Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello,

I am new to this forum and to the emulation scene, so I apologize in advance for any errors you might find in this post. I've read the rules and I'm gonna try to abide by them as much as possible. To put it shortly, the main problem I'm encountering is related to the emulation speed of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (NTSC), since my computer seems to be good enough (of course, that is just in my uneducated opinion), but it rarely achieves more than 30 fps and 50% speed. From what I've seen, there are weaker computers which manage to run this game without any problems. My specifications are as follows:

Windows 7 x64
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600x Six-Core Processor @3.60 GHz
RAM: Kingston DDR4 16.0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050

The Dolphin build I'm using is 5.0-8490 x64. Most of the settings are set to default. The DSP Emulation Engine is set to HLE, but changing it to LLE Recompiler doesn't do much speed-wise. The audio backend is set to XAudio2 with a latency of 20 and the Dolby Pro Logic II Decoder option is unchecked. The graphics backend is Direct3D 11, but changing it to Vulkan or OpenGL doesn't do much either.

LE: Disabling Dual-Core from the game's properties menu helps achieve full 100% speed and 60 fps for 2-3 minutes, but no matter what I do in-game, they go back to 40-50% and 30 fps afterwards.

Is my computer simply not good enough to run this game/Dolphin itself? I don't want exceptional graphics, I simply want to enjoy this game at its full speed/a speed as close to it as possible. Thanks for everything.

(07-27-2018, 03:05 AM)KTB Wrote: [ -> ]Hello,

I am new to this forum and to the emulation scene, so I apologize in advance for any errors you might find in this post. I've read the rules and I'm gonna try to abide by them as much as possible. To put it shortly, the main problem I'm encountering is related to the emulation speed of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (NTSC), since my computer seems to be good enough (of course, that is just in my uneducated opinion), but it rarely achieves more than 30 fps and 50% speed. From what I've seen, there are weaker computers which manage to run this game without any problems. My specifications are as follows:

Windows 7 x64
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600x Six-Core Processor @3.60 GHz
RAM: Kingston DDR4 16.0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050

The Dolphin build I'm using is 5.0-8490 x64. Most of the settings are set to default. The DSP Emulation Engine is set to HLE, but changing it to LLE Recompiler doesn't do much speed-wise. The audio backend is set to XAudio2 with a latency of 20 and the Dolby Pro Logic II Decoder option is unchecked. The graphics backend is Direct3D 11, but changing it to Vulkan or OpenGL doesn't do much either.

LE: Disabling Dual-Core from the game's properties menu helps achieve full 100% speed and 60 fps for 2-3 minutes, but no matter what I do in-game, they go back to 40-50% and 30 fps afterwards.

Is my computer simply not good enough to run this game/Dolphin itself? I don't want exceptional graphics, I simply want to enjoy this game at its full speed/a speed as close to it as possible. Thanks for everything.

Your results with dual core make me think it’s some kind of throttling or governing issue. Have you verify that everything is set to high performance (including the AMD optimized High perf profile, although I’m not sure windows 7 has that. ). Also what is your IR? (Is it set to auto?).

(07-27-2018, 07:43 AM)Nintonito Wrote: [ -> ]Your results with dual core make me think it’s some kind of throttling or governing issue.  Have you verify that everything is set to high performance (including the AMD optimized High perf profile, although I’m not sure windows 7 has that. ).  Also what is your IR? (Is it set to auto?).

My computer's power plan was set to balanced, so I've changed it to high performance. There doesn't seem to be any AMD high performance profile (or any other AMD profile, for that matter). Changing the power plan to the normal high performance mode makes no difference though, the game still runs at max 50% speed and 30 fps, but this time disabling dual-core doesn't do anything, it still runs just as slowly. My IR is set to Native (640x528). If it's relevant, my motherboard is an ASRock AB350 Pro4 with a PCI-Express Graphic Interface and x16 Link Width.

(07-27-2018, 11:26 PM)KTB Wrote: [ -> ]My computer's power plan was set to balanced, so I've changed it to high performance. There doesn't seem to be any AMD high performance profile (or any other AMD profile, for that matter). Changing the power plan to the normal high performance mode makes no difference though, the game still runs at max 50% speed and 30 fps, but this time disabling dual-core doesn't do anything, it still runs just as slowly. My IR is set to Native (640x528). If it's relevant, my motherboard is an ASRock AB350 Pro4 with a PCI-Express Graphic Interface and x16 Link Width.

I’m at a loss for exactly why this problem is occurring, but it’s definitely not a lack of processor power. You said both OpenGL snd DirectX run the same? Maybe you should enable ubershaders and/or the “compile shaders during startup” option.

This sounds like some ridiculous thermal throttling... Your PC is indeed more than strong enough.

(07-28-2018, 02:26 AM)Nintonito Wrote: [ -> ]I’m at a loss for exactly why this problem is occurring, but it’s definitely not a lack of processor power.  You said both OpenGL snd DirectX run the same?  Maybe you should enable ubershaders and/or the “compile shaders during startup” option.

Did all that, nothing is different: 50% max, 30 fps.

(07-28-2018, 10:46 AM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]This sounds like some ridiculous thermal throttling...  Your PC is indeed more than strong enough.

What is there to do, then? I am not familiar with that concept, unfortunately. Thanks in advance.

Thermal Throttling is when your CPU (or GPU) gets too hot, so the computer reduces your clock speed to a lower speed so that it isn't putting out as much heat, which translates to less power for you.

You should use a program like CoreTemp or CPU-Z to see what your CPU speed and temperature are when playing Dolphin, and then share it here so we can help determine if this is your problem.