Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums - Mac/Windows user trying to diagnose choppy audio and FPS dips

My specs are as follows:

mid-2010 iMac, 21.5 inch.

Processor: 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 (it's a 'quad core')
Memory: (recently upgraded) 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB

My computer is partitioned, I can also run dolphin on my windows side, same specs apply (more or less) So my question here, while it is focused on my mac partition, can be answered by someone who thinks i can get it to work on windows.
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As of now the only game I have tried to get to work is Gladius, which I have been dying to play for months.

I've used countless online tutorials - both on my mac and windows partitions - and I just can't get things to work.

The Lucas Arts logo works well, the introduction works fine, but typically when I get to the banner screen the music starts chopping up and lagging. Whilst I occasionally get the game working on the windows partition, the FPS always drops to around 30FPS during any scene more complex than a Saved Game confirmation box, the music and voices lag comically, in step with the plummeting framerate.

I know it means nothing, but my computer can handle Deus Ex: Human Revolution on high settings, The Witcher 2, etc etc, without a hiccup. I know Dolphin is resource intensive but until this has been confirmed to be the root of my problems I'm anxious for an alternate explanation.

The game also crashes at the end of battles - the first battle i fight in the first town invariable ends with a glitch when the point comes for the video to fade out and for me to be returned to the town menu - though I have a feeling this might resolve itself when I get the game running smoothly.

Can someone give me some thoughts on how to get the game running smoothly? Some tips on settings, etc? Or is my computer just not gonna pull off this barely 3D title from 2003?

ps. the configuration options on the 4.0 mac build seem to be very truncated vs. the options available on windows. The obvious reason is probably the right one, but for an example of this I can't choose an audio option aside from AudioGL and a single other one.

I have been trying to use the stable build for 4.0.2, or whatever, if that can be improved upon

UPDATE: I have downloaded the most recent version from the dolphin website, and have got it running at 60 FPS on my Windows partition, but it is crashing quite often. Typically the framerate gets stuck at 60 FPS there is a 5 second audio loop, or so. What could be the reason?

urprobablyright Wrote:I know it means nothing, but my computer can handle Deus Ex: Human Revolution on high settings, The Witcher 2, etc etc, without a hiccup.

If you know it means nothing, why bring it up? Dolphin isn't a modern PC game. PC games use hardware resources in very different ways from an emulator such as Dolphin. Most PC games rely on the GPU for the vast majority of their performance. Dolphin needs a strong CPU for the bulk of its work, and the GPU determines how high the resolution, level of anti-aliasing and such can be set without creating a bottleneck.

Now, if I recall correctly, Gladius is actually a CPU-intensive game in Dolphin. A mid-2010 CPU doesn't have enough single-threaded performance (which Dolphin greatly relies upon) to get decent speeds in Dolphin 4.0 (or 4.0.2 for that matter). I recommend that you ditch 4.0.2 and use one of the latest development builds here -> https://dolphin-emu.org/download/ (Dolphin 4.0-4139 at the time of this writing). 4.0.2 is slow, old, and slow. There have been a number of speedups since the last stable release, and they should make a noticeable difference in your case

If you still get slowdowns, this is due to your CPU being the bottleneck, most likely, in which case you can investigate overclocking, or look to new hardware. You never said which CPU you had specifically (this is important to know) so if you want to know more, we need to get the specific model name/number.

urprobablyright Wrote:Or is my computer just not gonna pull off this barely 3D title from 2003?

Emulation doesn't work like that however. It may be an old game, but it was designed to run natively on the GC, not our PCs. Getting it to run properly on our PCs takes many, many more steps than the original hardware ever performed.

EDIT - Seems you already tried my advice before I even gave it to you :/ Oh well.

About the crash, can you post screenshots of your Dolphin settings?

(11-14-2014, 04:59 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]EDIT - Seems you already tried my advice before I even gave it to you :/ Oh well.

But your advice worked very well, and is much appreciated, thanks very much.

As far as I can tell, this fellow seems to have had the same kind of crash that I have:

https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/is...il?id=6627

Furthermore, I have not been able to try the solution provided in that thread, because I have not been able to get my Gladius .ISO on the games list.

My new problem is described now:

My .iso was in .rar format, and even after extracting it it retains the icon of a .rar archive (even though windows describes it as an .iso image) and when I try to browse with Dolphin it simply doesn't recognize my .iso. I have since deleted said .iso in frustration and am now calling my friend up to get a new one to try. I'm trying to a PAL version too, as it apparently requires 50 FPS rather than 60 FPS? That's not such a problem, though, since I've somehow found a way to run it smoothly at 60 FPS. Just need to kill the freezes.

ps. Yes, I know it can be a pet peeve of some for me to mention something redundant ("My computer can run more resources intensive games. Just thought I'd say that, even though I know it means nothing.") etc, I'm sorry about that, but it's a habit of mine to tack little tongue-in-cheek complaints into posts. Doesn't really translate well over the interweb.

Thanks again for replying ^_^

(11-14-2014, 04:59 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]About the crash, can you post screenshots of your Dolphin settings?

I'm sorry it's in PDF format hope I haven't offended Tongue

These settings are really bare bones, I believe, and probably not ideal, but the fact is I've tried more sophisticated settings and under whatever I've got going now the game stays at 60 FPS pretty much consistently unless the battles are big, and the music never chops.

aw, pps. those framerate etc problems all came with 4.0.2, which is probably why I'm getting much better performance now - as you advised, the newer build must be much better.

urprobablyright Wrote:My .iso was in .rar format, and even after extracting it it retains the icon of a .rar archive (even though windows describes it as an .iso image) and when I try to browse with Dolphin it simply doesn't recognize my .iso. I have since deleted said .iso in frustration and am now calling my friend up to get a new one to try. I'm trying to a PAL version too, as it apparently requires 50 FPS rather than 60 FPS? That's not such a problem, though, since I've somehow found a way to run it smoothly at 60 FPS. Just need to kill the freezes.

Your dump is probably bad. Redump your game from the original game disc.