Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello, I'm having problems at running properly Zelda- The Wind Waker in different versions of Dolphin.

First of all, I've got to say that I'm aware of my computer limits, but I'm able to run Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess with no problem at all, with some exceptions like the Hyrule field and the Lanaryu Desert. So I'm pretty much concerned about getting a unplayable frame rate in Wind Waker.

Intel i3 3220 3.30GHz
ATI Radeon HD 5450 2gb
RAM 8GB
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bits

I've tested the game with the 3.5 version and the 4.0-593, which is supposed to be the version that fixes the broken heat effect.

With the 3.5 build the game was just fine in some parts, until a got to the Forsaken Fortress where I get no more than 20 fps, then I decided trying out the 4.0-593 build because I read about the heat bug in earlier versions, but with this one, it lags even worse. Inside the pirate's ship, it's so laggy when I look in any direction.

I manage to get 24/25 fps at the fully finished Hyrule field in Twilight princess, and that's a decent speed for both my CPU and GPU, the rest of the game varies in 29/30/31 fps. Same with Skyward Sword, so I don't know what's the deal with The Wind Waker.

These are the settings I use the most in any game:


 
However, I've tried changing many things but nothing works.

Thanks for reading.

If your Dolphin build has D3D9 as a backend, then it's an old, buggy and slow build, and you need to upgrade to the latest dev build (around 4.0-4800 right now). This should help a lot with speed. Also, I'm not wholly sure a 5450's enough for 1.5x IR, but it might be, so experiment.

Switch to the latest dev build, everything you tried is way out of date. New builds are way faster. If you're still lagging, then you could try turning the IR back to native resolution. If you're still lagging after all that, you're probably SOL.

Thanks for the quick replies, I'll check out the newest version.

PS: TP and SS seem to run just perfecly at 1.5x IR with my 5450.

TP and SS should both be way more demanding than WW. It's possible you've not got to the parts of the game that are hard to emulate yet.

(12-28-2014, 09:11 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]If your Dolphin build has D3D9 as a backend, then it's an old, buggy and slow build, and you need to upgrade to the latest dev build (around 4.0-4800 right now). This should help a lot with speed. Also, I'm not wholly sure a 5450's enough for 1.5x IR, but it might be, so experiment.

Look:





Settings: 

-Skyward Sword: 1.5x (960x762) IR - Dolphin 3.0-261-dirty
-Twilight Princess: 27/29 fps at hyrule field with Window Size (1024x768) IR, 30 fps in any other location of the game - Dolphin SVN 7719

-The Wind Waker: Tried with Dolphin svn 7719, 3.5, 4.2, and the ones you suggested, 4.0-4800, 4.0-4104, 4.0-4843.

Got the same results no matter what build. 1x Native (640x528) IR, AA none, AF x1, Scaled EFB copy/Force texture filtering disabled.

If I had been looking at the Guard lights, I would've got 19 fps.

It seems like the higher the build, the slower WW runs, and if you wonder why I'm using those old builds for SS and TP, well, they are the smoothest ones for my pc.

That's fair enough, but if you want to use old builds, you don't get support. Anyway, I have the answer you're looking for.

4.0-1192 greatly increased the usage of graphics cards, and Wind Waker is one of those sneaky games that uses the graphics card a lot (I think it's the depth of field that uses EFB effects) where it will make it slow. So if you have a horrible/old graphics card (which you do) then Wind Waker's framerate will suffer quite a bit.

edit; I should clarify, even on older builds, Wind Waker would be slower due to that depth of field effect smashing the GPU <-> CPU communication. Also, I'm just going on my own experience. With my Radeon 5850 I could barely hit 30 fps in Wind Waker, but on my GTX 760, I can hit 70 fps at 4x IR; same processor. I don't know if the same would happen for your PC, but I'm pretty damn sure it would.

(12-29-2014, 05:37 AM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]That's fair enough, but if you want to use old builds, you don't get support.  Anyway, I have the answer you're looking for.

4.0-1192 greatly increased the usage of graphics cards, and Wind Waker is one of those sneaky games that uses the graphics card a lot (I think it's the depth of field that uses EFB effects) where it will make it slow.  So if you have a horrible/old graphics card (which you do) then Wind Waker's framerate will suffer quite a bit.

edit;  I should clarify, even on older builds, Wind Waker would be slower due to that depth of field effect smashing the GPU <-> CPU communication.  Also, I'm just going on my own experience.  With my Radeon 5850 I could barely hit 30 fps in Wind Waker, but on my GTX 760, I can hit 70 fps at 4x IR; same processor.  I don't know if the same would happen for your PC, but I'm pretty damn sure it would.

I shall test that 4.0-1192 Build you just mentioned, thanks for clarifying to me what's the actual problem wiith this specific game.

" if you have a horrible/old graphics card (which you do) " I feel a bit upset about this. Bothering at the forums with this when the first thing I should probably do is upgrade my GPU at least. Because of that, I thank you for the support.  

I completely apologize. I didn't mean your GPU was horrible (It's not; it's a midrange GPU) it's just old! I'm talking about those really bad laptop cards when I mean horrible GPUs. You have a midrange card that's old. You had no way of knowing what the limiting factor was on your computer for various games; you did the right thing by asking.

(12-29-2014, 05:37 AM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]That's fair enough, but if you want to use old builds, you don't get support.  Anyway, I have the answer you're looking for.

4.0-1192 greatly increased the usage of graphics cards, and Wind Waker is one of those sneaky games that uses the graphics card a lot (I think it's the depth of field that uses EFB effects) where it will make it slow.  So if you have a horrible/old graphics card (which you do) then Wind Waker's framerate will suffer quite a bit.

edit;  I should clarify, even on older builds, Wind Waker would be slower due to that depth of field effect smashing the GPU <-> CPU communication.  Also, I'm just going on my own experience.  With my Radeon 5850 I could barely hit 30 fps in Wind Waker, but on my GTX 760, I can hit 70 fps at 4x IR; same processor.  I don't know if the same would happen for your PC, but I'm pretty damn sure it would.

14 FPS hehe