(07-16-2022, 03:07 PM)grahambelmont Wrote: [ -> ]I can't for the life of me get good frame pacing in Dolphin on the Deck. I'm using the Discovery install, updated as of 7/15. I'm running games at 720p, I've tried with both hybrid and full ubershaders. I've tried with standard deck settings, and also with TDP set to 11 and GPU set to 1300hz
Gamescope reports a consistent 60fps, but every minute or so I get 10 seconds of really really choppy frametimings. It's incredibly jarring and I have no clue how to fix it. It happens with every game that I've tried
I have the deck's FPS limit set to 60, and I have vsync enabled in Dolphin. Any ideas?
Same issue here. Playing in desktop mode seems to eliminate the frame pacing issue for me, does it for you?
I have the same issue where the frames seeming become kind off stuttery sometimes while the fps stay the same according to Dolphins inbuild counter and the Steam Deck overlay. This persists even with the thread count lowered, TDP adjusted and a fixed GPU speed.
Now I'm wondering: Does changes need to be done to Dolphins code to get around this or would one need to change things up in SteamOS itself ?
(07-27-2022, 06:21 PM)TheZoroark007 Wrote: [ -> ]I have the same issue where the frames seeming become kind off stuttery sometimes while the fps stay the same according to Dolphins inbuild counter and the Steam Deck overlay. This persists even with the thread count lowered, TDP adjusted and a fixed GPU speed.
Now I'm wondering: Does changes need to be done to Dolphins code to get around this or would one need to change things up in SteamOS itself ?
This seems to be fixed as of the new Steam OS update today!
has anyone else been getting unknown OP code crashes when trying to play TTYD at the launch screen? I checked my checksum and the game is all good. It wasnt happening with the last stable version of dolphin, just version 16793 (July's beta flatpack from the discover store). Any advice?
(07-20-2022, 02:18 AM)Eddie Van Helgen Wrote: [ -> ]Same issue here. Playing in desktop mode seems to eliminate the frame pacing issue for me, does it for you?
Ditto.
I'm on latest SteamOS Beta and wanted to try to play some GameCube games for real today (not just test them to make sure they work).
TimeSplitters 2 has these atrocious micro stutters. I've already tried adjusting PowerTools and Dolphin settings in Desktop mode, but it keeps happening and it's driving me completely bonkers.
There's something wrong with Dolphin I think.
(08-04-2022, 06:58 AM)Eddie Van Helgen Wrote: [ -> ]This seems to be fixed as of the new Steam OS update today!
It's not fixed at all in the latest Steam os update.
The micro stutters only show when in game mode. Switch into the KDE plasma desktop and see that there is no problem. I think the problem in game mode has something to do with the Wayland protocol/compositor. Desktop uses X11.
So for now, you have to play in desktop mode. You should also disable threads for much better emulation performance. I wrote a script that I run to enable/disable SMT. The performance is staggering when running 3 threads as opposed to the full 8, often allowing games to run at a full 60fps with no slowdown. A great example to test this is Mario Kart Wii.
I wonder if both the stuttering and the improved performance from disabling SMT is related to a trick that Valve uses in gamemode where they treat the CPU at 8c/8t instead of 4c/8t?
Valve claim that they got better performance with the 8c/8t configuration but I wonder if the opposite is true for native Linux software that is generally CPU-bottlenecked (which is the exact opposite of the usual Windows software running through Proton that is typically GPU-bottlenecked).
(08-16-2022, 04:27 AM)silverspring Wrote: [ -> ]It's not fixed at all in the latest Steam os update.
The micro stutters only show when in game mode. Switch into the KDE plasma desktop and see that there is no problem. I think the problem in game mode has something to do with the Wayland protocol/compositor. Desktop uses X11.
So for now, you have to play in desktop mode. You should also disable threads for much better emulation performance. I wrote a script that I run to enable/disable SMT. The performance is staggering when running 3 threads as opposed to the full 8, often allowing games to run at a full 60fps with no slowdown. A great example to test this is Mario Kart Wii.
So I ended up installing PowerTools as recommended by a user on the Steam Deck Discord, which supposedly allowed me to both disable SMT and set the number of threads to 3 (on a per-game basis), but the stuttering still occurs. I'm not sure if PowerTools isn't working properly or if changing these settings just didn't work.
How did you end up getting the emulator working properly in KDE plasma desktop mode? With native Dolphin or with Emulation Station? When I used the controller in native Dolphin it kept accepting my 8BitDo Pro button presses as mouse presses when using the L2 and R2 buttons.
And out of curiosity does anyone know if this issue would have to be resolved from Valve's side or from Dolphin's side? Based on what Nintendo Maniac 64 said I think it would be Valve's side but it's uncertain.
(08-16-2022, 11:19 AM)steejo Wrote: [ -> ]So I ended up installing PowerTools as recommended by a user on the Steam Deck Discord, which supposedly allowed me to both disable SMT and set the number of threads to 3 (on a per-game basis), but the stuttering still occurs. I'm not sure if PowerTools isn't working properly or if changing these settings just didn't work.
How did you end up getting the emulator working properly in KDE plasma desktop mode? With native Dolphin or with Emulation Station? When I used the controller in native Dolphin it kept accepting my 8BitDo Pro button presses as mouse presses when using the L2 and R2 buttons.
And out of curiosity does anyone know if this issue would have to be resolved from Valve's side or from Dolphin's side? Based on what Nintendo Maniac 64 said I think it would be Valve's side but it's uncertain.
The powertools plugin does indeed allow us to disable SMT and set the number of threads lower than 8. I find 3, or sometimes 4 the best.
Unfortunately, disabling SMT does not fix the micro stutters. It does however improve performance on a lot of games. Try Mario Kart Wii with both 8 threads, then switch to 3. The micro stutters is a completely different issue and wayland is suspect as these stutters don't show when run under X11 on desktop.
I just run dolphin standalone as downloaded as a flatpak through the Discover store. I don't know about your 8BitDo controller as I don't use external controllers. I just set mapped the steam deck's buttons.
I think the issue with the microstutters is on the Valve side, indirectly because of wayland.
I just found out that Steam OS supposedly defaults to using the schedutil CPU performance governor and that it's supposedly not really ideal for CPU-heavy workloads and is more ideal for power-saving and/or use-cases where you want more of your power budget going to the integrated graphics.
So here's an idea about the stutters - what if you set the CPU governor to something else? At least on my Linux Mint 20.3 installation on a Ryzen 4800U (which uses the very same L3-reduced Zen2 cores used in the Steam Deck), it defaults to the "Ondemand" governor instead with there also being an option for a "Performance" governor.
It may also be worth mentioning that it looks like Feral GameMode uses the "Performance" governor by default, though there's some mention of it using "powersave" when Intel integrated graphics are present (no idea about AMD, but it'd likely cause the same problems as "Schedutil").