Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey folks, longtime user but newbie to the forums.

I feel like I've got decent specs, but Metroid Prime 2 lags pretty hard sometimes and has more or less constant audio skipping and framerate drop.  I'm using hybrid ubershaders, but other than that I'm running default settings (as far as I know anyway).  Are there any specific tips to getting this game to run well?  Other games run great for me.  I was able to run Metroid Prime 1 without any issue except for lag in the map screen.  On MP2, it ran great at first but got progressively slower as I've made progress in the game.  I'm not sure if that's just my perception though or actual reality.  I've read that these games are notorious for being difficult to emulate and were even one of the poster childs for the development of ubershaders, but I feel like my hardware specs should be decent enough to run it.  Please correct me if I'm wrong, and thanks for any feedback.

CPU: Intel 6700K Quad Core @ 4.00 GHz
Memory: 16 GB
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2080, 8 GB GDDR6

What you backend. You better off with direct 11 with ubershaders. Also is compile before game start checked. If that don't help updating graphic driver might help. It possible that it isn't shader stutter. You could try sync ubershader at 1x and see if that still lags. If so it might be a cpu or other source of stutter.

(03-19-2022, 01:44 PM)jstwinkles Wrote: [ -> ]I was able to run Metroid Prime 1 without any issue except for lag in the map screen.  On MP2, it ran great at first but got progressively slower as I've made progress in the game.  I'm not sure if that's just my perception though or actual reality.

This is a known problem, and there's no great fix right now (other than turning down your graphics settings if you've enabled any enchantments).

I don't suppose these issues occur with the Trilogy version of MP2?

If you really don't want to use pointer controls (which TBH I feel are only even good if you set the in-game sensitivity option to "Advanced"), then there's always the option of using PrimeHack instead which will allow you to either use PC-style mouse & keyboard or dual-analog.

I kept playing around with the settings, and I think I found a combination that's fixed it. Now it's running pretty smoothly at 4k with 16x anisotropic filtering and map stutter is gone as well. My combo:

* Hybrid ubershaders
* Enable Dual Core (off by default apparently)
* Direct3D 11
* Enabled GPU Texture Decoding

I've played around with everything except GPU Texture Decoding before, so I guess that was getting bottlenecked by my CPU?

I came back here for a quick update:

Metroid Prime 2 was running super smoothly @ 60 fps 4k, but I had stability issues after fixing my main issue above. I'd occasionally get graphical bugs with pink screens, etc. crashing the game, especially when moving between light and dark Aether. Disabling SSAA fixed it for me. I hope this helps whoever might come after.