Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello Dolphin community,

wanted to reach out as I am experiencing major lags on a Mac when I run a dolphin games. I have tried both the 4.0 and 5.0 of Dolphin and none work properly. See below for my Mac specs. Any tips you can share on how to best run it? Thanks much!

Macbook Pro 2012
2.5 GHz Intel "Core i5" processor (3210M), with two independent processor "cores" on a single silicon chip
a 3 MB shared level 3 cache
4 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM (PC3-12800) installed in pairs (two 2 GB modules)
a 500 GB Serial ATA (5400 RPM) hard drive
an 8X DL "SuperDrive"
an "integrated" Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor

My Mac is running the Sierra Osx and it has been recently rebooted so the hard drive is not full.

Have a great day!
Jon

Honestly, that is a really slow processor these days. The haswell series (the one after your CPU) had a nice big speedup, and the ultra low power target of the low end laptop chips means it has pretty low clocks so can't make that up. And the integrated GPU is also slow and old, so don't expect much there either

And macos is already at a disadvantage during to the GPU drivers lacking features that force dolphin to use less efficient paths - so you may have better luck running windows on the device, whose drivers may help make up for the slow CPU.

I agree with JonnyH, but if you insist on trying, you should tune down any graphical and audio settings to the lowest they can go, and don't even think about AA or AF on your laptop. Also, make sure to double check the Dolphin Wiki so you know which settings work best in which games.

If you're having problems playing on macOS, usually you can blame their terrible GPU drivers. Try using BootCamp to install Windows, or if you don't have a license you can install Linux and build Dolphin yourself

I think you could get better results from a cheap windows laptop these days. You may think about investing into one of those if you want to play dolphin at a decent speed.

Idk, the price of getting a good CPU with adequate cooling usually puts you above $500