Hello everyone,
I am new to Dolphin, but I love its potential. I have a library of GameCube games that I am excited to play in high resolution. I played through the first level of Metroid Prime at around 60FPS with occasional slowdowns, but I did have issues with the sound stuttering during some of the more chaotic moments. On level 2 I noticed my FPS jumping from 60 to 20...possibly due to the rain effects? I also tried playing TransWorld Surf: Next Wave and had the same sound issues and lots of freezing and some slowdown...maybe this is due to it being a less optimized game? What I want to know is:
Is my build going to be okay for Dolphin?
Are the requirements to emulate GameCube vs Wii games different?
I have an AMD CPU, should I use specific settings, or maybe a certain version of Dolphin?
Here are my PC specs:
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair Formula IV
CPU: 3.2 Ghz AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black edition (coolermaster heatsink)
RAM: 16GB of Gskills ripjaw 1600MHZ 4x4GB
Video Card: Saphire HD 6870 with eyefinity and HDMI output
TL;DR
Is my PC capable of running Dolphin efficiently? Are there AMD specific settings or builds?
Hi there welcome, I can tell you that the rain drops on the visor is a known issue that causes slowdown, it has happened to me. However, upon testing this game on the stable build 4.0.2, I did notice that the slowdown went away and maintained constant speed. Also I do get a few frame drops when alot is happening on screen, but not much so I am suspecting it is a hardware limit.As for the other game I couldn't tell you as I do not have this game. You may want to post your settings for Metroid Prime to see what you have.
Well I can at least answer one of your questions: Requirements for GameCube and Wii are slightly different: It will take more to emulate the average Wii game than the average Gamecube game.
You should be able to run Dolphin with your computer, though AMD is a bad CPU I've heard. But some problems are not because of your system but because of your games.
Take a look at the wiki page of the games you are trying to play. For Metroid Prime:
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?t...e_%28GC%29
About the audio:
Micro-stuttering
All of the Prime games suffer from micro-stuttering: screen redraws and small stops in the video that can become very annoying. It occurs in all graphics backends, but the OpenGL backend has consistently been the most resistant to the problem. DSP HLE and DSP LLE are both affected, though DSP LLE appears to make it worse in some revisions. Its severity varies depending on the revision and settings used, so if you want to play the game you should try a wide variety of combinations. Enabling a virtual External Frame buffer may improve microstutter issues greatly.
About slowdown caused by rain effects:
Refraction Slowdown
Refraction effects, such as raindrops on Samus' visor, cause slowdown in OpenGL. Even the strongest computers are affected by this issue, and there is no solution with the OpenGL backend at this time. D3D is not affected by this problem in this game.
For Transworld Surf there are no special problems known. Yet that does not mean that there are none.
I guess some more professional users can tell your more about your hardware stuff and about differences between Dolphin builds.
Hope this helps.
410172
Thank you both for your replies. I have been reading about AMD's poor performance with Dolphin...next computer build I will use an Intel, but hopefully this AMD build can get me through a couple more years.
Thank you for the link to the wiki page, I have checked that out in the past and found is very useful. I do not seem to notice much improvement switching from HLE and LLE, so maybe my CPU is just too weak? Since Dolphin games seem to require tweaking settings, is there an easy way to save game specific settings?
Each game has an ini file saved somewhere, and you can set almost all settings through it.
(05-22-2014, 03:55 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]Each game has an ini file saved somewhere, and you can set almost all settings through it.
Excellent, thanks! This guide helps clarify some of the settings as well.
More questions:
Is there a major difference between the audio backends?
Does running in fullscreen vs window mode effect performance?
DSound sucks, XAudio is generally the best, but has some issues, and OpenAL fixes most of XAudio's problems, and has 5.1 surround, but sounds worse than XAudio.
There shouldn't be any difference between fullscreen and windowed.
As a fellow AMD user, take with a grain of salt when people try to sell you into buying Intel and tell you AMD is bad no matter what.
Metroid Prime is a complicated game, and as such no matter what CPU you have, you need the right configuration/build in order for it to run properly (though your CPU is a bit outdated, I played MP fine back when I had a phenom).
I would suggest you try using dolphin r7719, and right click your metroid prime game and check "enable accurate vbeam emulation". Because it's an older build you might run through some glitches that are not present on recent builds, there should be no issues with sounds besides music occasionally stopping or desyncing (very are, entering into an area with different music solves it), there is no sound stutter and FPS are solid mostly (intro sequence runs at full 60 fps).
Try that and see how it goes.
@jconway2002:
Your CPU isn't good for Dolphin. Especially for demanding games. Metroid Prime games are demanding.
You won't be able to get constant full-speed in these games. Full-speed is needed to get correct sound. if you can't then the sound will be crappy