I'm using 4.0-3964(I don't have any special reason to not use the latest beta)on Win7 Ultimate SP1 x64 and no matter what options I set,the emu is making the cpu to always work at full power\speed with turbo enabled
(even tho the cpu usage is low and if I disable the fps limit,all of the games I tried can run at at least 3x normal speed(3x-10x and even more))
Even if I limit the speed to 50%(1600Mhz),I still have way above full speed on any game I tried
This increased the temp little by little
That's because Dolphin utilizes two cores it gets scheduled to of your CPU fully.
Your CPU usage is low because you have 8 logical cores (4 of them are Hyperthreading) and since only two of them are used at a time, you'll see an usage of approximately 25%.
Quote:Even if I limit the speed to 50%(1600Mhz),I still have way above full speed on any game I tried
Your CPU even while downclocked is probably fast enough for whatever you threw at it then. You should be happy.
Hm,it seems the this is caused by the "Enable Dual Core" options.
I do get huge speed boost by it but games are running way above full speed even without it.
Enabling Dual Core - forces the cpu to run at full speed with turbo all the time and gives you 100 or more percentage speed boost(at least on the games I tried)
Disabling Dial Core - only increased the cpu speed when it's actually needed but gives you less max speed
Is your framelimit set to auto? It should be set to auto. That should alleviate any 'it's all going to fast' issues.
The emulator is not running too fast,in fact while the dual core option is enabled,even if you set the fps limit to 5 and frame skipping to 9,it still makes the cpu to run constantly at 3.9GHz(like when the fps limit and the dual core option are disabled)
If I'm not mistaken, vsub is asking why Dolphin causes 100% CPU usage on specific cores even when not playing demanding games. Assuming Dolphin is similar to other emulators in this respect, the reason is that emulating a console requires exact timing. A normal PC game would render each frame and then "go to sleep" until the next frame was ready to be drawn, which would result in low CPU usage in the Task Manager. Dolphin doesn't go to sleep and instead constantly checks to see if the next frame is ready to be displayed, which results in a 100% CPU usage measurement even when you're not playing a demanding game. There is no way around this, because if you let the emulator become idle in between frames, it won't be able to "wake up" soon enough to draw the next frame on time, which will result in a choppy framerate.
As such, Dolphin will always max out 1 or 2 cores, depending upon whether dual core is enabled, so you should only use Dolphin on a PC with sufficient cooling capacity to safely run at 100% CPU usage for extended periods of time.
If the reason for constant 100% CPU usage is something else, then please ignore this post.
I haven't ever seen Dolphin max out any of my cores so far though in regular cases. They generally stick around a range of 25~45% usage and they might only ever reach 100% when you hold down TAB (I peaked at around 70% so far at max).
I believe what Aleron has said (other than it maxing out your cores, from my own testing) is sort of the explanation as to why dual core has that behavior. The two cores need to stay in sync and that makes the CPU work as hard as it does.
You can't have one operate at another frequency than the other or there won't be any good syncing.
Also frame skipping does not work as you probably think it does like in the retro emulators. It's been explained a couple of times already and is a search away if you want to know why.
Maybe you need to update the Intel managemenet software. Do a Google search for the 'Intel Driver Update Utility" page, download and run it.
Ok,lets try again(I installed the latest of everything when I installed the OS at the beginning of this month...when I got the PC)
Here are two images,one with DC enabled and one with disabled.
As you can see when enabled,even when the game is forced to run at 5fps,the emu is making the cpu do much more work and to constantly run at full speed(3.8\9Ghz)compared to when dc is not enabled while running at 30fps
This is on screen with nothing moving on it.
That makes sense. Dolphin is a high power application. When the two threads are split, your computer is reacting as such. Strangely, when you're using one core, it doesn't. That's weird if anything.