Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey what's up?

I have a weird problem and I can't understand what's happening here. Most games are fine. But when I want to play with custom textures (.dds), and/or big graphics enhancements, the game can't reach 100%. Same when I try to play big games like F-Zero GX.
And, as you can see, the CPU core that Dolphin uses is only at 50% (I also tried dual core, it's better but not that mush), and the GPU, 38%. Then, I can't understand why my game speed is stuck at 85%.



Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for your answers.

You should check cpu clock speed , make sure it's not underclocked
I just tried melee on my i7 4700MQ which is quite similar to your i5 4670k
I got 230FPS on DX11 and 290FPS on DX12 (Framelimit disabled , 4xIR )

You title says "SC", so single core. With "dual core", this game likely run a bit faster

I already tried dual core as I said, It's better but still not fullspeed. Thanks for the suggestion still.
In theory I don't need the dual core hack since I think my computer can handle it.
My problem is not really that my game can't reach 100% speed, it's that Dolphin pretends it can't go any faster whereas it don't use my CPU core and my GPU at their maximum charge.

@admin89 : I'll look at it this evening.

Do you have your Window Power Options set to high performance?
Do you have a profile for Dolphin in Nvidia control panel to make it use high power mode? Otherwise the GPU may say Dolphin needs minimal resources and go into low power mode.

Soooo...

I tried setup Windows for Maximum Performance. I also enabled Maximum Performance in Power Management on NVidia Control Panel.
This time, I tried F-Zero GX with no custom textures. IR 3x, MSAA 2x. Results : Dolphin keeps thinking it can't use 100% of my hardware. As you can see, the CPU core Dolphin is using isn't underclocked (3800).



I opened and enabled all logs to see if there was a suspicious behavior, but nothing relevant.
And yes, my speed limit is 100% (the game is running in between 45-55 FPS, PAL60 is enabled)
I really don't understand what's happening.

Okey, I found the guilty.

Does it makes sense that uncheck the "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" option makes Dolphin not running at full speed while not using all computer power?
I mean, right, I'm not dumb, I now unchecking this option enable EFB copies to RAM and slow down the emulation. But since neither my CPU or my GPU was reaching 100% charge, rationally, I would assume that emulation should be fullspeed even with EFB to RAM. Did I miss something?

With EFB to RAM, F-Zero (in game) runs at a inconsistant framerate when windowed, and seems to be capped at 30 FPS in exclusive fullscreen. What a strange behavior.

What EFB2RAM does is to copy data from the GPU to the CPU. When the game triggers EFB2RAM, the CPU has to stop what it's doing until the GPU has rendered the requested data, meaning the CPU generally can't be used 100% of the time.

Also you should turn off all logging, that can cause slowdowns in some cases

Worse, the GPU is usually a bit behind the CPU, so you'll often end in the worst case: When the CPU triggers the EFB2RAM call, the GPU driver flushes all buffers and *start* with the rendering. When this is done, the CPU is allowed to continue. So, the utilization of the GPU + the CPU can't go up to 100% together.