Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey Guys,

New to the forum. I've read through many threads about stuttering and the article about how async ubershaders fixed the problem. I still could not find a solution to some of the games, namely smash bro brawl and donkey kong country returns. Most of the games works decently well running at 60fps mostly with random drops to about high 40s which is not really detectable during gameplay

For SSBB, the frame rate dips to single digit, sometimes 1fps especially at the start of a solo match. The waterfall stage where the player have to keep jumping also encounters a freeze for about 1-2 second when "speed up" of the stage occurs. For DKCR, sometimes there will also be freezes for 2 second.

My machine specs:

AMD ryzen 1700 @ 3.8ghz
nvidia 1660ti
32GB's of GSkill RAM

I have left settings at default except changing the IR to 1440p which is my native monitor res. I have also turned on SSAA 2x, 16x AF. I have also tried 2x MSAA and still encounter the exact same 1-2 second freezes. Also tried turning off dual core with same results. I am using the latest build.

Is there anything else I can try or is my CPU bottlenecking?

I have more info about the frame drop incident which feels like a freeze. Here is a screenshot from msi AB showing the frame dip, after the dip I stopped the emulator:


The GPU utilisation was found to drop as well:


The CPU untilisation for the 16 threads are here:


Hope this help narrow down the issue

I have reset the all settings to default for a test, surprising the same stutter that last about 2 seconds is still present in SSBB. The CPU utlisation for the hardest working core reaches about 80%.

For a test, i also went to try ishiiruka's build and there didn't seem to be a problem for SSBB in the same stage. For that build there are problems with other games but it is not the aim of this thread.

Where are you reading your games from, does it happen when they are loading?

Also post all your Graphics settings.

From a normal mechanical drive, have also tried running it from SSD with the same 1-2 second freeze still present in SSBB.

I would set Texture Cache accuracy to fast, Arbitrary Mipmap detection off and Defer EFB cache invalidation on. Using Vulkan can maybe help. If that doesn't fix it, it might be a Jit cache flush. To check that, you can follow the instructions in this issue thread: https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/11716.

(08-26-2019, 02:17 AM)Miksel12 Wrote: [ -> ]I would set Texture Cache accuracy to fast, Arbitrary Mipmap detection off and Defer EFB cache invalidation on. Using Vulkan can maybe help. If that doesn't fix it, it might be a Jit cache flush. To check that, you can follow the instructions in this issue thread: https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/11716.

Thanks for your recommendations.

The 3 options resulted in the same thing. 

I have tried the dirty hack that increased the cache for dolphin build 10039 and the stuttering is indeed gone. I have also verified that every time the stutter occurs the message that cache is flusing is shown. From here: https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/11693

It seems like the fix will be to amend the code myself if I still want to use the latest version?

I have also verified that the ishiiruka build will encounter the cache flush, at different moments in the game, maybe some time later or earlier at random. I guess there is no fix for this at the moment?

Nope, requires a major rewrite to Dolphin's JIT.

(08-27-2019, 10:47 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]Nope, requires a major rewrite to Dolphin's JIT.

I see, how about increasing the cache to a bigger value like you have recommended in the support thread? Are there detrimental issues with doing that if there is sufficient ram? I went through the code and see that you have increased it 8 times in the dirty hack.