Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi guys here is the situation.

I have an old notebook I use as a media center, but sometimes my nephew wants to play some emulators on it.

The notebook is hooked up to a 720p tv.

The specs are: Intel Core i7 2860qm 4 cores / 8 threads 2.5-3.6 Ghz
Nvidia GT540M 1 gb 672 Mhz core Clock. Drivers 391.35 (most up to date available)
8 gb DDR3 RAM @1600 Mhz
128 gb SSD
Compatible Wii Mote
Windows 10 x64 genuine

What Happens? Everything works fine if I play at native resolution. 60 solid FPS. If I try to scale it up at 720p everything drops around 50 fps and the audio becomes slow. So the game looks good (no anti aliasing or other graphical upgrades) but it's kind of unplayable even at 50fps, to me. Vsync on and off does not make any difference.

I can only play it with open GL since this old GPU is not DX12 or Vulkan compatible. Even if I try to select DX11 I get some errors and heavy glitches.

I upgraded this notebook from a 2630qm to a 2860qm hoping that those extra 600 Mhz, bigger cache and some more bandwidth could have made the difference, but nothing changed under the gaming aspect.

Is the low clock of the GPU the problem? I have checked with MSI Afterburner and the memory is not even close to full.

Make sure the laptop is running with the High Performance profile (on Windows). Likewise for the NVidia Control Panel, set it to high performance.

After you do this, try again.

(03-14-2020, 07:51 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]Make sure the laptop is running with the High Performance profile (on Windows). Likewise for the NVidia Control Panel, set it to high performance.

After you do this, try again.

Yes, this is how I usually play. Nothing happens. I have also tried Mario Kart but it's barely unplayable. It stays around 35 fps, but it seem to be running at a much lower speed.

Same goes for Super Mario Wii. 

Isn't my system good enough to handle the Wii at 720p? Might be the GPU clock too low?

Gamecube runs fast and smooth.

New Super Mario Bros Wii is one of the most lightweight games you can run in Dolphin i think. So if anything runs, then it should be this game.

How do you "scale up to 720p"? I guess you might have some setting wrong that causes Dolphin to require more peformance than you have. Maybe you should post your graphics config here.

(03-14-2020, 06:57 AM)brand Wrote: [ -> ]Hi guys here is the situation.

I have an old notebook I use as a media center, but sometimes my nephew wants to play some emulators on it.

The notebook is hooked up to a 720p tv.

The specs are: Intel Core i7 2860qm 4 cores / 8 threads 2.5-3.6 Ghz
                     Nvidia GT540M 1 gb 672 Mhz core Clock. Drivers 391.35 (most up to date available)
                     8 gb DDR3 RAM @1600 Mhz
                     128 gb SSD
                     Compatible Wii Mote
                     Windows 10 x64 genuine

What Happens? Everything works fine if I play at native resolution. 60 solid FPS. If I try to scale it up at 720p everything drops around 50 fps and the audio becomes slow. So the game looks good (no anti aliasing or other graphical upgrades) but it's kind of unplayable even at 50fps, to me. Vsync on and off does not make any difference.

I can only play it with open GL since this old GPU is not DX12 or Vulkan compatible. Even if I try to select DX11 I get some errors and heavy glitches.

I upgraded this notebook from a 2630qm to a 2860qm hoping that those extra 600 Mhz, bigger cache and some more bandwidth could have made the difference, but nothing changed under the gaming aspect.

Is the low clock of the GPU the problem? I have checked with MSI Afterburner and the memory is not even close to full.

lets start with saying that it is indeed an older laptop, but the CPU should be fine to run a lot of games at acceptable speeds, but upscaling, for bigger than native resolution, you need GPU power, as we recommend a GTX750TI or equivalent for 1080p this will be the minimum for most games to run correctly at that resolution. Now we come to your GT540M which is first of all from a much older generation (2 years) and runs slower than a mobile Intel HD4400 iGPU, even though your "effective speed" is about 64% more than the Intel iGPU all other "nice to have" benchmarks are way better: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nv...006vsm7668.

So my educated guess is that your GPU is too slow, since you are able to run games at full speed on native resolution but get slowdowns on 720p.

(03-15-2020, 06:08 AM)mstreurman Wrote: [ -> ]lets start with saying that it is indeed an older laptop, but the CPU should be fine to run a lot of games at acceptable speeds, but upscaling, for bigger than native resolution, you need GPU power, as we recommend a GTX750TI or equivalent for 1080p this will be the minimum for most games to run correctly at that resolution. Now we come to your GT540M which is first of all from a much older generation (2 years) and runs slower than a mobile Intel HD4400 iGPU, even though your "effective speed" is about 64% more than the Intel iGPU all other "nice to have" benchmarks are way better: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nv...006vsm7668.

So my educated guess is that your GPU is too slow, since you are able to run games at full speed on native resolution but get slowdowns on 720p.

Yeah I was thinking the same. That GPU might bee too weak. I will post my whole settings tomorrow so that you can have a more precise guess at the whole situation. With this pandemia thing at the moment here there is not much to do, so I don't regret having spent 75 euros os a 8 years old cpu to try to spicy up the things lol. I ended up refreshing two old laptops that can still work as  media centers XD

I would like to point out that I have tested the emulator with the exact same settings in the other laptop I was mentioning, It's lower spec'd since it's got an i7 2630qm, 4gb of ram and a GT520MX. That GPU has a higher clock than the GT540M but all the rest is worst than the GT540M. Anyway, I have the exact same results that I have with the higher spec'd laptop. Same behaviour at 720p: slower sound effects, 45-50 fps that seem ways less. 

In case I should not be able to scale the game up to 720p, is there any way I can make the graphics look smoother at native resolution?

That's odd. Your GT 540M is based on the same GF108 core from the GT 440 I have on my HTPC, and the GT 440 absolutely can run anything in Dolphin at 2x IR with no AA, some lightweight games can even run at 3x IR. With that said, even considering the slightly slower clock of the GT 540M when compared to the GT 440, I see no reason to not hit 720p on a lightweight game like NSMB.

Other strange thing is that you said you can't use DX11 in Dolphin, which you definitely can. Fermi GPUs are fully compliant to DX11 spec, which makes me wonder, are you really sure you're running Dolphin with the NVIDIA GPU and not with the integrated Intel HD 3000 GPU? That iGPU is the known one to have issues with Dolphin DX11 backend. Have you manually set Dolphin to run with the NVIDIA GPU through the NVIDIA Control Panel?

(03-15-2020, 07:14 PM)mbc07 Wrote: [ -> ]That's odd. Your GT 540M is based on the same GF108 core from the GT 440 I have on my HTPC, and the GT 440 absolutely can run anything in Dolphin at 2x IR with no AA, some lightweight games can even run at 3x IR. With that said, even considering the slightly slower clock of the GT 540M when compared to the GT 440, I see no reason to not hit 720p on a lightweight game like NSMB.

Other strange thing is that you said you can't use DX11 in Dolphin, which you definitely can. Fermi GPUs are fully compliant to DX11 spec, which makes me wonder, are you really sure you're running Dolphin with the NVIDIA GPU and not with the integrated Intel HD 3000 GPU? That iGPU is the known one to have issues with Dolphin DX11 backend. Have you manually set Dolphin to run with the NVIDIA GPU through the NVIDIA Control Panel?

Yes, I have set it as the default GPU on max performace mode. 

Now comes the weird thing. If I right click on dolphin, I can see that windows says it will run thru the integrated intel graphics. Ok, now I right click again and select the option to run it with the nvidia GPU. Now when I run a game, dolphin itself says that the GPU involved is the nvidia GPU.

I have two laptops with barely the same combination of GPU and CPU and they both behave the same under windows 10.

EDIT:

Two words: NVIDIA OPTIMUS TECHNOLOGY.

I have finally managed to launch the game with DX11, but hey, on the system with the GT520MX I only get a black screen if I try to run the game at 2X.

It's getting frustrating.

So, I did some homework!

I managed to correctly configure my systems to run Dolphin with the Nvidia GPUs. I set Windows 10 on performance mode, I set the Nvidia driver to automatically choose which GPU to use and finally I set the driver to force Dolphin on the Nvidia GPU + performance mode (checked with the Nvidia notification icon). There is no anti virus software or other stuff more than the usual Windows processes running in background.

My systems, to be clear.

• A: Intel Core i7 2860qm ( 4c/8t 2.5-3.6 GHz, 8MB cache, bus 25,6), 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz dual channel, Nvidia GT540M 1Gb, Windows 10 1903 (due to some HDMI output incompatibilities with higher releases, since I'm using it on a 720p TV)
  

• B: Intel Core i7 2630qm (4c/8t 2.0-2.9 GHz, 6MB cache, bus 21.3), 4 gb DDR3 1600 MHz dual channel, Nvidia GT520MX 1Gb Windows 10 1909
  

Nvidia GT540M: core 672MHz, shaders 1344MHz, memory 900Mhz, bus 128bit, 96 (cores?)

Nvidia GT520Mx: core 900MHz, shaders 1800MHz, shaders 1800MHz, memory 900MHz, bus 54bit, 48 (cores?)

The tests I have made.

I Used both the last build of Dolphin and the latest Ishiikura I could find (1100). DirectX 12 (support up to 11 with my GPUs) and Visual C++ are correctly installed.

Settings: all STOCK, I have just selected DX11 and let the emulator choose the GPU. Now things start getting WEIRD.

With Dolphin and DX11 on BOTH systems at 2X I get 35-40 fps that make the game totally unplayable even if on a pc game with those fps I would definetely be able to enjoy a game, just like on my ps4. This is weird because system A should be more powerful than system B. Every benchmark I have seen states that the GT540M is more powerful than the GT520MX.

With Ishiikura and DX11, well, at native resolution the game launches correctly. At 1.5X and 2X, 8 times out of 10 I get a solid black screen and I have to force close the emulator from the task manager, but when the game manages to load I get 60 fps at 1,5X and almost the same at 2X. On BOTH systems.

With OpenGL I get pretty much the same results.

Guys, this is the clearest scenario I can provide. I did my best.

Now it's up to your experience and kindness )))

Most (if not all) GameCube and Wii games have the game speed tied to the FPS. That means that if the FPS drops below 60 (or 30 if it's a 30 FPS game) the actual game speed will slow down too and audio will also start cutting out (unless you enable audio stretching). PS4 and most current games, however, doesn't have the game speed tied to FPS, so the FPS can drop without making the game go slower.

Now to the actual troubleshooting: how exactly are you selecting the NVIDIA GPU? The correct way to do it is to go to the NVIDIA Control Panel, locate Dolphin profile on the list (or add a new profile) and select "Prefer NVIDIA GPU". Don't leave it on Auto Select and don't try to select the GPU from Dolphin. Does it still run slow? If yes, try monitoring your CPU and GPU temperatures to make sure you're not thermal throttling due overheating...