Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Trying to get dolphin to run and not sure if running at full speed is feasible. Here are my exact system specifications:

OSX 10.15.4
Ivy Bridge 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7-3615QM
4 gb ddr3 RAM
1tb SSD
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512 mb GDDR5 and Intel HD Graphics 4000
Dolphin build 5.0-12247 and Faster Melee Slippi 2.2.1
Backend: Vulkan
Adapter: GeForce GT 650M
Everything else left on default settings


The two main games I'm trying to get to run at full speed are Melee and F-Zero GX. Both are slow and stutter basically all the time, huge input delays, dropped inputs, stuttering audio, etc. Not sure if it's even reasonable to hope to get it running at full speed.

CPU seems decent from what I can tell. 4 gb is sufficient for dolphin as long as you're not running any other big program in the background. The GPU is 8 years old, which shouldn't matter much as Dolphin uses cpu mostly, but could be something to look out for. Dolphin build is good. Vulkan is a bit weird on macOS, from what I hear, so try your luck with OpenGL if you haven't already.

My guesses: Your CPU isn't fast enough to run emulated GC/Wii games, the backend is messing you up, or your graphics card is too old and may be missing some features or is simply not powerful enough.
Lmk what you find out!

You won't get fullspeed in Melee or F-Zero GX on that maachine. There are no magic tweaks or settings really, Dolphin is already using the fastest settings, that's just really hardware with low clock speeds. I have a mid-2012 13in macbook that used to be my main laptop, so the same CPU architecture as your machine and roughly the same clocks, and um, laptop ivy bridge is not very good for Dolphin, you can trust me on that one! You'll really just need better hardware to get those games to fullspeed.