Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I'm using Dolphin on my old computer currently setup as an HTPC. It's currently running on the following specs:

Intel i5-750 OC'd to a constant 3.7GHz
Nvidia GT630 4GB
GeIL 4GB DDR-1333 RAM

Before anyone tries to tell me, I know the GT630 isn't remotely useful for gaming but hear me out first.

I've been running Super Mario Galaxy on Dolphin and I'm quite a bit into the game already using the said system. So as far as emulation is concerned, it's somewhat playable and I'm getting 60 fps for the most part of the game. I've set Dolphin's IR to 2x for 720p output. I've tried bumping it up to 3x for 1080p but that just chokes up the poor graphics card. Audio is set to LLE for this particular game.

When running at 720p, there are parts of the game that drop the frame rate to ~45 fps. I thought at first that this might be a video card problem so I lowered IR to native. Still, the game stutters. I setup RivaTuner to give me some OSD stats and strangely enough, the GPU core, GPU memory, and CPU cores are below 100%. CPU usage was roughly 60% for all cores. I know that Dolphin can jump between cores so I tried locking it to the first two cores of the CPU. Without the core-locking option, I had to set Dolphin's CPU affinity to the first two cores and ran the game. This time, cores 2 and 3 were nearly idle while cores 0 and 1 registered between 60-80%. Still, the core usage never reached above 90%.

The reason I'm asking this is since I'm planning on upgrading the graphics card so I can play at 1080p with AA enabled. The thing is, if my system is CPU-limited as well, then there really is no point in going for the upgrade. I cannot afford to replace the entire system at this point. Any thoughts?

You are probably being limited by that cpu of yours. There has been a significant amount of single core performance since when the 750 was released. If I am correct an 8350 sitting at 4.4ghz would still net you better single core performance compared to the older i5. SMG is one of the more demanding games and I think my friend with an 8350 and a gtx 770 had fps drops in certain areas.

I haven't tried the performance outside of SMG yet but I guess you have a point there.

Talking about the 8350 vs the i5 750, aren't the performances quite similar? At least that's the case with the Dolphin CPU benchmark data. The 750 running at 3.7 GHz seems to be a few seconds faster than the 8350 running at 4.2 GHz (no data at 4.4). Now I know these benchmarks aren't conclusive but I'm guessing that they should perform quite similarly. Or is there something else missing in the equation? Also, the CPU loading still confuses me as it really hasn't reached 100%.

On a side note, this talk about benchmarking gives me an idea. Let me try to see how badly the benchmark runs on my exact system. That might lead to more clues.

Quote:Also, the CPU loading still confuses me as it really hasn't reached 100%.

Dolphin is a dual core app

Yep, as I explained in my opening post, when I don't touch the processor affinities, the core usage (by this I mean the individual core loads) runs at about <60% for all four cores. When I set Windows to allow Dolphin to use only cores 0 and 1, those two cores run at around 80% usage but never quite reaching 100%. I'm not sure I understand this behavior since I can readily make any set of cores run at 100% (I do that all the time when I run mathematical simulations).

UPDATE:

I've ran the official and unofficial benchmarks on my CPU and it gives me the following:
Official (v1) - 12m03s
Unofficial (v2) - 7m45s

I guess the CPU does have it's own share in limiting this system.

So I've been thinking and since the CPU is running slow on me, I could probably change up the CPU, motherboard, and video card while retaining all other components. How does this config sound:

Pentium G3258 OC'd to ~4.7GHz (or higher since my water cooling block is still in place)
MSI Z97 PC MATE
MSI Radeon R9 390 or 390X

I don't really need this for daily computing so I can probably live with the dual-core.

That processor will run Dolphin like a champ once over clocked but not to many modern pc games. A 390/x would be overkill if you wouldn't be doing pc gaming. I'd recommend a 270/x or 280/x for an amd branded card.

The 390/390x is overkill for Dolphin. A good price/performance is the 750 ti.

(06-30-2015, 06:05 PM)IceStrike256 Wrote: [ -> ]I'd recommend a 270/x or 280/x for an amd branded card.

The R9 270 (non-X) is still the price/performance king ("best bang for the buck" card). See the "performance per dollar" charts at TechPowerUp!, for example.
R9 270X is always at the top of that list in all recent reviews. GTX 750 Ti doesn't even come close (it's a whole lot worse).
They didn't test the non-X variant of this card for some odd reason. It could've 'ruled' the top spot with an unbeatable price/performance ratio, way better than the R9 270X or even the dirt-cheap R7 265.
Why would anyone buy the 270X, when a [non-reference] 270 non-X is cheaper, more power efficient, cool and quiet, while offering the exact same performance (and still overclocks like a beast)?
You don't need anything better than this for Dolphin. It's good for FullHD/1080p (3xIR), UltraHD/4K (6xIR) or 5K (8xIR).
This puppy can even do 8K (12xIR) in some cases (Ishiiruka w/ D3D backend in the more "lightweight" titles).

I don't recommend the "new" R9 300 series rebrands. They're not much different, while being more expensive (worse price/performance ratio).

(06-30-2015, 12:05 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Also, the CPU loading still confuses me as it really hasn't reached 100%.

Dolphin is a dual core app

CPU load is constantly communicating from one core to the other when using Dolphin, that is why you don't see CPU reach 100%.