Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello everyone!
I'm new to the forums, yet this is not the first time I've used the Emulator.
I tried it last year to play the same games, but I was facing the same issue that I come here to ask help for.
I am trying to run Resident Evil Zero, however, the game runs fine except for the audio, which for some reason, keeps on stuttering every few seconds, cause the game itself to slow down a lot. I seems to be the rain effects that are causing this problem, but I have no idea how to fix this.... I've tried some of the different Audio options but none seems to help...
Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks in advance.

What do your framerates do when you encounter this stuttering? Do they dip when you get the audio stutter?

IIRC this game is somewhat demanding (I haven't played it myself) and your CPU is at the low end of the high performance category since it is 2nd gen. What CPU clock rate are you achieving while gaming? Can you measure that with one of the nice free utilities that exist?

(03-02-2014, 02:20 PM)rokclimb15 Wrote: [ -> ]What do your framerates do when you encounter this stuttering? Do they dip when you get the audio stutter?

IIRC this game is somewhat demanding (I haven't played it myself) and your CPU is at the low end of the high performance category since it is 2nd gen. What CPU clock rate are you achieving while gaming? Can you measure that with one of the nice free utilities that exist?

Honestly, it's pretty strange. Out of curiosity, I tried it with my internal GPU, Intel HD3000 that is used for the Laptop display, and it works fine... Which is very odd... Considering I always use the Nvidia with HDMI since most games (Not emulated) tend to run far better on the Nvidia, that is, if the Intel can run them at all... I'm using about 30% of the CPU.

This makes me wonder if you are overheating your GPU, causing it to throttle or maybe just not achieving full GPU clock. Can you check your GPU clock on the Nvidia during gameplay using Nvidia Inspector?

I also get audio stuttering during some games.
For example in Tales of Symphonia, despite constant 60 fps.

Or in Twilight Princes (GC version), though in that game I get only 21-25 fps, but that still doesn't explain the stuttering.
I tried almost every combination of the audio settings but cannot find one that removes the stuttering.

Audio and video are synchronous in newer versions of the emulator (3.5 and above I think). If you don't hit 60fps, you can expect stuttering and drops.

Tales of Symphonia sounds like a more complex issue. Can you post your configs? More puzzling yet is why you can't hit 30 fps in LoZ: TP with that hardware (except Hyrule Field).

I'm using Dolphin 4.0-714 and this is my configuration:


I just now only get 17-18 frames in a scene with only Link and the kid you save early on, it's in front of a cave with almost nothing around.

Because LLE is very CPU demanding, and it seems that yours is pretty weak for the game (Zelda TP).

Switch your fullscreen resolution to auto.
Change the DSP to HLE. Games that need LLE will automatically switch over to it, and games that can use HLE will be faster.
Change the audio backend to OpenAL and play with latency (higher is less stuttery)

(03-04-2014, 06:16 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]Because LLE is very CPU demanding, and it seems that yours is pretty weak for the game (Zelda TP).

4670K isn't weak for LoZ: TP at all. It can handle LLE at stock clocks with some reduction in framerate. Not a 50% reduction though. 21-25 is realistic with LLE enabled at stock.

KHg8m3r's advice is good.

@OP, can you post screenshots showing your temps and clocks during gameplay to confirm you're not overheating and downclocking?