Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Please help!

I just upgraded my CPU and Im still having stutterings when trying to play SW RS 2.

Here are my settings:
Ryzen 5 2600
16GB DDR4 3200Mhz Ballistix
GTX 1050 2GB
SSD 240 GB
Seagate 1TB
PSU Corsair 550W


I tried ubershaders, async, sync, but I still get slowdowns, especially in FMV's.

I read in some topic that its because I have an Nvidia card. Is that true?

What kind of settings should I try?
Is my GPU not enough?

The "Stutter on NVidia GPUs despite async ubershaders enabled" is only visible in some titles on the OpenGL and Vulkan backends - if it still stutters on the D3D backend it's not that.

For ubershaders, make sure you're using the 'asynchronous ubershaders' option - the others are only really for debugging issues (the synchronous ubershaders option puts a LOT more load on the GPU for no benefit, it's only useful for debugging and testing issues like the stuttering mentioned above) or extremely resource-limited systems. Ubershader options aside, your GPU should be more than enough to run any title at non-crazy settings (IE not more than 4k IR, no stupidly high MSAA or similar).

One thing that may be useful to try is to disable vsync (in both dolphin and the nvidia control panel) - while it might tear, if the stutters disappear that may suggest it's a frame timing issue - that can often be caused where you're just on the cusp of running it at 100% speed, but occasionally *just* misses the vsync period, so has to wait for another frame before displaying the next - so the same frame is shown twice appearing as 'stutter'.

But be aware the Rogue Squadron games are notorious for using weird and wonderful gamecube/wii hardware features that few other games utilize, which are often hard to emulate on a PC architecture. It may be that you're still CPU bound, despite having a fast CPU that can easily blaze through the majority of titles without breaking a sweat. It may be that there simply isn't a CPU on the market fast enough to emulate these features at full speed.

If that is the case, you may still be able to get small improvements by tweaking the clocks - the ryzen 1000 and 2000 series respond more to RAM clock tuning than CPU clock tuning for the most part - there may be some performance you can gain there, but at best it'll be a few percent, so likely only useful if you're just on the verge of being smooth, rather than making a completely unplayably choppy game buttery smooth.

Seems to me its a problem with the emulator.
IF it doesnt work with a ryzen 2600, I dont think upgrading to a ryzen 3600 will improve that much.

(12-23-2019, 02:27 AM)JonnyH Wrote: [ -> ]But be aware the Rogue Squadron games are notorious for using weird and wonderful gamecube/wii hardware features that few other games utilize, which are often hard to emulate on a PC architecture. It may be that you're still CPU bound, despite having a fast CPU that can easily blaze through the majority of titles without breaking a sweat. It may be that there simply isn't a CPU on the market fast enough to emulate these features at full speed.

Hmmmm.. Note this post sort of goes OT but it tells a story and explains all the issues I had with Dolphin and Star Wars games..
After I had no success on mac with Dolphin and it was suggested I use bootcamp, I ended up upgrading to a 16" MBP, 8GB 5500M, 64GB Ram, 2TB SSD, 9980HK 8 core CPU.. Windows 10 Pro, latest Dolphin.. and I could not get ANY game to run without stuttering, even at native res, let alone upscaled LOL!

I gave up. I tried 20 different games to no avail.

SO.. the reason I am posting in here, is because of the post that said it might be an Nvidia issue.. well.. this was ATI's top mobile graphics card (equivalent to about a 1660TI Max Q but with 8GB ram) and Intel's very fastest mobile chip in existence. I was hovering around 3.8ghz on all 8 cores when the issues happened (16" macbook pro has decent thermals).

I was convinced it was an ATI issue. I decided to return the machine for other reasons (Catalina breaking 50% of my music apps) and am back to my 2015 haswell 2.8ghz quad core with Nvidia 750M and Mojave.
I have bootcamp installed on this and no joy either.

The thing is, and this is a big "thing", there are TONS of videos out there showing fantastic Rogue squadron performance even at 4K upscaled, in older Dolphin builds.. using Nvidia 1050TI for example and an average quad core CPU.

Are you sure something hasn't been broken in the last year or so in Dolphin with regards to certain games?

In any case, I decided to just buy a windows laptop dedicated to emulation and nothing else, so i got a nice cheapie.. It arrives today.
MSI Alpha 15, 3750H quad core, 16GB ram, 5500M 4GB, Win 10 Home.
ETA prime does tons of dolphin videos and he is showing success even with the in built Vega graphics on the AMD APU's, at 1080P upscaling (and even higher on some games). So I am confident that there is *some* way I will be able to have a good dolphin experience on this machine.

What I am after is ANY help for particular settings to run the Star Wars games well.. I have both rogue squadron games as well as Bounty Hunter, still sealed, and i really don't want to open them to play on my real gamecube, plus I REALLY want to play them at 1080P. The 3 of them will be worth something in the future, especially brand new, which is why I'd really like to keep them that way. They have been sealed for 17 years!

I also bought the gamecube to USB adapter so i can plug my original gamecube controller straight into the PC so to speak, just in case modern bluetooth controllers could also cause problems.

Just for reference, on the very same 9980HK macbook pro, I was able to play ANY psp game at 10x upscale. Yep, 10x. There is no higher setting.
I was able to upscale Mode 7 in Bsnes to the absolute max 4K.
I could play ANY dreamcast game at 4K in redream.
I could play ANY PS2 game at 1080P at full speed in PCSX2, and 80% of the library at 4K.
I could play any PS3 game at 1080P in RPCS3 (if the game was compatible).
Citra & Cemu also presented zero performance issues.

So there has to be something going on with Dolphin that it doesn't like?

I can also tell you this.. I could play Rogue squadron at 720P on my 2015 5 year old macbook pro (2x native) in Dolphin a couple years back using an official release. I didn't adjust any settings other than put it to 2x. This was when the mac build worked, and was in Mac OS Sierra 12.12.6.

If my new cheap and cheerful laptop that is solely dedicated to windows does not help, I have no idea what else to do. ANY advice to play the star wars stuff at 1080P with smooth performance appreciated. I will absolutely owe you one, or more!

(12-23-2019, 10:27 PM)Night Raven Wrote: [ -> ]Seems to me its a problem with the emulator.
IF it doesnt work with a ryzen 2600, I dont think upgrading to a ryzen 3600 will improve that much.

Maybe but ETA prime is running it smoothly at 720P with an AMD APU with just Vega 8 graphics. There is video of it.. so... I myself think *something* has changed in the emulator in the last year but when I have this new windows laptop set up, the first game I'll try is RSII and I'll let you know. 

Well, I don't know what ETA prime is doing, as I have just spent FOUR hours with Dolphin latest daily release, Rogue Squadron 2 and my new MSI Laptop, and the performance was shocking. I tried EVERY graphical setting check box option (on or off), I tried OpenGL, Vulkan, D3D11 and D3D12, and the cpu was in "extreme mode"

The cpu frequency was at 4GHZ during dolphin use.. Note, when I updated to the latest radeon driver, hoping it would fix it, I lost vulkan discrete graphics for the 5500M!, although they still worked for the APU Vega 10! Neither the Vega 10 nor 5500M gave satisfactory performance even at native res let alone upscaled. Of course I tried ubershaders and also the basic setting and the one in between.
If a 4GHZ cpu and 1660 level graphics card can't run it, there is something seriously wrong here.

Yeah, you can move about at 60 FPS and even shoot stuff..it can be somewhat playable despite quick pauses and farts.. but if you try to go  into cockpit view.. it's a MESS.. impossible to use.

Furthermore, I installed the 3 year old Dolphin 5.0 release in a different folder, and that was much more playable. I could only get 35 to 47 FPS with that, however all transitions to cockpit and back were smooth.

In any case, I am glad I got this MSI laptop from ebay plus, which means I am returning it tomorrow.

In it's place will be an Aorus X5 V8.

-6 core CPU, all core turbo of 4ghz (and it can maintain it with the aorus).
-Nvidia 1070, 8GB ram, NOT the max Q version
-32GB ram
-Win 10 Home (sadly)

If that can not give me a decent frame rate with Dolphin, I can not afford anything that can. I am still playing off my imac pro from 2 years ago for the music studio, and now work is dead with the human malware.

Rogue squadron is even problematic on my imac PRO, 8 core, 64GB ram, Vega 56 8GB. I presumed again it was an AMD issue..

So now this is the first time I will be trying a laptop with a high end Nvidia card and high end CPU, so if it's still a problem, I have to just blame it on the emulator and let it go.
Yes, it's an 18 month old model.. BUT.. it has the 8850H 6 core in it, which has TSX instructions which is awesome for RPCS3. The 9750H replacement does NOT have TSX.
It has G Sync, which is becoming almost impossible to find in laptops these days, with a lovely 144hz screen.

It is 2000 AUD on blowout, vs 4 grand AUD for something with a 2060/2070 in it, G sync, 32GB ram, 6 core cpu (and only a 9750h), etc.
The 2000 AUD price is around 1200 USD, when this used to sell for 2500 USD.. so that tells you how cheap I am getting it. Brand spanking new.

18 months ago this would be considered an absolute ultra high end notebook.

Anyway, that's my last hurrah with windows and dolphin, then I will just have to give up..

Cheers
I'll let you know how it goes.

PS.. I don't think ETA Prime is being honest with his rogue squadron playing, cause he only shows a few seconds and never shows changing views, etc. There is no way an amd apu can do it if my 3750H with discrete 5500M couldn't even do it at native, and he tests at 1080P! I don't buy it, period.

That said, I have seen the entire game being played in 4K on a weaker system than the laptop I am getting in a few days, so I am hoping an Nvidia 1070 and a 6 core intel cpu are enough.

(04-01-2020, 10:46 PM)Teddy Wrote: [ -> ]Well, I don't know what ETA prime is doing, as I have just spent FOUR hours with Dolphin latest daily release, Rogue Squadron 2 and my new MSI Laptop, and the performance was shocking. I tried EVERY graphical setting check box option (on or off), I tried OpenGL, Vulkan, D3D11 and D3D12, and the cpu was in "extreme mode"

The cpu frequency was at 4GHZ during dolphin use.. Note, when I updated to the latest radeon driver, hoping it would fix it, I lost vulkan discrete graphics for the 5500M!, although they still worked for the APU Vega 10! Neither the Vega 10 nor 5500M gave satisfactory performance even at native res let alone upscaled. Of course I tried ubershaders and also the basic setting and the one in between.
If a 4GHZ cpu and 1660 level graphics card can't run it, there is something seriously wrong here.

Yeah, you can move about at 60 FPS and even shoot stuff..it can be somewhat playable despite quick pauses and farts.. but if you try to go  into cockpit view.. it's a MESS.. impossible to use.

Furthermore, I installed the 3 year old Dolphin 5.0 release in a different folder, and that was much more playable. I could only get 35 to 47 FPS with that, however all transitions to cockpit and back were smooth.

In any case, I am glad I got this MSI laptop from ebay plus, which means I am returning it tomorrow.

In it's place will be an Aorus X5 V8.

-6 core CPU, all core turbo of 4ghz (and it can maintain it with the aorus).
-Nvidia 1070, 8GB ram, NOT the max Q version
-32GB ram
-Win 10 Home (sadly)

If that can not give me a decent frame rate with Dolphin, I can not afford anything that can. I am still playing off my imac pro from 2 years ago for the music studio, and now work is dead with the human malware.

Rogue squadron is even problematic on my imac PRO, 8 core, 64GB ram, Vega 56 8GB. I presumed again it was an AMD issue..

So now this is the first time I will be trying a laptop with a high end Nvidia card and high end CPU, so if it's still a problem, I have to just blame it on the emulator and let it go.
Yes, it's an 18 month old model.. BUT.. it has the 8850H 6 core in it, which has TSX instructions which is awesome for RPCS3. The 9750H replacement does NOT have TSX.
It has G Sync, which is becoming almost impossible to find in laptops these days, with a lovely 144hz screen.

It is 2000 AUD on blowout, vs 4 grand AUD for something with a 2060/2070 in it, G sync, 32GB ram, 6 core cpu (and only a 9750h), etc.
The 2000 AUD price is around 1200 USD, when this used to sell for 2500 USD.. so that tells you how cheap I am getting it. Brand spanking new.

18 months ago this would be considered an absolute ultra high end notebook.

Anyway, that's my last hurrah with windows and dolphin, then I will just have to give up..

Cheers
I'll let you know how it goes.

PS.. I don't think ETA Prime is being honest with his rogue squadron playing, cause he only shows a few seconds and never shows changing views, etc. There is no way an amd apu can do it if my 3750H with discrete 5500M couldn't even do it at native, and he tests at 1080P! I don't buy it, period.

That said, I have seen the entire game being played in 4K on a weaker system than the laptop I am getting in a few days, so I am hoping an Nvidia 1070 and a 6 core intel cpu are enough.

First of all the Rogue Squadron games are one of the most demanding games made for the Gamecube and thus are very, VERY difficult to run on Dolphin. ETA Prime is known for his great reviews of simple hardware but he never shows the real thing, he always tries to put the thing he is reviewing in the best light possible. That said, I am going to test RS2 and 3 for you on my i9 9900k @5.1GHz and RTX2080ti... will report back soon.

I do remember something about RS being broken because Dolphin became more accurate, but there was no known fix for it yet, neither did the Dev's know what was actually wrong.

So I did a full run of the first mission (Death Star) in RS2 on D3D12, Async Ubershaders, Compile before starting, 4xIR, 16xAF, 8xSSAA, all enhancements on (except for Widescreen Hack and Disable Fog) Turned all the settings on the Hacks tab to the fastest settings available. On Audio I have set DSP HLE (fast) and use the WASAPI back-end and on the "Advanced"-tab of the general settings I have set up JIT and MMU, and have clock override turned off... This gives me an average FPS of 60, with the rare drop to 58 and only when there is a screen transition (e.g. Fade to black) it will stutter to like 35FPS. I do want to mention that I am using the NTSC version of the game and have a version 1.2 IPL loaded as well (GameCube Bios)

RS2 runs fine on my i5-6600 desktop, I'll test on my i7-4700MQ laptop later. Same results as mstreurman using OpenGL/Async Ubershaders/Compile before starting/3xIR, I get 60 FPS and only slight stutter when switching views.

(04-05-2020, 05:06 AM)mstreurman Wrote: [ -> ]So I did a full run of the first mission (Death Star) in RS2 on D3D12, Async Ubershaders, Compile before starting, 4xIR, 16xAF, 8xSSAA, all enhancements on (except for Widescreen Hack and Disable Fog) Turned all the settings on the Hacks tab to the fastest settings available. On Audio I have set DSP HLE (fast) and use the WASAPI back-end and on the "Advanced"-tab of the general settings I have set up JIT and MMU, and have clock override turned off... This gives me an average FPS of 60, with the rare drop to 58 and only when there is a screen transition (e.g. Fade to black) it will stutter to like 35FPS. I do want to mention that I am using the NTSC version of the game and have a version 1.2 IPL loaded as well (GameCube Bios)

4x IR is 1440P yes?

I am happy if I get 720P out of the laptop when it arrives.

Please know I had ALL the things that you have on, OFF. Yes, no widescreen hack (i never ever use that, I play games always in their precise original A/R) and of course I don't disable fog either, but AF/AA all off. And I couldn't run it at native. I am using the [warez site name] USA NTSC rom, as I said my copy is sealed and I'd have no clue how to rip a GC disc anyway. I am not using an external bios but will try that when my new laptop gets here. Honestly, I wouldn't even know how to connect my gamecube to do that anyway, but since my gamecube is PAL, I think that would stop me using the NTSC rom. I really am not advanced with the emulation scene, as in, I do NOT understand how to rip my discs, or bios or any of that. I have a PCE(JP), PS1/PS2/PS3, SMS/Megadrive/Saturn (J-NTSC), 360, GBA/DSLite/3DS/Snes/N64/GC, Dreamcast (2, a JP and a Pal), and finally a switch (no PS4 or Xone here). My CRT is dead beyond repair (sony), so from the Dreamcast upwards I have them hooked to a 720P 28" Sony LCD, via S video (DC), or component (PS2 up) and the 360 and PS3 to a 1080P sony LCD via HDMI. My more retro consoles are collecting dust. I even have the original nintendo GC component cables.. all of 28 AUD when I got them LOL (around 15 USD).
But my MD/Snes/N64/PCE etc I am only keeping , as well as the games, to legally play them via emulator. Once I have had enough  of the game via emu, I delete the rom and sell the game if it's worth anything. I like to do everything above board but I am emulation DUMB - clueless on how to rip discs or bios, so I find them online.

From what you are telling me, 720P, just a basic upscale, with all other enhancements off, no anti aliasing etc, should be absolutely fine on the 6 core/4ghz/1070/32GB ram combo. I mean that's way less power than you have but also what I am asking is so much less demanding. Seriously, all I want is to play it at 720P no enhancements.

I HAVE played the RS2 and RS3 games fully, on day one they were respectively released.. I bought and owned them, beat them and sold them as I do with some games I play and beat. I re bought them a year later when I realised gamecube games would be something of a novelty in future due to it being a bit of a failure of a system, and maybe a good investment, and why I kept them sealed, as I found them all sealed for a good price. Same with my Ikaruga and some other classics. But the moment I open them they are not worth much at all and quite common (except Ikaruga). Sealed, not at all common.

So it's been 18 years since playing them, maybe longer, I can't precisely remember the release date, and I'd love to again as I ADORED RS2 especially. 3rd person space arcade action games seem to be a dead species sadly, which is why I want to revisit this so much, and especially if I manage to do it in HD.

What you did was very very kind, and I truly appreciate it. If I can ever help you with anything in future it would be my pleasure.

Now the question remains.. cause previous Dolphin builds were accurate enough for me personally to play through all the star wars games,  is it OK to have an older Dolphin installed in one folder to play those few select hard to emulate games, and the latest one to play everything else? I noticed having 5.0 release, and 5.0xxxx beta on the same PC, seemed to share preferences, but they did both launch and work OK from what I could tell.

Would really like advice on this and happy to make a new topic about it if you think that's wise, and also I better do some searching about BIOS, etc.