Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello to all. I am a new user in these forums and I would like to ask for some technical support, if possible.

So, as the title says, I want to optimize my emulator so that my PC runs it and its games as best as it can. I only recently got to using the emulator and I am honestly not the most savvy when it comes to PC specifications and requirements to set them up properly. And I don't want to tweak settings willy nilly, out of fear I might break something. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as they say.

I have already taken a look at the specific threads for each game that interests me, to check for compatibility and the like, however, because I don't readily trust me with any tweaks regarding program optimization (and the fact that many games seem to have issues of their own), I want to ask the expertise of people in this site, who are bound to know more than me on the matter.

I have tried a few games on the emulator already, as a test run to see if the emulator even works, and while they have presented some graphical/sound glitches, I am not readily gonna bother with optimizing their settings individually and just focus on tweaking the emulator's settings to make it as game universal as possible, as long as my computer can handle it

I know I may be missing details (again, I am not that savvy with PC specifications), but here are my computer's specifications (It's a Dell laptop, btw.):

Operating System: Windows 7 x64
Processor/CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4510U CPU @ 2 GHz
Video Card/GPU: Intel® HD Graphics 4400 (?)*
Memory/RAM: 4 GB

*It came with NVIDIA GeForce, but I also see these Intel stuff whenever I look up my video card info. Dunno if I am looking in the right places, so apologies for this mangled up info on this one.

(If it helps with any future suggestions, I really don't really mind graphical quality. I just want my games to run smoothly and not spent 5 hours into lag heaven for each Final Fantasy-esque flashy cutscene the game decides to throw at me. XD)

Knowing what nvidia GPU you have would be very helpful, since you said it has one.

What games are you trying to run?

your system isn't really ideal to run Dolphin because of that ULV CPU but you can probably get some lighter games running okay.

There are a few games that interest me. To name two examples, I have tried out Megaman Network Transmission for the GameCube side of the emulator and Castlevania Judgement for the Wii side. Obviously Castlevania is the more demanding of the two, so I reckon that if I can get THAT one to work, I can surely get other GC games and probably less demanding Wii games to work as well.

As for the Nvidia part, the version is GeForce 840M.

First, lets ensure that Dolphin is running on your nvidia GPU.

Go into nvidia control panel > Manage 3D settings > Program Settings > Add > Add Dolphin.exe

Then set "Preferred praphics processor for this program" to your nvidia GPU.

After that, run Dolphin, and try to see if your castlevania game runs okay

I don't seem to have such a control panel on my computer, so I really have no idea where to go to input these settings changes.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I was using the 3.5-367 build for these tests, because I keep getting .dll errors on the latest one and I can't seem to be able to install the C++ needed for it. Maybe if I get the latest version to work I won't be having many issues?

(05-31-2016, 11:35 AM)labouka Wrote: [ -> ]I don't seem to have such a control panel on my computer, so I really have no idea where to go to input these settings changes.

Right click your desktop and you should see it.

(05-31-2016, 11:37 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: [ -> ]Right click your desktop and you should see it.

All I get is my Graphics settings for Intel. I do see a 3D section there. But I see no selection for Nvidia stuff in the right click menu.

It's possible you don't have nvidia drivers installed and are using your intel GPU for everything

http://nvidia.com/drivers

Go download and install drivers for your GPU there, and then try again.

(05-31-2016, 11:49 AM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]It's possible you don't have nvidia drivers installed and are using your intel GPU for everything

http://nvidia.com/drivers

Go download and install drivers for your GPU there, and then try again.

I was afraid it would lead to this. I have not updated any of my drivers ever since I bought this computer and did the mandatory primary setup updates. Mostly out of fear that the newer drivers will not support older PC games that I still play and I don't want risk losing access to them by updating the drivers.

Edit: I should mention that without setting anything on the emulator, the aforementioned games played just fine, except some sound glitches and some graphics absense for Megaman and a lot of sound glitches for Castlevania. Also, both had some freezes in unrelated points, so I dunno where to pinpoint those.

That won't happen.

If anything they'll run better. Always keep your OS and drivers updated. Always.