Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi guys,

I hope you can help me with this issue.

My friends and myself have been facing serious lag issues playing Dolphin games on netplay and even by ourselves for quite some time now, it got so bad that we stopped playing them altogether for a long time. The latest Dolphin 5 release got us excited that the problem might be solved, but we saw no significant performance difference after installing. As in, the particular problem we're facing has not been resolved by the latest release. And since some of us couldn't even get Dolphin 5 to run (long story - Windows update totally borked, hence can't get the update required to install VC2015 dist, hence can't run the app), we are back to Dolphin 4.0.2.

And now after some long sleepless nights I've finally figured out one major issue that's been ruining Dolphin games for us. Looks like Intel turbo boost is not working well at all when it comes to Dolphin, at least on some PCs. See for yourself:





Do you see what's happening? The OS stubbornly refuses to recognize that additional performance is needed and it is keeping the CPU downclocked and downvolted while the game is being played, resulting in potentially horrific performance drops depending on the intensity of what's happening on screen, with FPS drops down to single digits sometimes - especially if playing with several people who have the same problem. There is no throttling going on, the system is not at all overheated. The OS just doesn't understand that additional clock cycles are needed and it is perpetually keeping the CPU in "idle mode" with reduced voltage and halved clock rate.

The problem seems to be particularly acute during netplay, although single player tends to have the same issue often as well.

Where there's a problem, there's a solution: if I run a CPU stress test parallel to the game, artificially forcing one of the CPU cores to stay at 100% usage, turbo boost seems to recognize the need for additional cycles and increases the clock speed accordingly. And as soon as it does that, viola, all lag is instantly gone! Magic! Fucking miracles! But that's retarded. And what if the game needs to use that CPU core that I'm artificially stressing for no real purpose? I'm potentially reducing performance of my computer just so the system wouldn't downclock the CPU.


No lag the entire game! Even in netplay!

And as soon as the stress test finishes, the OS once again downclocks the CPU and considers it "idle", and the lag issues come back with it. Why can't I just run the game by itself and have the OS give it the correct clock rate? I mean, this is probably a question to Microsoft and Intel as much as it is a question to Dolphin, but still, it seems to be the only emulator and the only program in general that has this particular issue, I haven't had that issue with anything else yet.

Any ideas on meaningful solution?

System specs of the particular computer that's having this issue (It's not a very high end computer, but it's more than enough to run most Dolphin games at full speed provided that the CPU is not downclocked to hell):

-Intel Core i5-3350P, 3.1-3.3ghz (recently overclocked to 3.25-3.9ghz)
-SDRAM 8160 MB (DDR3-1600 recently overclocked to DDR3-1685)
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 (2 GB)
-Windows 7 SP1 DirectX 11.1
-Dolphin 4.0.2

Please note that the problem precedes the overclocking effort, in fact it was the lag issue that provoked me to try overclocking in the first place, thinking that perhaps insufficient computer resources might be at the root of it.

Thanks all.

_Get rid of that old Dolphin and use the latest
_Install throttlestop and set CPU speed to whatever value you want . Tutorial here : https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#my-laptop-new-gpu-not-performing-well-it-should
_Upgrade to Windows 10 for free (download on Microsoft website) and use DX12 instead of DX11 , DX12 is up to 60% faster than DX11 depending on the game but there is no reason for not using it

Thanks for the quick reply and recommendation!

I've just tried throttlestop. I was able to fix the frequency at one of the highest tiers, and that is indeed one solution to the problem, but it is still a bit invasive, no? Is there no Dolphin trick or configuration that can make it cooperate with intel's power management and turbo boost technologies? All Intel CPUs come with those nowadays, and I imagine a lot of dolphin users out there are wondering what the hell is wrong with their system and why they are getting lag despite having a high end machine.

Regarding upgrading Dolphin to 5, I can do that but some of my friends can't due to certain windows issues I described earlier. But when I upgraded to 5, the problem did not go away for me. Was it supposed to be resolved with the dolphin 5 release?

As for Dx12, well the reason for not using it is that it comes with Windows 10. I'll certainly consider upgrading if I run out of options, but at this stage it seems like the program can perform rather well on Windows 7 pcs provided that power management/turbo boost doesn't screw with it.

Quote:Is there no Dolphin trick or configuration that can make it cooperate with intel's power management and turbo boost technologies

You misunderstand sth here . Dolphin works fine with Intel Turbo Boost feature as long as your CPU doesn't throttle due to overheating
In fact , none of my CPUs ever throttle when running Dolphin . I use throttlestop for other purpose like lower CPU temp by decreasing CPU speed
The problem lies within your CPU , more likely OS issue that prevent your CPU to be used at maximum speed with Dolphin
i5-3350P is low power CPU .It's also possible that your CPU is runnning at power saving mode to save power , try to find any option in your bios that can disable this
Edit : btw you can try this

FYI, we only support the latest stable version or the development versions released after it. In other words, upgrade to at least Dolphin 5.0 stable if you want further support.

Now, regarding the throttling issue, check Windows' Power Management settings and make sure it's either on "Balanced" or "High Performance", otherwise the OS itself will throttle the CPU...

Quote:You misunderstand sth here . Dolphin works fine with Intel Turbo Boost feature as long as your CPU doesn't throttle due to overheating

Well, since my example is clearly not an overheating issue (I can provide more proof if you need although the screenshots above should be enough), that looks like a wishful statement. Maybe it works fine with most CPUs, but for whatever reason it's not working well in this case. :/

It would also be very strange if it was throttling to save power since, well, stressing one CPU core continuously seems to bring the clock to full power immediately as does almost any other application doing work, other than Dolphin. But I'll mess around with the Windows power settings regardless and see if it has any effect, thanks for the suggestion.

Anyway thank you for your time guys, I'll try to proceed with the information I have.

(07-02-2016, 05:17 PM)kami888 Wrote: [ -> ]It would also be very strange if it was throttling to save power since, well, stressing one CPU core continuously seems to bring the clock to full power immediately as does almost any other application doing work, other than Dolphin.

Dolphin uses CPU and GPU in some unusual ways, and that seems to make some power saving features think Dolphin doesn't need full power. However, this seems to occur mostly on GPU drivers, as I never heard of people having problems with standard Windows Power Management settings.

TL;DR look for other power saving apps you may have installed, they may be causing this. Windows by itself handles Turbo Boost with Dolphin just fine as long as you're not on the "Power Saving" profile...

Whops, you were totally right, turns out that computer did have some weird ass power settings. Resetting them to default caused the problem to disappear. I would have probably figured this out sooner had it been my computer having this problem.

While I'm here, may I ask a couple more questions?

-What exactly is vBeam speed hack and why was the option removed in Dolphin 5? At least for Mario Kart Wii, turning it on seemed to drastically improve performance with no apparent downsides.

-Is there a way to make netplay work with at least one wii controller on either Dolphin 4 or 5 or any branched version? I tried different versions, the only way I could get it to run at all was to get a third party driver for the wiimote and then configure it as a gamecube controller in Dolphin. That was already kind of clunky and missing some features, but more importantly any attempt at netplay would cause a desync - the same character controlled by the wiimote would quickly end up in different positions on the two machines. We only have one person who wants to use the wiimote, it would be awesome if we could make it work.

(07-03-2016, 10:04 AM)kami888 Wrote: [ -> ]Whops, you were totally right, turns out that computer did have some weird ass power settings. Resetting them to default caused the problem to disappear. I would have probably figured this out sooner had it been my computer having this problem.

While I'm here, may I ask a couple more questions?

-What exactly is vBeam speed hack and why was the option removed in Dolphin 5? At least for Mario Kart Wii, turning it on seemed to drastically improve performance with no apparent downsides.

-Is there a way to make netplay work with at least one wii controller on either Dolphin 4 or 5 or any branched version? I tried different versions, the only way I could get it to run at all was to get a third party driver for the wiimote and then configure it as a gamecube controller in Dolphin. That was already kind of clunky and missing some features, but more importantly any attempt at netplay would cause a desync - the same character controlled by the wiimote would quickly end up in different positions on the two machines. We only have one person who wants to use the wiimote, it would be awesome if we could make it work.

From February 2015 progress report,

VBeam speedhack¶

VBeam emulation has had a long and storied history. In CRT televisions, the image is sent in an interlaced format, rendering the raster image from top to bottom every other line, then blanking and starting again. The console fires interrupts when the raster line reaches certain points, and some games use these interrupts as internal timing. Naturally, Dolphin has to emulate these timings, and if it gets them wrong any game that relies on them will break. But if Dolphin's emulation is incorrect, then modifying these timings can actually fix them! That's how Accurate VBeam eventually became a mainstay feature.

Eventually skidau was able to make VBeam emulation accurate enough that it didn't have any problems, and could be turned on permanently in 3.5-1249! The hack was on the chopping block even then, but a few games behaved badly with Accurate VBeam and needed the speedhack, and so it remained as the "VBeam speedhack". Once the cause of those aberrations was discovered (special thanks to Fiora for that,) it was only a matter of time before the VBeam speedhack was removed.

Wii mote netplay is currently broken, so it was disabled until we figure out why it's broken.