Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello commuity,

I am new to this forum and to everything concerning dolphin.
I discovered it already few years ago - but my curiosity was aroused 2 weeks before this post. I wanted to play Metroid Prime 2 (one of my all-time favorites). I was very impressed by the quality.

BUT: although I am getting 60fps almost all the time.. it is just almost. In some places m tremendous frame drops occur (entering outer terrain, activating light and dark portals and especially the pirates base with the holograms of the two aethers and the room where the metroids are contained in these energy barriers). It partially goes down between 25 and 30 fps. I am not enough into dolphins options to know what would help.

I tried different enhancement methods and levels (more and less AA and AI, etc.), tried different render methods (had the best experience with Vulkan and synchronous shaders). For increasing the fps in the mentioned situations I have the most success by going down in resolution (720p where perfect). My screen is 1440 - so that's what I want. Unfortunately fps drops occuring beyond 720p.

I assume that my CPU or my GPU aren't powerful enough - would it make a difference to have some newer hardware? Or can I improve things a bit more with my 2500k and the 1050ti?

Btw: i also have this drops in SSX TRICKY and Double Dash

The gtx 1050ti should be fine at 3x, probably higher. The cpu is old but is reasonable. Have you try async ubershaders and have compile shaders before start checked. Nvidia with async ubershaders tend to better with direct x. These drop might be from shader generation stutter.

Hi... Thx for replying... Yesterday I fiddled around a bit more with dolphin and MSI afterburner. I overclocked my GPU by reasonable amount. Using Vulkan with 8xMSAA 16XAI and 1080p now delivers the best and stable overall result I've ever seen in this game. I only have some stutters sometimes but without framedrops - don't know what's that supposed to be (appears when shifting the camera fast to one side). Cranking up resolution still results some drops at the portals (why the portals?)
I tried ubershaders but that gave me the 15-20fps nightmare... Maybe I did something wrong here...

Edit:
Interesting fact... I don't know why but I just tested dx11 with ubershaders again and have mostly 60fps - I don't understand why it works now.

The reason why direct x is recommend for nvidia and ubershaders is nvidia driver tend to work best with direct x if ubershader are used. I assuming you using the 3x ir for 1080p. You might want to reduced the amount of aa used, as 8x msaa and 3x ir(for 1080) is like 24 ir in terms of how demanding it can be. Since aa upscales the image to use that to smooth out the edges in basic terms for msaa. Other forms of aa may work differently like fxaa but aren't in dolphin menus and it isn't recommend to force setting outside of power management\gpu option(for laptops that have switchable graphics) in the nvidia control panel.

Don't force any enhancements in the nvidia control panel. But do make a profile for Dolphin and set the power management setting to "Prefer maximum power" so that your GPU keeps itself at maximum speeds (prevents ramp up/down waiting for new commands from Dolphin)

Folks.. after a while i managed to switch over to some other Hardware:
I am now using a Ryzen 5 2600X on an ASUS ROG STRIX X470-F Gaming. The GPU was exchanged few days ago. Out went the 1050 Ti and in went the 1080. Of course these are not the most recent parts but I am impressed of how much improvement i got with the new (used) parts. I can now run Matroid Prime 2 with overall stable 60 fps. It looks really great that way. Already spent maaaaaany hours with playing.