Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi, there is a ploblem with newer versions of dolphin. Donkey Kong Country Returns (as example, the problem exists in more games) shows a 1 second pause/hitch a few meters away for every first level in a new zone.

Usually the pause matches the first time we kill an enemy or a few meters away from starting point. Next levels in the same zone (jungle, beach...) don't show that problem. When player changes zone, the new level of that zone shows the problem again.

That doesn't occur in older versions of Dolphin, where I can play every level without pauses.

I tested every option and every combination of them with no luck. It happens in every preset. Otherwise, I can't replicate that behavior in older versions.

It's not a problem with hard disk access time, first of all, 3.0 doesn't show the problem using the same iso file, but also, I tested with a 10 GB ramdisk (32 GB ram) and moving dolphin and iso file into ram. Doesn't fix the problem.

For Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, the 1 second pause occurs first times I use spin move, first time I kill an enemy or first time I crush a brick.

It's really annoying.

Can you find exactly which revision the issue starts in? If you can it may help the devs pursue the issue further

I have not tested every version but

3.0 works ok
3.5 works ok
4.0.48 works average, not 1 second pause, but maybe a barely visible little hitch
4.0.1246 1 second pause

so you're expecting the devs to know what to do with a 1198 revision gap?

I think this is just a case of your computer slowly becoming outdated (it is 2 generations old) as Dolphin emulates more and more, but unfortunately you didn't narrow down the range at all, so I can only guess.

For me this sounds like the micro stuttering that occur when your Shader Cache is empty....

(03-25-2014, 11:49 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]so you're expecting the devs to know what to do with a 1198 revision gap?

I think this is just a case of your computer slowly becoming outdated (it is 2 generations old) as Dolphin emulates more and more, but unfortunately you didn't narrow down the range at all, so I can only guess.

I think you can't find a new cpu at default frequency with better performance in dolphin than my 2700K with HT at 5 ghz. But you are only guessing.

(03-26-2014, 02:47 AM)Jhonn Wrote: [ -> ]For me this sounds like the micro stuttering that occur when your Shader Cache is empty....

But it doesn't occur in older dolphin versions. Even in older versions just downloaded from scratch.

And more important, it happens every time I launch newest dolphin versions, not only the first time. Is there a new automatic cache clean up function recently added?

I have the same issue and I'm on an unlocked Haswell 4.3ghz. It's random, though, sometimes the game would stutter every minute or sometimes it would run butter smooth. BTW, a stock Haswell at 3.9ghz is faster than your 5ghz Sandy bridge.

(03-26-2014, 03:38 AM)drhycodan Wrote: [ -> ]BTW, a stock Haswell at 3.9ghz is faster than your 5ghz Sandy bridge.

Completely offtopic, but can you link a bench to support this?

If it's an actual issue, there's an easy way to get their attention; find the builds that introduced issues instead of leaving 1000+ build gaps in your testing.

(03-26-2014, 03:53 AM)MaLDo Wrote: [ -> ]

(03-26-2014, 03:38 AM)drhycodan Wrote: [ -> ]BTW, a stock Haswell at 3.9ghz is faster than your 5ghz Sandy bridge.

Completely offtopic, but can you link a bench to support this?

Haswell is more advanced than Sandy Bridge; hence, drycodan´s faster than yours (even though yours have a higher clock than his).

Here´s the official benchmark: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-new-dolphin-cpu-benchmark-no-game-required.