that I could've easily avoided by simply getting off my lazy ass and plugging my Wii in again. Thanks anyways guys, and double thanks for not ripping the dolt apart who registered just to post his hardware woes. XD

Don't worry, we rip apart enough dolts who whine about performance as it is.

If your motherboard's a Z68 (I'm assuming Z86 is a typo?), you can cheaply get an i5-2500K or 2550K and a decent cooler (e.g. the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO) to overclock it heavily with. Going from 3.1 GHz to 4.2-5 GHz will make quite a few more things run at full speed.