Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums - Confused

Hi,

first my Specs are:
OS: Linux (LibreElec)
PC: Intel NUC8i3BEH
CPU: Intel Core i3-8109U (2x 3GHz)
GS: Iris Plus Graphics 655
RAM: 4GB

My problem:
I have lags, sometimes more sometimes less. The thing is I started testing with Rune Factory Frontier and this runy pretty good actually, even on my old NUC which had just 2x 2GHz CPU. So I think its one of the games which doesnt demand much CPU. So as I said I started testing with this game on my new NUC with 2x 3GHz. And as expected everything was fine. Then I started trying another game: Need for Speed Carbon. And this game on the other hand lagged pretty hard if I started a race. So I started to change some settings but I dont know much about this stuff and things didnt improve. Actually I didnt even notice any difference no matter what I changed. I closed NfS Carbon and opened Rune Factory Frontier again. I also turned on "Show FPS" what I didnt before. I changed the resolution from native to 1080p just for fun. And besides the graphics which looked much better now nothing has changed. I had 25 FPS before and 25 FPS after changing resolution. I was confused and tested Need for Speed again. Suddenly I didnt have any laggs anymore and it ran pretty nice. Same with Mario Kart Wii.
Once again I tested different games and unfortunatelly its lagging. So I dont know if I just have to play it a bit more as the games before until it gets better or what happens if I turn off and turn on a game, or switch the games. If it has affect on this shader cache.. will it get cleared or not..
Someone on reddit told my to read the dolphin blog about ubershaders. I did and it sounds pretty interesting even if I didnt understand everything. However it also didnt really solved my issues. In the dolphin blog they wrote that the best settings for Linux with Intel CPU is Vulkan + Hybrid Mode.

Here we come to my current settings:
Dolphin version: 5.0-9806
GFX Backend: empty
Shader Compilation: First synchronous, then asynchronous (Ubershaders)
Resolution: still switching between native and 1080p, not sure if it has any affect on performance
I dont know which other settings are woth to mention so I just attach my dolphin+gfx.ini

I first changed the shader compilation from synchronous to asynchronous (Ubershaders) and it improved my lags at the beginning. Although Im not sure if it is really because of the shaders or because of something else. Because as I said the other games also were laggy at the beginning and got smoother at some point what I couldnt explain to myself.
Anyways at the beginning the game lagged less but playing some minutes it still started lagging at certain points.

Then I tried changing my backend from empty to vulkan but that made thing just much more worse. The game stuttered every 2 seconds so I changed it back to empty. Empty and OpenGL feels the same to me but cant say for sure.

So that was a lot of text but maybe someone has an idea what I can change because atm everything is really confusing to me Confused

Thanks in advance Smile

Dolphin.ini

Code:
[General]

LastFilename = 

ShowLag = False

ShowFrameCount = False

ISOPaths = 2

RecursiveISOPaths = True

NANDRootPath = 

DumpPath = 

WirelessMac = 

WiiSDCardPath = /storage/.local/share/dolphin-emu/Wii/sd.raw

ISOPath0 = /var/media/SPIELE/Wii/Roms

ISOPath1 = /var/media/SPIELE/Gamecube/Roms

[Interface]

ConfirmStop = False

UsePanicHandlers = True

OnScreenDisplayMessages = True

HideCursor = False

AutoHideCursor = False

MainWindowPosX = 100

MainWindowPosY = 100

MainWindowWidth = 800

MainWindowHeight = 570

Language = 57

ShowToolbar = True

ShowStatusbar = True

ShowLogWindow = False

ShowLogConfigWindow = False

ExtendedFPSInfo = False

ThemeName40 = Clean

PauseOnFocusLost = False

LanguageCode = 

ShowActiveTitle = False

UseBuiltinTitleDatabase = True

ThemeName = Clean

DebugModeEnabled = False

[Display]

FullscreenResolution = Auto

Fullscreen = True

RenderToMain = False

RenderWindowXPos = -1

RenderWindowYPos = -1

RenderWindowWidth = 640

RenderWindowHeight = 480

RenderWindowAutoSize = False

KeepWindowOnTop = False

ProgressiveScan = False

PAL60 = True

DisableScreenSaver = True

ForceNTSCJ = False

FullscreenDisplayRes = Auto

[GameList]

ListDrives = False

ListWad = True

ListElfDol = True

ListWii = True

ListGC = True

ListJap = True

ListPal = True

ListUsa = True

ListAustralia = True

ListFrance = True

ListGermany = True

ListItaly = True

ListKorea = True

ListNetherlands = True

ListRussia = True

ListSpain = True

ListTaiwan = True

ListWorld = True

ListUnknown = True

ListSort = 3

ListSortSecondary = 0

ColorCompressed = True

ColumnPlatform = True

ColumnBanner = True

ColumnNotes = True

ColumnFileName = False

ColumnID = False

ColumnRegion = True

ColumnSize = True

ColumnState = True

ColumnDescription = False

ColumnTitle = True

ColumnTags = False

[Core]

HLE_BS2 = False

TimingVariance = 40

CPUCore = 1

Fastmem = True

CPUThread = True

DSPHLE = True

SkipIdle = True

SyncOnSkipIdle = True

SyncGPU = False

SyncGpuMaxDistance = 200000

SyncGpuMinDistance = -200000

SyncGpuOverclock = 1.00000000

FPRF = False

AccurateNaNs = False

DefaultISO = 

DVDRoot = 

Apploader = 

EnableCheats = False

SelectedLanguage = 1

OverrideGCLang = False

DPL2Decoder = False

Latency = 2

MemcardAPath = 

MemcardBPath = 

AgpCartAPath = 

AgpCartBPath = 

SlotA = 1

SlotB = 255

SerialPort1 = 255

BBA_MAC = 

SIDevice0 = 6

AdapterRumble0 = True

SimulateKonga0 = False

SIDevice1 = 6

AdapterRumble1 = True

SimulateKonga1 = False

SIDevice2 = 0

AdapterRumble2 = True

SimulateKonga2 = False

SIDevice3 = 0

AdapterRumble3 = True

SimulateKonga3 = False

WiiSDCard = False

WiiKeyboard = False

WiimoteContinuousScanning = False

WiimoteEnableSpeaker = False

RunCompareServer = False

RunCompareClient = False

EmulationSpeed = 1.00000000

FrameSkip = 0x00000000

Overclock = 0.368567288

OverclockEnable = True

GFXBackend = 

GPUDeterminismMode = auto

PerfMapDir = 

EnableCustomRTC = False

CustomRTCValue = 0x386d4380

SkipIPL = True

AudioLatency = 20

AudioStretch = False

AudioStretchMaxLatency = 80

EnableSignatureChecks = True

[Movie]

PauseMovie = False

Author = 

DumpFrames = False

DumpFramesSilent = False

ShowInputDisplay = False

ShowRTC = False

[DSP]

EnableJIT = True

DumpAudio = False

DumpUCode = False

Backend = ALSA

Volume = 100

CaptureLog = False

DumpAudioSilent = False

[Input]

BackgroundInput = False

[FifoPlayer]

LoopReplay = True

[AutoUpdate]

UpdateTrack = 

HashOverride = 

[Analytics]

ID = 9e16f33ae78745cdf93468232d2cf83c

Enabled = False

PermissionAsked = False

[Network]

SSLDumpRead = False

SSLDumpWrite = False

SSLVerifyCertificates = True

SSLDumpRootCA = False

SSLDumpPeerCert = False

[BluetoothPassthrough]

Enabled = False

VID = -1

PID = -1

LinkKeys = 

[USBPassthrough]

Devices = 

[Debug]

JitOff = False

JitLoadStoreOff = False

JitLoadStoreFloatingOff = False

JitLoadStorePairedOff = False

JitFloatingPointOff = False

JitIntegerOff = False

JitPairedOff = False

JitSystemRegistersOff = False

JitBranchOff = False

[NetPlay]

TraversalChoice = direct

GFX.ini

Code:
[Hardware]

VSync = True

Adapter = 0

[Settings]

AspectRatio = 0

Crop = False

wideScreenHack = False

UseXFB = False

UseRealXFB = False

SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 128

ShowFPS = True

ShowNetPlayPing = False

ShowNetPlayMessages = False

LogRenderTimeToFile = False

OverlayStats = False

OverlayProjStats = False

DumpTextures = False

HiresTextures = False

ConvertHiresTextures = False

CacheHiresTextures = False

DumpEFBTarget = False

FreeLook = False

UseFFV1 = False

EnablePixelLighting = False

FastDepthCalc = True

MSAA = 1

SSAA = False

EFBScale = 2

TexFmtOverlayEnable = False

TexFmtOverlayCenter = False

Wireframe = False

DisableFog = False

BorderlessFullscreen = False

SWZComploc = True

SWZFreeze = True

SWDumpObjects = False

SWDumpTevStages = False

SWDumpTevTexFetches = False

SWDrawStart = 0

SWDrawEnd = 100000

BackendMultithreading = False

InternalResolution = 3

EnableGPUTextureDecoding = False

ShaderCompilationMode = 2

WaitForShadersBeforeStarting = True

[Enhancements]

ForceFiltering = False

MaxAnisotropy = 0

PostProcessingShader = 

ArbitraryMipmapDetection = True

DisableCopyFilter = True

ForceTrueColor = True

[Stereoscopy]

StereoMode = 0

StereoDepth = 20

StereoConvergencePercentage = 100

StereoSwapEyes = False

[Hacks]

EFBAccessEnable = True

BBoxEnable = False

ForceProgressive = True

EFBToTextureEnable = True

EFBScaledCopy = True

EFBEmulateFormatChanges = False

DeferEFBCopies = True

XFBToTextureEnable = True

When you boot a game, Dolphin automatically sets the recommended settings so the game doesn´t have odd graphics/missing effects/crashes out of nowhere/etc.

Unfortunately, sometimes those settings (EFB to CPU Access, EFB Copies to Texture turned off, Bounding Box) can be quite taxing.

Then you have those games that are outright demanding even if they don´t need any specific settings (which is the case with NFS Carbon, and pretty much any EA game).

And then you also have an ultra-low voltage CPU model that doesn´t really help much... Too much stress for too long and the CPU will force its clock speed down (since it´s not meant for actual gaming).

I would be interested in knowing what model nuc you used to have, but I have noticed in multiple u series 8th gen laptops that either they have heat\power issues or some manufacturers put extra limits in the bios limiting the sustained clock speeds (short boosts are generally fine). This has mainly been on the 8250u and the 8550u (an i5 and i7 CPU respectively), also in form factors with limited\no active cooling (some ultrabooks) or in laptops with poor cooling\power delivery solutions. More recent models have been getting better, but it was a lot of models early on. Also most of my experiences with this were on windows based systems, but I don't think it was just a windows thing.... just that they have a pretty dominant market share.

If you can run an active hardware monitor program while you play and get temp, voltage, and clock speed readings, I would be interested in those when you experience lag.

Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

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