Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Yeah, i can't seem to find any option or anything to fix this. So i guess it's one of those things i'll have to suck it up until i get lucky or something. Maybe i'll try to use the Dolphin RetroArch core more if i can but this has it's own annoying problems since it's not as complete as the standalone. Or maybe i will give up on Dolphin emulation altogether and try again in 6 months or something like that.

Alright.

1) You're going to clean uninstall your NVIDIA drivers with DDU and then clean install the most recent ones.

DDU:
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewt...95341b1ff0

I don't know if you know this program, in case you don't here it is:

- When opening DDU the first time go to "Options" and tick "Enable Safe Mode dialog".
- Close DDU and reopen it.
- In the "Launch option" select "Safe Mode" and click "Reboot to Safe Mode".
- Once in Safe Mode, your password will be asked, not the pin code. DDU will open automatically.
- On the right, in "Select device type", select "GPU"
- Click on "Clean and restart (Highly recommended)".
- Once rebooted, install the drivers.
- Once they're installed, reboot one last time and you're good to go.

2) You're also going to use MSI Afterburner (and his companion RTSS that is bundled with it).

MSI Afterburner:
https://fr.msi.com/page/afterburner

In the MSI Afterburner settings, under monitoring, just enable framerate and frametime like on these screenshots. Text for framerate, graph for frametime.

https://i.imgur.com/Wfh0dHI.png

https://i.imgur.com/sWR2wSc.png

This is RTSS, tingle with the options as you like:

https://i.imgur.com/lP06CtY.png


When everything is set, it should look something like this (first and last lines of course):
https://i.imgur.com/5zQIXZS.png

To toggle this OSD in-game, it's the "END" key.

3) And finally, record the Mario Kart Double Dash spinning around the Pianta statue with Shadow Play, with the MSI Afterburner OSD on. The Shadow Play quality is bad but it uses the GPU rather than the CPU, so you should get no framerate drop whatsoever when recording. Crank up the quality setting to the max before.
Upload the footage to something like MEGA, MediaFire, Dropbox or whatever, so we can download the untouched footage.


Forgot to ask, but have you tried both the NVIDIA Control Panel V-Sync and Dolphin's? Not at the same time of course.

(09-29-2018, 09:06 AM)Shadorino Wrote: [ -> ]Alright.

1) You're going to clean uninstall your NVIDIA drivers with DDU and then clean install the most recent ones.

DDU:
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewt...95341b1ff0

I don't know if you know this program, in case you don't here it is:

- When opening DDU the first time go to "Options" and tick "Enable Safe Mode dialog".
- Close DDU and reopen it.
- In the "Launch option" select "Safe Mode" and click "Reboot to Safe Mode".
- Once in Safe Mode, your password will be asked, not the pin code. DDU will open automatically.
- On the right, in "Select device type", select "GPU"
- Click on "Clean and restart (Highly recommended)".
- Once rebooted, install the drivers.
- Once they're installed, reboot one last time and you're good to go.

2) You're also going to use MSI Afterburner (and his companion RTSS that is bundled with it).

MSI Afterburner:
https://fr.msi.com/page/afterburner

In the MSI Afterburner settings, under monitoring, just enable framerate and frametime like on these screenshots. Text for framerate, graph for frametime.

https://i.imgur.com/Wfh0dHI.png

https://i.imgur.com/sWR2wSc.png

This is RTSS, tingle with the options as you like:

https://i.imgur.com/lP06CtY.png


When everything is set, it should look something like this (first and last lines of course):
https://i.imgur.com/5zQIXZS.png

To toggle this OSD in-game, it's the "END" key.

3) And finally, record the Mario Kart Double Dash spinning around the Pianta statue with Shadow Play, with the MSI Afterburner OSD on. The Shadow Play quality is bad but it uses the GPU rather than the CPU, so you should get no framerate drop whatsoever when recording. Crank up the quality setting to the max before.
Upload the footage to something like MEGA, MediaFire, Dropbox or whatever, so we can download the untouched footage.


Forgot to ask, but have you tried both the NVIDIA Control Panel V-Sync and Dolphin's? Not at the same time of course.

Thanks for the suggestions. And the very detailed instructions. I appreciate it.

I always use DDU. And i always update the drivers in the way you describe.

I tried both the Nvidia Panel and Dolphin's vsync separately.

I also tried 3 different PCs and monitors.

I will try and record a video when i get some time.

I have stutters as well but only when using a development build, stable 5.0 is working perfectly. I don´t like having much more options in the newer revisions, 5.0 is quite simple, I just want the perfomance of 5.0 in a newer rivision.

I haven't managed to record a video yet but i got a new monitor. This monitor supports anything from 50/60 to 240hz. Dolphin continues having those microstutters on all options but with 120hz (which is 2x 60 so it should sync) it's very noticeable because it's more frequent and instead of one microstutter every 40 seconds you get noticeable multiple stutters every 5-6 seconds.

From what i can gather, Dolphin simply can't sync perfectly with any monitor.

Edit: The emulator has very noticeable stutters when using 120 or 240 hz. So it definitely can't sync properly with those. But let's stick to 60hz which is the original issue. Here the microstutters are still very subtle like i mentioned in the thread already. But now i measured the framerate/frametime in Afterburner:

https://i.postimg.cc/FK7gvk3R/Untitled.png

You can see the frame time line isn't a perfect line like the frame rate above. The program does report perfect frame rate but it does have micro stutters because the frametime isn't good. I have seen this behavior in a few other games on PC but i can usually fix it by changing some options or playing on Windows 10 instead of Windows 7. But Dolphin is the only program that is so stubborn and i can't fix it no matter what i do or wherever i use it.

(11-01-2018, 04:19 PM)Tasoulios Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't managed to record a video yet but i got a new monitor. This monitor supports anything from 50/60 to 240hz. Dolphin continues having those microstutters on all options but with 120hz (which is 2x 60 so it should sync) it's very noticeable because it's more frequent and instead of one microstutter every 40 seconds you get noticeable multiple stutters every 5-6 seconds.

From what i can gather, Dolphin simply can't sync perfectly with any monitor.

Edit: The emulator has very noticeable stutters when using 120 or 240 hz. So it definitely can't sync properly with those. But let's stick to 60hz which is the original issue. Here the microstutters are still very subtle like i mentioned in the thread already. But now i measured the framerate/frametime in Afterburner:

https://i.postimg.cc/FK7gvk3R/Untitled.png

You can see the frame time line isn't a perfect line like the frame rate above. The program does report perfect frame rate but it does have micro stutters because the frametime isn't good. I have seen this behavior in a few other games on PC but i can usually fix it by changing some options or playing on Windows 10 instead of Windows 7. But Dolphin is the only program that is so stubborn and i can't fix it no matter what i do or wherever i use it.

Try setting emulation speed to 95% in the GUI or via the game config:

[Core]

EmulationSpeed = 0.95

That should cap FPS to 57 FPS which should match up with the additional overhead of Gsync or vsync.

Also, try setting

[Core]

JITFollowBranch = false

in the config files of affected games.

If this is an issue due to the vsync clock not quite matching the virtual emulated wii refresh rate, there's probably no correct way of "solving" this without moving to some adaptive sync method. If it's not the vsync, it'll be the audio clock. The simple fact is there are multiple independent clocks, and even if they are calibrated to /exactly/ the same rate (not going to happen) they'll drift over time. If you locked onto vsync, for example, it would cause the audio and cpu clocks to be slightly 'out' compared to hardware per frame - which may cause other artifacts.

With composited window managers, all display is effectively aligned to vsync - weather you wanted to or not. Instead of tearing, it just tends not to show a frame if it wasn't ready for the composition pass - causing frame doubling and likely the stutter you're experiencing. Going to 120hz, for example, will likely make the stutter less obvious, as instead of the same frame being shown for 32ms (vs 16 at 60hz) every N seconds, you'll get one frame being shown for 24ms every N/2 seconds, which will likely be much less visible despite being more frequent. A dynamic refresh rate, like one of the adaptive sync technologies that are becoming popular now (for good reason, I might add) would be a perfect solution for this - so long as the desktop compositor uses the dolphin frame output as the trigger for a new composition pushing it to the display.

No clock is perfect - pretty much everything has to choose some 'canon' clock and use that as the timebase for everything else. If it's not the vsync clock drifting, it'll be the audio clock, or the CPU cycle count, or some other timebase.

But I understand the suggestion of trying to sync with the clocks that are most obviously 'bad' when they get out of sync though - but I guess 'patches are welcome' here. But be prepared to get bikeshed-ed.

(11-02-2018, 11:28 AM)nbohr1more Wrote: [ -> ]Try setting emulation speed to 95% in the GUI or via the game config:

[Core]

EmulationSpeed = 0.95

That should cap FPS to 57 FPS which should match up with the additional overhead of Gsync or vsync.

Also, try setting

[Core]

JITFollowBranch = false

in the config files of affected games.

Neither of those fix the issue. Setting emulation speed to 0.95 makes is even worse, with constant noticeable stutters, not to mention wrong sound pitch. Tried 0.99, i get one frame of stutter but instead of every 40 seconds i get it every 3 or 4.

(11-02-2018, 03:39 PM)JonnyH Wrote: [ -> ]Going to 120hz, for example, will likely make the stutter less obvious, as instead of the same frame being shown for 32ms (vs 16 at 60hz) every N seconds, you'll get one frame being shown for 24ms every N/2 seconds, which will likely be much less visible despite being more frequent. A dynamic refresh rate, like one of the adaptive sync technologies that are becoming popular now (for good reason, I might add) would be a perfect solution for this - so long as the desktop compositor uses the dolphin frame output as the trigger for a new composition pushing it to the display.

In my case, 120 and 240hz make matters worse as i get noticeable judder of multiple frames very often instead of just one frame.

Unfortunately, my monitor supports freesync but i can't use it because i have an Nvidia card (the gsync version of that monitor was 200 euros more expensive). It's not that i needed something like this though, everything else is smooth, only Dolphin has this issue. I'm convinced by now that it's not something wrong on my system (or the others i tried this on) or anything like that.

Sorry for the double post. I don't know how to multi quote in this forum.

How about this @Tasoulius,

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comme...laying_on/

I will try it later and see if it helps on my end.

Edit: doesn't fix here either!