Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I'm pretty sure the issue is my CPU, but I'll post all my hardware specs:

Dolphin Revision Currently Using: 5.0 x64
Operating System: Windows 10 x64
Processor/CPU: AMD A8-6600K APU
Video Card/GPU: AMD R9 380 4GB
Memory/RAM: DDR3 16 GB



My 2-core CPU has a base clock speed of 3.9 GHz (I don't overclock it). Clock speed -wise, it seems pretty decent, but I get ~15-20 FPS in most areas of Metroid Prime 3. IIRC clock speed is more important than more threads, so I find it odd that someone with a 4-core 4.0 GHz I7-4770k  gets 60 FPS with Prime 3, which is substantially more than what I get. I can think of a few reasons:

- Emulation settings? (though, I'm using the defaults)
- My CPU is AMD and not Intel
- Since I don't have many cores, my idle CPU usage is high (20%)
- I'm using a wbfs instead of iso file for Prime 3 (so it has to be decompressed meaning more resource usage?)

I'm not sure how much impact each of those have though. Assuming the high idle CPU usage is a severe problem, I'd need to look into getting a new CPU -- preferably one with more cores so other processes aren't interfering with Dolphin. When I upgrade, I'll need to consider which CPU to get. I hear Intel is generally better than AMD, but I imagine it really depends on the processor. I'm concerned by the specs on userbenchmark though. The i7-7700K is 4.2 GHz with 4 cores and has high ratings for gaming, desktop, and workstation usage:

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Intel-Core-...ating/3647

The 4.1 GHz AMD A10-6600K APU with 4 cores has awful ratings for gaming, desktop, and workstation usage:

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/AMD-A10-680...ating/2936

Comparing to the userbenchmark rating for my current CPU, the A10 doesn't seem to be much better, but the i7 is shown as leagues better than both of them.

With that being said, I have the following questions:

- Is the i7 substantially better than the A10 for Dolphin as userbenchmark shows even though they have similar clock speed?
- Is high idle usage or the awful userbenchmark score the biggest problem I'm facing with my current CPU?
- Will converting from wbfs to iso provide any substantial performance gain with my current CPU, or will its effects be mostly negligible due to high idle usage?
- Can anyone who has an i7 share their experiences with what the performance differences have been between wbfs/iso? Negligible or noticeable?



Also, I have another question regarding performance. I can run Metroid Prime 1 and 2 stably at ~40 FPS. When I step in water in either of the games though, my FPS drops to 10 until I've stopped moving or leave the water. This is especially noticeable in Prime 2 since it has an entire area (Torvus Bog) with frequent water.

- Is Dolphin the bottleneck here (requiring much more resources than normal for water)? Or is this an issue of my CPU having a poor userbenchmark score even though it has high clock speed?
- If I get an i7 and other top-of-the-line hardware will I get bad performance stepping in water? Can anyone who has better hardware confirm if they have issues with water or not?
- Can anyone with top-of-the-line hardware share their experiences regarding performance in general (for any games)? Is your experience mostly stellar, or do you frequently encounter performance issues strictly due to any possible limitations due to emulation?

the i7-7700k will play Dolphin flawlessly.

It has very high clocked kaby lake cores. Dolphin really only needs two of them, but the i7 will handle it more than okay. and that's at stock clocks.

Just btw, comparing clock speeds alone means very little. The A10-6600K is a CPU that was not very well designed (even during it's time) and as a result was very very inefficient.

Depending on your other workloads you do not have to even go as high as the i7 7700k

The Kaby Lake Pentium processors will do gaming and emulation better
The Core i5 and i7 lines (maybe with the exception of some of the ultra low power varients) will massively perform better, though you will habe to get new ram to go with the new platform DDR4

You can also use some of Intel's older platforms that support DDR3 with the 1150 Haswell series being the most performance compatible with your current 16GB. Though if you are going back to haswell or further stick to i5 or i7 (with a few specific exceptions)

If replacing your ram is not an issue and you just love AMD you can also go Ryzen which has good performance and some advantages depending on your workload.

Neither ISO nor WBFS are compressed, so the performance is essentially the same for both. And even if you had been using a compressed format, the performance difference usually wouldn't matter in practice, because disc decompression is one of the few things that Dolphin can use a separate thread for.