Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello forum readers,

Recently I have been dumping the last few of my Wii games, yet I find that graphics in Dolphin are (for example in Monopoly Streets) worse than on my actual Wii, while my Wii is connected to an old TV and my laptop has full HD resolution (1920x1080). Emulating games like Mario Kart Double Dash give me worse graphics than watching a Youtube video of someone playing Mario Kart Double Dash on Dolphin. I think the graphics I should get out of Dolphin should be better for my HD resolution screen.

So, what are the best graphic settings? I am using Dolphin 4.0.2 (due to the lack of an auto-update future and no will to upgrade twice a day), specs can be found in my profile.
These are the settings I currently use:

Graphics configuration:
Direct3D11, Intel® HD Graphics 4000 (using my Nvidia Geforce 710M gets me an "Can't enumerate outputs" error message, I set the settings to high performance (in the Nvidia Geforce control panel)

Screen resolution: 1920x1080
Auto, use full screen; no V-Sync

Internal resolution: 1x native (640x528)
No anti-aliasing, 1x anisotropic filter
Scaled EFB copies checked, other four unchecked

EFB copies to texture; Texture cache set to fast
External Frame Buffer disabled due to slowdown (will this make the difference?)
Five things under EFB unchecked.

Advanced tab: everything unchecked.

Sorry, no screenshots cause those are giving me a lot of trouble lately.


I hope someone knows how to make my Dolphin look better . I apologize if this is in the wrong forum.

Thanks in advance,
410172_Chief

One thing that'll help will be turning AF to max, as it has no measurable performance hit, and only causes issues in a few games (and you'll be able to tell when it does). Unfortunately, with that GPU, you're unlikely to get good speed on many games if you go past 1x IR, and as that's the first step to make something prettier in Dolphin, that restricts you.

Is Nvidia Geforce 710M that old already? I thought I bought a good laptop. (Bought it about half a year ago)

O and as I use the Dutch version of Dolphin, please tell me what AF and other short terms stand for because it will be hard to find back in another language. Thanks .

Anisotropic texture filtering.

The 710M doesn't have to be old to be useless. It's a below-entry-level GPU, and is only really designed to make sure you can watch videos without problems. If you buy a children's tricycle, even if it's new, it'll still not be able to compete in the Grand Prix, as it was only designed to be played with by children, not go hundreds of miles an hour round Silverstone.

It's not old but it's the weakest GPU of Nvidia mobile 700 series
When you buy a Nvidia GPU , you should look at the middle model number first ( For example : GT 710M vs my GPU : GT 540M) and then specs . Although your GPU is based on newer technology but it's weaker than a 3 years old GPU like GT 540M

Is you old TV CRT?

Well I'm sorry to hear that it probably won't get much better. Let's see what I can do with the antisotropic texture filtering. What exactly is the slowdown that more than 1x IR could do? Gonna test that out too, hope I can get some better graphics out of it.

Any more suggestions? Thanks anyway guys.
410172_Chief

If you get a slowdown, and you're not on a recent dev build, you'll get really nasty audio. On something with decent time-stretching, everything'll just be in super slowmo.

So upgrading to a recent dev build is something I should really do. Is the most recent one always the best?

Normally it is.