Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I've been playing Skyward Sword on Dolphin for the last couple of months, and since I could'nt make Dolphin 5.0 to run on my pc (due to conflict betwenn x86 and x64 files), I figured out using the 3.0-410 motion plus branch, which works quite well, emulated on my Dualshock-like USB gamepad. Some parts are indeed hard to get through, but nothing that a bit of patience could not settle.

However, even a huge dose of patience would't help when i reached the infamous "draw a circle on the wall" part. So, I started looking for some way to overcome this, when I came across the Dolphin team's article about the official motion plus emulation on 2019.

At the same time, I rushed to download the newest version of dolphin: 5.0-15448, eager to use the new motion plus features and finally be able to draw shapes on the walls (lol). But what was my disappointment to see that the game ran much worse in this version than the one I had been using!

Although the FPS were pretty stable in the default, the game is unplayable in 2x native 1280x1056 resolution (which is what I currently play on 3.0-410), always staying between 10 and 17 fps, in addition to choppy sound.

This happens for all available backend types. Also, in Directx11, there is a loss of textures (missing trees, vegetation and Link's eyballs), which doesn't happen in 3.0-410, which I run with Directx11 at 2x native. Also, there is no DirectX 9 option in this new version, which gave me a good performance also in 3.0-410. It is also not possible to use 1.5x resolution, as in 3.0, only 1x or 2x and above...

Also, on 3.0 motion plus, despite frequent lag spikes - reaching 10-12 fps for almost 5 minutes straight - I can still play at 20 - 25 fps in 720p for most of the time, with no graphical glitches, which for me is perfect given the hardware limitations.

Tried to enable/disable several graphical options, but none helps. Anyway, maybe I could even use the emulated motion plus more effectively, but the fact that I'd have to be stuck in 1x native resolution (which looks horrible on the screen) to be able to play on 5.0-15448, already discourages to continue using it...

Is there still a solution for that, or maybe another version with official emulated motion plus that would work in my case?

Note: My system is 64-bit, and both versions mentioned are x64. Also tried 5.0-15260 (latest Beta), but with same effect as 5.0-15448 (latest dev.)

Most of the problems you're having is due to the Intel HD 4000 iGPU. It only works properly with Direct3D 11 backend, it's not powerful enough to push 2x on most games and it has driver bugs that won't be fixed because Intel ended support for it a long time ago (that's why you're seeing glitches). To make things even worse, a security update pushed by Intel on early 2020 had a huge impact on performance, which already weren't that good to begin with.

So yeah, there's not much you can do. If you don't care about the security exploits you can downgrade to driver version 15.33.48.5069 or earlier, to reclaim the lost performance. Even then, it won't fix the graphical glitches you're experiencing...

(11-06-2021, 04:57 AM)mbc07 Wrote: [ -> ]Most of the problems you're having is due to the Intel HD 4000 iGPU. It only works properly with Direct3D 11 backend, it's not powerful enough to push 2x on most games and it has driver bugs that won't be fixed because Intel ended support for it a long time ago (that's why you're seeing glitches). To make things even worse, a security update pushed by Intel on early 2020 had a huge impact on performance, which already weren't that good to begin with.

So yeah, there's not much you can do. If you don't care about the security exploits you can downgrade to driver version 15.33.48.5069 or earlier, to reclaim the lost performance. Even then, it won't fix the graphical glitches you're experiencing...

On the GPU issue, I understand. But the point itself is not about that, but about the difference in performance between both versions of Dolphin that I have used - and, of course, on the same hardware.


Big question here is: Why does the newer 5.0, from which a minimal gain would be expected, have glitches and lower performance than the older version 3.0-410? Even because in this 3.0, there are no graphical glitches - not even in resolutions above 2x native - just lag spikes - which was expected and, as I said, completely acceptable! And the hardware is the same, with the same CPU, GPU and RAM. What changes is the software!

So, unless someone comes to me and says something like: "Newer versions of Dolphin are less tolerable to older GPUS like the Intel HD 4000, while older versions can handle such GPUs better", I can't help myself to convince otherwise, as far as the difference between the versions in practice is so evident. 


So then I'd go back to version 3.0 with its messy motion plus, and try to get by with various control profiles, until finish the game!  

Newer versions of Dolphin take advantage of newer features, and if your shitty onboard GPU has drivers missing newer features or implementing them in a broken way, then yeah, Dolphin will be buggier and slower.

3.0 was made in an era where it wouldn't be relying on anything cutting edge or new, but it also will have some graphical bugs like the map depth not working, timestones not rendering correctly, etc.

But yeah, using old builds on extremely outdated/bad hardware is definitely an option, as the optimizations of newer builds often take advantage of newer CPU instructions/features, GPU features, and other things your computer doesn't support. At that point, even though the older build is less optimized, the fact it emulates less makes it faster.

(11-06-2021, 11:38 AM)Asaftas Ardem Wrote: [ -> ]On the GPU issue, I understand. But the point itself is not about that, but about the difference in performance between both versions of Dolphin that I have used - and, of course, on the same hardware.

A buggy GPU driver definitely can bring performance down, especially when lacking features current Dolphin builds takes advantage of. For reference, I used to have a similar laptop than yours (Core i7-3630QM), but it also had a GeForce GT 650M. When running Dolphin with just the iGPU (same Intel HD 4000 as yours), performance in most games were bad and I also had similar graphical glitches, by switching to the NVIDIA GPU all bugs vanished and performance actually surpassed old versions by a noticeable margin, despite the CPU being very old at this point.

So, yeah. You can use any Dolphin version you want, however we only provide support for the latest stable release (currently 5.0) or newer. If you decide to stick with unsupported versions, you're on your own with any issues you encounter...

OK, I got it: no Dolphin 5.0 on this PC then!

Actually, I wouldn't even mind looking for another version besides 3.0-410, if it weren't for the problem of drawing pictures with emulated motion plus.

But, that's what suits for me right now, anyway...

Thanks for the support