I'm using an HP laptop, AMD Ryzen 5 5600H 3.30GHz cpu, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 gpu, 8gb of ram, on windows 11. I want to know what this setup can do with dolphin. I mean, I've been trying it out already, but I want to know what other enhancements I can use, like Ubershaders, Anti-Aliasing, resolution, stuff like that. I've noticed just some slowdown in some games when using 60fps codes, like Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing, Sonic Colors, Mario and sonic at the Olympics (mostly the replays), Sonic Unleashed (a lotta sonic :]), and a 60fps hack for Mario Kart Wii's 4 player mode. I just want to know how much my computer can do, or where to draw a line with the codes and/or enhancements. (Dolphin ver. 5.0-16380 btw).
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the 60fps codes are likely problematic because they themselves may be problematic on a real console, meaning you may need up to twice as much CPU grunt as you would normally to run them at a perfect 60fps. In other words, those codes may be more designed for use on a Wii U whereby, via homebrew, you can run games with the Wii U's full 1.2+ GHz CPU clockrate which is nearly 2x that of the Wii. The main reason I say this is because I definitely know that the 60fps code for Mario Sunshine only gets you to something like 45fps on a GameCube but you can very much hit the full 60fps if you take advantage of the Wii's 50% higher clockrate via Nintendont (and presumably Devolution since it can improve poorly-performing games but, well, only very few know how to get modded games working through Devolution and none of them have "spilled the beans" so to say which is unfortunate as it's still the only way to use a wired 360 controller with a USB drive for GameCube games on real hardware without a USB adapter).
That being said, I don't actually have experience with those codes so, for all I know, due to Dolphin's relative accuracy nowadays, it's possible that it's actually emulating the Wii's performance too accurately, resulting in the performance issues you describe. If this is the limitation rather than your actual CPU then the solution may be to actually increase the CPU clock override setting in the "Advanced" tab - just note that I could be completely wrong on this helping but, if it doesn't help, you'll find out really quickly since it'd probably tank your performance otherwise.
Nevertheless, your GPU, despite being not all that strong, should be pretty plenty for uber-shaders, higher resolutions, and the like. Once again I refer to a Ryzen 4800U that I have where, even with just its integrated GPU, I can run F-Zero GX with exclusive ubershaders at 3x internal resolution (without AA or AF) or 5x internal resolution with hybrid uber shaders (without AA or AF) - I say without AA or AF because, being an integrated GPU, there are times where I'm memory bottlenecked and I have to drop all the way to 1x internal resolution with no ubershaders in order to get full speed (this should not be an issue that discrete GPUs suffer from unless it's super-low end like the infamous DDR4-equipped GT1030).
And while it's definitely less of an issue with Nvidia, I'd at least double-check and make sure you're using Vulkan rather than OpenGL.
Thanks! I actually found out some of my issues came from "EFB copies to texture only" being disabled, which slowed down things like mario kart and sonic and sega all stars. But Still, some of my games are a little more intensive with some brief slowdown, and some of the codes do make the games act a bit strange, but its good to know I should be good with using ubershaders and a higher resolution for the most part. Some of it could just be from using OpenGL too, so thanks for reminding me for that.