Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi,

I tried searching for this but most of the info I was able to find seemed to pertain to older Macs or MacBook Pros.  

I am on a Mac Pro (late 2013 trashcan) with 8-core Xeon cpu, dual AMD FirePro 6Gb, and 64 Gb ram.  Obviously this is definitely more of video editor's machine than gaming rig.  And I understand that certain cpus like the Sandy/Ivys seemed more suitable to using Dolphin than this machine, but I figured I ask if there is anything I can do to improve the performance I am getting.

I have tried a few gamecube games and they seem to run pretty well although I do get the occasional audio glitches.  But with my Wii titles such as Mario Galaxy there is definitely screen tearing and sluggish performance.  I loaded up Other M and the opening titles were almost impossible to get through.  Stuttering fps, like moving in slow motion and terrible audio.

Here are some screenshots of my settings attached.

I tried both the latest dev builds for MacOs and the official 5.0 release (which seems to be a couple years old).  I do notice a difference in performance on the GC titles in the new dev 5.0-9431 compared to 5.0.  Should I be using an older or different version perhaps?

Thanks!

[attachment=17786][attachment=17787][attachment=17788][attachment=17789]

Use the development version and switch the graphics backend to metal/vulkan/whatever we call moltenvk on Mac

(02-08-2019, 03:13 PM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]Use the development version and switch the graphics backend to metal/vulkan/whatever we call moltenvk on Mac

Hey.  So I tried the change and in Other M, everything still moving in slow motion during the entire opening cinematic.  The FPS drop and fluctuate from like 15-20 FPS and VPS: 30 - 70%. Once game starts FPS still fluctuates but not as bad.  During certain parts the game freezes.  

Metroid games are extremely demanding and moltenvk is only a partial solution to the problem that MacOS just doesn't give us modern GL version to work with, which we need to go fast on graphics backend heavy games like Metroid. Translation wrappers aren't super fast, especially for an API that has a slow by design shader compiler.

Your only other option is to dual boot either Linux or Windows, where you can have access to GPU drivers that support modern GL and D3D.

(02-08-2019, 05:30 PM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]Metroid games are extremely demanding and moltenvk is only a partial solution to the problem that MacOS just doesn't give us modern GL version to work with, which we need to go fast on graphics backend heavy games like Metroid. Translation wrappers aren't super fast, especially for an API that has a slow by design shader compiler.

Your only other option is to dual boot either Linux or Windows, where you can have access to GPU drivers that support modern GL and D3D.

Ok.  Aside from dual booting on this Mac, I have an older PC I can use as well.  It has a 6-core i7-3970x cpu, dual Nvidia GTX760 gpus (4Gb each) and 32Gb ram.  I believe it is already running win10.  Would those specs be good enough to run Dolphin and GC/Wii?

Thanks!

Yes, this monster is more than enough for Dolphin. You can even try WiiU/PS3 emulation on it.

(02-09-2019, 01:40 AM)DrHouse64 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, this monster is more than enough for Dolphin. You can even try WiiU/PS3 emulation on it.

Heheheh.  Well it was a good editing machine for sure, but I though all these multi-cores weren't good for Dolphin emulation.

You are correct in that Dolphin doesn't benefit from more than 2 threads, but any high clocked sandybridge or newer runs most things OK. Essentially any haswell or newer runs Dolphin flawlessly. The older PC will run Dolphin fine at UHD resolutions

(02-09-2019, 04:25 AM)Helios Wrote: [ -> ]You are correct in that Dolphin doesn't benefit from more than 2 threads, but any high clocked sandybridge or newer runs most things OK. Essentially any haswell or newer runs Dolphin flawlessly. The older PC will run Dolphin fine at UHD resolutions

Alright.  Well, think I will hook it up this weekend and see how it goes.