Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey all,

I was hoping to hear back from users with this CPU/GPU to see what kind of performance they are getting. I hear a lot of "that'll run X just fine" for Good Old Games and then it turns out to be kinda sluggish... Overload was a REAL disappointment, for example. I'm hoping that Dolphin will be stable enough to use on my daily driver work/browsing laptop (Asus F512DA-EB55) but I'm skeptical that Metroid Prime Trilogy will be up to snuff, especially upscaling to 1080. Any predictions?

This isn't quite a "will my hardware run this?" question as this is a "I'm 42 years old and I just want to waste time occasionally without being bothered with glitches and whatnot."

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Use the most up to date Dolphin dev build and play with your charger plugged in. Should be good to go. Dolphin runs pretty well on most modern Ryzen CPUs. Make sure you keep your GPU drivers and Windows up to date

(09-01-2020, 11:39 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]Use the most up to date Dolphin dev build and play with your charger plugged in. Should be good to go. Dolphin runs pretty well on most modern Ryzen CPUs. Make sure you keep your GPU drivers and Windows up to date

Thanks, I had some fun with Metroid Prime 2 last night, been quite a while since I played the original. Once I remembered to set the backend, it ran pretty okay at native resolution. I'd like to upscale to 1080 and don't mind comprimising effects a bit. I'll keep playing but the audio is still slightly garbled at 40-50 fps. Stretching helped the earsore but I know I can keep tweaking it. Compiling shaders was also key.

Would it help to take the ROM off my HDD and put it on my M.2 SSD? I don't quite understand emulation 100% yet but with 18 GB of usable CPU RAM I would think it would just load the whole thing. Maybe I'm mistaken about that. I do know that it won't be 100% perfect, and that the Metroid series is a lot more tasking (Nintendo always seemed to build complex hardware with light software and then made the most of it) so I'll try a few other titles. Hoping to give F-Zero GX another try as well.

(09-02-2020, 01:32 AM)TheMortallyWounded Wrote: [ -> ]Would it help to take the ROM off my HDD and put it on my M.2 SSD?

No. These games were designed to run from DVDs, and HDDs are already faster than DVDs.

(09-02-2020, 01:57 AM)JosJuice Wrote: [ -> ]No. These games were designed to run from DVDs, and HDDs are already faster than DVDs.

Good... Currently I only have 129GB on my boot drive (that will probably change when I get more work-from-home tasks) and can't spare much room.

I'm able to play somewhat satisfactorily @720 right now, but some boss battles get slowed a bit. Enabling Uber shaders helped. Still have aspect ratio glitching occasionally. Running in a rendered window SEEMS to help but maybe that's just because of the specific cut scenes. I think it is still trying to run at 60 FPS and slowing when it can't handle that. I'd be fine at a set 30 FPS, so how can I accomplish this?

(09-01-2020, 12:47 AM)TheMortallyWounded Wrote: [ -> ]Hey all,

I was hoping to hear back from users with this CPU/GPU to see what kind of performance they are getting. I hear a lot of "that'll run X just fine" for Good Old Games and then it turns out to be kinda sluggish... Overload was a REAL disappointment, for example. I'm hoping that Dolphin will be stable enough to use on my daily driver work/browsing laptop (Asus F512DA-EB55) but I'm skeptical that Metroid Prime Trilogy will be up to snuff, especially upscaling to 1080. Any predictions?

This isn't quite a "will my hardware run this?" question as this is a "I'm 42 years old and I just want to waste time occasionally without being bothered with glitches and whatnot."

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

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My primary "web surfing" and daily work system has the exact same config - Lenovo IdeaPad Laptop, Ryzen 3500U w/Vega 8 integrated graphics and 16GB of RAM.

I have installed Dolphin (I run the latest Dev version) on it and I'd recommend the following...

1. Backend - personally I get the best results using Direct3D 12, Vulkan would probably be a close 2nd but D3D12 just seems smoother overall and seems to be easier on the integrated GPU
2. Set internal resolution to 2xNative (Enhancements) for 720p, any higher than that will begin to stress the CPU/GPU and cause slow-downs and bog FPS. In other words, you will probably be disappointed trying to run the Metroid Prime Trilogy at 1080p on that Ryzen 3500U system.
3. Anti-Aliasing - 2x MSAA (don't use SSAA)
4. Anisotropic filtering - leave at 1x
5. Keep Dolphin updated - although there's a chance the latest Dev versions might have stability issues, getting the latest and greatest code optimizations and other bug fixes/new features outweighs the risk of stability issues, which are generally fixed in a successive dev version of Dolphin anyway.

Most GC/Wii games will run at their max possible framerate with those settings above, but you'll still get slow-downs every now and again with a few titles. Notably F-Zero GX will be choppy when the count-down timer drops down at the start of a race, and you may experience some frame rate drops in other games. Overall though the Ryzen 3500U w/Vega 8 graphics should do a fairly decent job with most titles @ 720p resolution. Integrated GPU's are the downfall for running emulators on most laptops...though some higher-end "gaming" laptops will likely run Dolphin quite well.

Since I have a fairly modern "gaming rig" on another floor of my house, I use that to run Dolphin and stream it through the Steam Streaming client, aka Steam Remote Play. The gaming rig has a Ryzen 7 3700x and a XFX Thicc III Ultra Radeon RX 5700XT which powers through Dolphin like greased lightning, so I've gone 100% to streaming. If you have a more powerful desktop system w/discrete GPU, you can install Steam and add Dolphin to your Steam Library as a "non-Steam" game and use the desktop as a Host for Steam Remote Play. Then you can stream games @1080p remotely to any system running the Steam streaming client (when streaming @1080p via Steam's highest quality stream, 35-45mbps of bandwidth is required internally, which should be no problem on hardwired ethernet and probably fine on a 5Ghz AC Wifi connection). A beefier gaming PC with a fast discrete GPU is a solid option for getting 1080p resolution on any Wii/GC title running at full FPS (with anti-aliasing and other enhancements cranked up) streamed via Remote Play to your laptop. I still run many of the retro emulators (NES/SNES/N64, etc.) directly from the Ryzen 5 3500U laptop, but anything that requires more intense 3D graphics processing ends up hosted on the gaming rig and streamed via Steam Remote Play.

(09-02-2020, 12:08 PM)ForkWNY Wrote: [ -> ]My primary "web surfing" and daily work system has the exact same config - Lenovo IdeaPad Laptop, Ryzen 3500U w/Vega 8 integrated graphics and 16GB of RAM.

I have installed Dolphin (I run the latest Dev version) on it and I'd recommend the following...

1. Backend - personally I get the best results using Direct3D 12, Vulkan would probably be a close 2nd but D3D12 just seems smoother overall and seems to be easier on the integrated GPU
2. Set internal resolution to 2xNative (Enhancements) for 720p, any higher than that will begin to stress the CPU/GPU and cause slow-downs and bog FPS
3. Anti-Aliasing - 2x MSAA (don't use SSAA)
4. Anisotropic filtering - leave at 1x

Most GC/Wii games will run at their max possible framerate with those settings above, but you'll still get slow-downs every now and again with a few titles. Notably F-Zero GX will be choppy when the count-down timer drops down at the start of a race, and you may experience some frame rate drops in other games. Overall though the Ryzen 3500U w/Vega 8 graphics should do a fairly decent job.

Since I have a fairly beefy "gaming rig" on another floor of my house, I use that to run Dolphin and stream it through Steam. That system has a Ryzen 7 3700x and a XFX Thicc III Ultra Radeon RX 5700XT which powers through Dolphin like greased lightning, so I've gone 100% to streaming. If you have a more powerful desktop system, you can install Steam and add Dolphin to your Steam Library as a "non-Steam" game and it runs just fine remotely to any system running the Steam streaming client.

Ah-ha, thanks! That is what I was hoping to hear, someone with a similar system giving me some limitations. I'm pretty close to what you have, though I think I've still got D3D11. I'll have to double-check. Also good to know you've got 2× MSAA running well. If I can't get to 1080 then at least some cleaner edges would be nice.

So then, is there even a way to force 30 FPS? Or would that not even make a difference if it were possible? Unfortunately any free time I have I spend playing with this one game (maybe half an hour at most a day) and the only time I have to ask questions is at work before nobody gets here. So I can't tell you my exact configuration but I'll put it up tonight if possible.

At my age I just don't have time to sit in front of a game for hours.

(09-02-2020, 08:54 PM)TheMortallyWounded Wrote: [ -> ]Ah-ha, thanks! That is what I was hoping to hear, someone with a similar system giving me some limitations. I'm pretty close to what you have, though I think I've still got D3D11. I'll have to double-check. Also good to know you've got 2× MSAA running well. If I can't get to 1080 then at least some cleaner edges would be nice.

So then, is there even a way to force 30 FPS? Or would that not even make a difference if it were possible? Unfortunately any free time I have I spend playing with this one game (maybe half an hour at most a day) and the only time I have to ask questions is at work before nobody gets here. So I can't tell you my exact configuration but I'll put it up tonight if possible.

At my age I just don't have time to sit in front of a game for hours.

I'm in the same boat...don't have a lot of hours to spend in front of games, but it's nice to fire up some of those GameCube and Wii games I really enjoyed years ago, especially with a remote streaming set up so that I can stream them to the TV set or a laptop, whichever is more convenient. With anti-aliasing enabled and higher display resolutions, the games have a new life to them, and look much sharper than they did on the original consoles. The big advantage with emulators (and ones that work really well, Dolphin being a prime example) is that you no longer have to spend hours in front a game thanks to Save/Load State, as well as the cheats that are often available readily for most game titles. You can Save your state and walk away from the game, no worries about finding "Save" locations (such as in Zelda or Metroid Prime) before you can ditch the game and pick it up later on.

D3D12 is a free download from Microsoft (if you don't already have it...should be part of your Windows 10 installation). You can grab the latest DirectX end user run-time here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download...aspx?id=35 ...I believe the install really only applies to older Windows 7 systems, but in case you don't have it, that link should be your ticket. You can test out different backends within the emulator and judge for yourself which ones work best on your particular setup. You might find Vulkan does better for you, depends on a number of variables.

Some GC titles were developed to run at 30 fps, others 60 fps, the framerate limitations I believe are dictated by the games themselves and not necessarily the emulator or anything related to the hardware they're running on. For example, Twilight Princess runs at 30 fps whether I launch it from my laptop or the higher-powered gaming rig (that system can run most modern 1080p games with graphics settings maxed out at 100-200 fps or higher). F-Zero GX runs at 60 fps, it's a preset and how the game was designed.

So I did switch over to D3D12 and tried anti-aliasing at 2× but it was not sufficient for me. D3D12 doesn't seem much better than 11 but it's no worse so best to keep up with the latest and greatest anyway I suppose. I locked the aspect ratio to 4:3 and I'm not getting the rapid switching I was before. Don't know if Metroid Prime 2 had any 16:9 but so far it's more stable anyway. Definitely a trade-off emulating: 720 is better than 480 but glitches are somewhat frustrating. That's okay, we have a Wii U that nobody plays with so I could always run old games on that if this got tiresome. It is still fun doing it on my laptop.

Since I bought this Asus knowing it wasn't a powerhouse, I can't complain. It's still more than I need for real life. And the old Nexus Player remotes are such a dead match for it!

Ideally a more dedicated gaming PC is needed to fully take advantage of Dolphin and enhance those graphics into the 1080p range. Otherwise the native resolution with some anti-aliasing will give you sharper-looking results compared to the original consoles (though the Wii U supported higher res and likely did some AA on the games).

On a tangent, I recently set up a Raspberry Pi 4b with Steam Link and it's nice for streaming from the gaming PC out to the 4KTV set. Can connect a PS4 controller to it and use that for input. Works really well...nice seeing the GC games in 1080p on the large screen!