So I bought this new laptop a month or so ago (specs are in my profile), figuring it would be a good upgrade from my previous one. It generally runs stuff how I would expect it to for the most part--but sometimes I still get lag in Dolphin playing at 3X IR. Of course, I could turn down the IR, but that would kind of defeat the point. Mario Galaxy especially lags considerably--I know it's an especially GPU-intensive game, but I thought the GPU I have now would be able to run it fine at 3X. It's not even necessarily intensive points that make it lag (or maybe I just don't know what is "intensive" for the Wii GPU). Is this the performance that should be expected for this setup on Galaxy? If not, what settings should I be checking? Nothing is overclocked, by the way, and my Dolphin version in my profile is up-to-date. Thanks.
My guess is that there are probably "choke points" in SMG games that are just too demanding on most GPUs. You can't always judge how demanding something will be by eyeballing it. It was a looong time ago, but me and rpglord did some testing a while back with the SMG games. From our results, I suspected that some spots where just too demanding for most systems to handle, even though most looked like nothing was going on. That may well be the case still. I wouldn't worry about it unless this is very frequent. If it happens only every now and then or rarely, you're probably getting the right performance.
For reference, can you pinpoint any exact locations in the game? That is to say, do you know if you play a certain segment you can guarantee lag? We might be able to test it ourselves to validate whether it's you or just Dolphin and the game.
OK, here's a good example. I noticed that every time I stand outside the Engine Room, I get considerable lag. I thought this was weird because there's actually almost nothing on-screen, but then I looked closer and noticed this very bright spot off in the horizon that creates a bunch of lens flare effects, and I figured out that the game lags horribly whenever that brightness is on-screen. There are other object like it throughout some other galaxies as well. I can't think of any other specific instances, it seemed pretty random, although the Kingfin fight was also laggy when a bunch of fish-missiles were close to the screen. I'll edit this if I can think of anything else.
EDIT: When I talk to Toad after starting my file, the game lags when the 5-UP graphic appears until it disappears.
(07-13-2015, 10:43 AM)Kurausukun Wrote: [ -> ]OK, here's a good example. I noticed that every time I stand outside the Engine Room, I get considerable lag. I thought this was weird because there's actually almost nothing on-screen, but then I looked closer and noticed this very bright spot off in the horizon that creates a bunch of lens flare effects, and I figured out that the game lags horribly whenever that brightness is on-screen. There are other object like it throughout some other galaxies as well. I can't think of any other specific instances, it seemed pretty random, although the Kingfin fight was also laggy when a bunch of fish-missiles were close to the screen. I'll edit this if I can think of anything else.
EDIT: When I talk to Toad after starting my file, the game lags when the 5-UP graphic appears until it disappears.
I think it would be prudent to check whether using a lower IR alleviates the issue. That way we can determine whether it is a GPU or CPU related issue.
Completely lagless at native resolution.
Quote:Is this the performance that should be expected for this setup on Galaxy?
No . Your laptop is stronger than my desktop
You should not get any lag even at 4xIR
Check your CPU clock and GPU clock and see if either CPU or GPU throttle when running game or not
https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#my-lap...-it-should
Make sure your GTX 980M (=GTX 960) is used , not the crappy HD 4600
That's a good idea. I'll get to it some time tomorrow and report back.
OK, I checked my GPU while running Galaxy at 3X IR using GPU-Z. When I played the game, the GPU load jumped up to mid-20%, so I'm fairly certain it is being used and not the Intel graphics. When I got to a particularly laggy section (described in previous posts), the GPU load jumped from mid-20% to mid-30%, but never any higher. The temperature stayed relatively constant at ~60-65 degrees centigrade.
I wasn't really sure how to check my CPU, so I just looked at CPU-Z, but I didn't really find anything useful. My core multiplier jumped around 32x to 34x a few times, but that's it. I'm pretty convinced it's not a CPU issue; if it were, I would be getting lag even at native resolution, but I'm not. Can anyone suggest a next step, or will the game just always lag at certain points?
EDIT: Attached some screenies of GPU-Z.
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Just use Realtemp and Nvidia Inspector
Both CPU-Z and GPU-Z are pretty bad