Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello, I am a new Doplhin user and using a latest build and I have been reading here for the most part Open GL is better for Nvidia graphics cards but I have much better results with D3D. I have my settings pretty much maxed out in Dolphin like :

IR = 4x
AA = 8 Samples (quality level 32)
AF =16x

Everything else is at default except for fullscreen checked and vsync due to screen tearing and every game I have thrown at it so far I have gotten 57-60 FPS for the most part in D3D mode but as soon as I put in in Open GL mode with max settings the FPS drops off dramatically and is unplayable.

I was wondering what might be causing this since most people recommend Open Gl especially for Nvidia cards for best performance and my graphics card has the latest driver? My pc specs are in my sig below.

Probably because OpenGL has higher quality AA or you're playing a game with a lot of EFB Copies to RAM syncing.

I have to turn anti aliasing completely off in dolphin to get good results in open gl mode which is surprising.

(02-28-2015, 08:32 AM)kmoney2315 Wrote: [ -> ]I have to turn anti aliasing completely off in dolphin to get good results in open gl mode which is surprising.

I have similar results with you having a 960 card and latest nvidia drivers, opengl is clearly slower.

(02-28-2015, 08:32 AM)kmoney2315 Wrote: [ -> ]I have to turn anti aliasing completely off in dolphin to get good results in open gl mode which is surprising.

It's not surprising, because the OpenGL backend uses a different (more demanding and high-quality) form of anti-aliasing (SSAA).
If you enable 9xSSAA @ 4xIR, you're effectively running Dolphin at 12xIR (!) That's too much for any GPU.
4xSSAA @ 4xIR = 8xIR. Still too much for a card like the GTX960.

On the other hand, Direct3D uses the much cheaper (low-quality) MSAA / CSAA.

Also, Direct3D is a lot faster with EFBtoRAM, while OpenGL is faster with geometry-heavy loads.