Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I always use the latest development version. And I've once been able to comfortably play Xenoblade Chronicles at a solid 30 FPS with a few hiccups here and there at 3X IR, 8x AA and 16x Anisotropic Filtering, and the HD Texture Pack /w Environment Pack.

But, starting with 4.0-5279 (Proper zfreeze support), my performance tanked. The game starts out good, but over the course of a minute or two the framerate grinds to a halt. Around the end of my patience sometimes as low as 5 FPS. I turn down all the enhancements, I turn off custom textures, I've even turned off the DSP. Hardly a change.

And it isn't only Xenoblade. Every Wii game I have does this. And at times, even simple GameCube games like Kirby Air Ride begin to crawl hard.

The strange part is that rolling back doesn't do anything. I've tried going FAR back before 5279, but it still slows down. What's even weirder is that the old Netplay build (4.0-652) works fine, albeit without custom textures.

Nothing in my system has changed. I have the latest nVidia drivers. (347.25 as of this post) What gives?


Windows 7 x64
nVidia GeForce GTX 760 (Gigabyte)
Intel i7 4770
8GB G.Skill Sniper Low Voltage series

I made this thread on the Hardware board a while ago. After realizing that Hardware probably wasn't the best place to put it, I removed the OP. I can't figure out how to delete the thread entirely, though.

Try deleting your shadercache, but it seems that the problem is on your end, not ours, if that doesn't work and reverting to prior to zfreeze doesn't work. Or maybe you just bisected/assumed incorrectly on what build is causing the regression.

(01-26-2015, 04:14 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]Try deleting your shadercache, but it seems that the problem is on your end, not ours, if that doesn't work and reverting to prior to zfreeze doesn't work.  Or maybe you just bisected/assumed incorrectly on what build is causing the regression.

Deleted shadercache (and purged cache from the "View" dropdown menu before I knew what you meant). No dice.

Considering most of the changes go over my head whenever I read up on what's actually changed, it wouldn't be beyond me to assume incorrectly on something.

I've tried lowering my IR again just to see if anything could be done. It now runs Project M at about 92%~ at 2x IR. EDIT: Though, before posting this, it's now chugging along at 72% strength on the pause menu.

2.5x and 3x simply destroy it.

Call this a hunch, but I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe the latest nVidia drivers did this. Or that there's a memory leak somewhere. Just sayin'.

Check your cpu temperature and clock with cpu-z.

(01-27-2015, 07:35 AM)Link_to_the_past Wrote: [ -> ]Check your cpu temperature and clock with cpu-z.

For the love of me, I couldn't find temperature on CPU-Z. But fortunately, the A-Tuner software given to me by my mobo manufacturer has temp.

I get roughly 44C and my clock comes out at 3700MHz when I'm running Xenoblade Chronicles on my old settings. (3X IR, Custom Textures)

Do you have Dump Textures enabled? If so, try disabling it here:

Graphics Settings > Advanced > Dump Textures

(01-27-2015, 09:05 AM)skid Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have Dump Textures enabled?  If so, try disabling it here:

Graphics Settings > Advanced > Dump Textures

Nope. Unchecked.

Sounds like a pretty silly thing to miss if you ask me. But I'm sure you've encountered people who've been dumping textures while trying to play a game.

EDIT: While I'm at it, I might as well tell you things I do have checked in Graphics.
OpenGL Backend
Fullscreen V-Sync, Hide Mouse Cursor, and Show FPS in General
Scaled EFB and Per-Pixel Lighting in Enhancements
Ignore Format Changes, EFB to Texture, Texture Cache to Fast, and XFB disabled in Hacks
Load Custom Textures and Progressive Scan in Advanced

Try again without vsync, per pixel lightning and progressive scan. Those 3 are known to cause problems.