The game runs pretty much perfectly most of the time but every time Im in an area with a lot of fog the game slows down quite heavily (VPS is 60 but FPS is 30). I know that some effects cause slowdown in general such as the visor stuff but what can I do to help myself in this situation especially since it only happens in specific areas.
There's not much you can do really. Metroid Prime is a CPU-intensive game; settings won't change that. You can look at the
Dolphin Laptop Performance Guide (Part 1, see the bit about Throttlestop), and you can use EFB to Texture instead of RAM. I think RAM is the default Dolphin uses for this game (it reads settings from .ini files automatically on start up) so just open up the Graphics options to change it mid-gameplay. You need EFB to RAM for certain effects to work, but you can switch between Texture and RAM as needed.
Thanks for the tip, it seems there's specific effects that are causing the slowdown and I was wondering if I could disable them, in fact can it be done for the visor effects?
Also those areas look like there some effects missing and yes youre right it defaults to Texture. Lastly I knocked my AA down to nothing (it was 2x) and I dont know if its just me but the framerate seemed better, generally how demanding is AA (I have internal resolution at 2.5x).
The only effects you can disable are the Visors (by using EFB to Texture), else you'd have to go about making/finding AR codes.
How demanding AA is depends on your GPU and your other graphical settings. I dunno about the GT 740M, but at 2x MSAA at 2x IR, it's probably not bottlenecking you or slowing you down. To be sure, disable the Framelimit, then compare your max speed (in the same spot, use save states) with no AA and 2x AA. If you notice a difference, your GPU is slowing you down when you enable AA, if not, feel free to leave it on, although 2x MSAA isn't that much quality-wise.
Metroid Prime's scan visor works with EFB to Texture, but the thermal and xray visors don't. You could use the hotkey (Options > Hotkey Settings > Toggle EFB Copies) to switch between EFB to Ram and EFB to Texture on the fly. It's not exactly ideal, but it could help you workaround the problem.
This doesn't work in Prime 2 and Prime 3 though. They require EFB to Ram even for the scan visor. You'd be flipping between modes so much you'd be driven mad.
Will toggling EFB Copies help my framerate, the game runs perfectly but then hits specific areas and it all goes downhill. If I knew it was going to be like this I wouldve held off until I got a better system.
But yeah are the GC Metroid Prime games regarded some of the most demanding games in general, do they compare to the most demanding Wii titles?
Metroid Prime is harder to get a smooth experience out of than most Wii titles in my opinion. I run Super Mario Galaxy (With HLE Audio in new builds) at a higher framerate than Metroid Prime.