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Low FPS with Dolphin

kerkelenz

New member
Hey folks,

This is my first post here so I might as well say Hi along with my first question:

I got Dolphin all set up, all the plugins are in and for security all the settings are kept at default, except the controls of course.

Anyways though, when I load up my newly acquired Super Smash Bros Melee GCM, i get an FPS count from 0.1x all the way up to 5.x, what the hell is that all about? I play F.E.A.R. Multiplayer on my computer on 60FPS and then a gamecube emulator is telling me that it doesnt like to work, hell no.

So what can I do to improve the FPS count?

Thanks in advance,
-Kevin
 

Toasty

Sony battery
kerkelenz said:
I play F.E.A.R. Multiplayer on my computer on 60FPS and then a gamecube emulator is telling me that it doesnt like to work, hell no.
View attachment 36909
This is known as the IDonWannaWrk835 bug. Currently there are no workarounds, but you can learn more about it in the FAQ Falcon4ever linked that you're supposed to read before posting.
 
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kerkelenz

New member
I read the FAQ's beforehand and spent quite some time doing it, i just can't seem to figure it out, I'm not a dumbass or a lazy fu** trying to make other people figure out my problem.
 

Agozer

16-bit Corpse | Moderator
If you really read the FAQ, then you should have figured out already. Take a long, good look at the last question in the FAQ and let it sink in for a while.

Also, never compare PC games performance with emulation performance. They aren't the same thing, not by a long shot.
 
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Toasty

Sony battery
kerkelenz said:
I read the FAQ's beforehand and spent quite some time doing it, i just can't seem to figure it out, I'm not a dumbass or a lazy fu** trying to make other people figure out my problem.
What exactly did you spend quite some time doing? This is the relevant question in the FAQ:
Q: Whoa, Dolphin is running as fast as a pregnant snail, what am I doing wrong?
A: The Nintendo Gamecube is a very advanced platform and (todays) computers are not fast enough yet to emulate it with the techniques we use. So... you aren't doing anything wrong! Upgrading a CPU or GPU won't gain you much more performance (you will only gain 1-5 fps). IF you decide to upgrade just besure to get a 64-bit CPU and a GPU which supports (at least) 2.0 pixelshaders.
In simpler language, decent speed emulation is not going to happen with today's technology and emulators.
 
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kerkelenz

New member
Well I ignored that one due to the fact that the GameCube hardware is by far outdated with Quad core CPU's and DX10 GPU's supporting shader model 4.0, so why would it be so slow, I am running a computer with an Intel Core 2 Extreme and dual 8800GTX's, I really dont' get it.
 
In the future your computer specs will be able to run a gamecube emulator at a nice speed, but at this time no one has devoted enough time into this hard to emulate console to get great results yet.
 

Agozer

16-bit Corpse | Moderator
In short, you're computer isn't fast enough to emulate the GameCube at full speed, no matter how high-end your computer might be. True, future versions of Dolphin could very well bring change when it's optimized for multi-core processors.

But until then, get yourself a Wii or a GameCube.
 

Doomulation

?????????????????????????
Well I ignored that one due to the fact that the GameCube hardware is by far outdated with Quad core CPU's and DX10 GPU's supporting shader model 4.0, so why would it be so slow, I am running a computer with an Intel Core 2 Extreme and dual 8800GTX's, I really dont' get it.

A simple answer to your question:
When you play a PC game - you play a PC game on the CPU and the graphics on the GPU and the rest of the work on the rest of the hardware. When you play an emulator game, you play the game plus do all the hardware (that includes GPU; though not the rendering) work on the CPU ALONE (most of the time anyway). There are far more interesting explanations somewhere on the board, though I can't remember where.
Of course, you can always ask for us to indulge you further as to why this phenomenon happens.
 

Tagrineth

Dragony thingy
Keep in mind emulation is significantly more difficult than running code natively.

For comparison, my first PC, a 233MHz Pentium MMX, couldn't run some SNES games at full speed with sound and effects.

That's SNES. For reference, SNES has a 3.58Mhz CPU. Do the math.

My old 800MHz Pentium 3 couldn't emulate N64 or PS1 fullspeed either, and those are 94.5 and 33.4MHz CPUs, respectively.

Emulation takes a metric fuckton of extra horsepower. :)
 
I don't think that's true. The problem is the dev teams for all these emulators are guessing and really do not have a good idea of what works and what does not and basically flying blind here. If Nintendo were to emulate their own console (having all the info needed as they do) they could do it on what would be considered a weak PC of today.
 

enix-sama

New member
Oh I'm sure that's true. I saw some "making of" type video on games and saw wind waker being run on a pc, and it didn't look like video capture. So I think they probably exist and are used for testing within gamecube game development.
 

Allnatural

New member
Moderator
I don't think that's true. The problem is the dev teams for all these emulators are guessing and really do not have a good idea of what works and what does not and basically flying blind here. If Nintendo were to emulate their own console (having all the info needed as they do) they could do it on what would be considered a weak PC of today.
On the contrary. As developers learn more about the hardware and increase emulation accuracy the hardware requirements generally go up (e.g. MAME, bsnes).

Could Nintendo do it better? I don't know, but I suspect they're using a fair amount of HLE with their existing emulators (i.e. the Wii's virtual console).
 

Doomulation

?????????????????????????
I don't think that's true. The problem is the dev teams for all these emulators are guessing and really do not have a good idea of what works and what does not and basically flying blind here. If Nintendo were to emulate their own console (having all the info needed as they do) they could do it on what would be considered a weak PC of today.

Ha! You know not of what you speak!
Create an emulator yourself and see if you truly are right.
Emulation is a complex operation and that's true - now if you can prove all authors that create emulators out there that they are wrong, that they are lazy - I'd love to see you try. Yes, do it yourself. There's lots of documentation on how systems work out there.
 
No. Not for me to do it myself. Not that they are lazy, but they do not know nintendo as well as nintendo does. I'm not knocking the dophin teams hard work or effort, but i believe it is possible to run a gamecube emulator on a single core 64 bit OS with all the proper information that nintendo knows that the devs have to guess and figure out on their own and that takes a whole lot of time.


Don't be one of those retards who like to say "well make your own emulator". Don't be one of those guys who can't come up with something original or worth while to say.
 
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kerkelenz

New member
Well as a Game developer I can understand where this is going and I am indeed a dumbass for saying what I said, A computer has RAM, CPU's, and GPU's as three seperate things for a good reason - the operating system and the programs secretely running in the background, games developed on computers are built to take use of cpu's, ram, and gpu's for mostly different things, RAM for pre-processing and temporarilly storing data, then transfer it to the GPU to be rendered, and then other data like AI and other Scripted functions to the CPU. But then creating an emulator makes this process a wee bit harder, and I personally think it would be easier to reverse engineer (or get a sourcecode) of a certain game and since they're all developed on PC's anyway, re-compile it for PC, after a lot of scripting that is..

Sorry again for that stupid remark.
 

Doomulation

?????????????????????????
No. Not for me to do it myself. Not that they are lazy, but they do not know nintendo as well as nintendo does. I'm not knocking the dophin teams hard work or effort, but i believe it is possible to run a gamecube emulator on a single core 64 bit OS with all the proper information that nintendo knows that the devs have to guess and figure out on their own and that takes a whole lot of time
Now, this I sincerely doubt. Why? Because emulation is not a simple task. The GameCube has about a 450 MHz processor, right? Well, let's think it this way... If each instruction executed on the GC needs 4 instructions to execute on PC, you'll need 450 x 4 = 1.8 GHz of processor power. Of course, this is just an estimation. There are more factors as well. Different opcodes take more/less opcodes to execute, then we have API overhead, then we have background processes and all that and the worst of all is that after this, we've just emulated the processor. The rest of the hardware needs to be emulated too! Now do you see why it is so hard?
Will we get to see it full speed sometime in the future? Yes, most likely. But only on those which have 2 or mores cores, I believe. Perhaps the sweet spot is 4 cores, and when optimized enough, then maybe 2. 2 when we push up the speed of the processors enough. And maybe if we enlist the GPU for help with some number crunching. But I doubt that... emulation isn't that much about number crunching...


Don't be one of those retards who like to say "well make your own emulator". Don't be one of those guys who can't come up with something original or worth while to say.
Then don't be a retard and insult the authors. Come with some good arguments, make sure you really know what you're talking about and I'll not call you a retard if you call authors lazy.

But then creating an emulator makes this process a wee bit harder, and I personally think it would be easier to reverse engineer (or get a sourcecode) of a certain game and since they're all developed on PC's anyway, re-compile it for PC, after a lot of scripting that is..

Sorry again for that stupid remark.

Perhaps it is... but again, you must remember that though they're developed and compiled on PCs, they're run on the console hardware and written for it. Perhaps it is easier to write an emulator, and then again, perhaps not. I don't know. And we're not talking about speed here, just getting it working. But porting it wouldn't be easy either. But that's just what I believe.
 

Doomulation

?????????????????????????
I didn't say you insulted them, did I (or I really? :p)?
Anyhow, whatever you did, you did mention that you think emulation of GC can run on one core only full speed. My thoughts on that is: not possible. GC emulation is just too demanding.

However, you DID mention that authors really have no (pretty much; guessing anyway) idea what they're doing and that Nintendo could create a GC emulator on a weak PC (single core, yes?). Well, to that the answer is simply no.
I will mention this again just so we're clear, yes? It's not that authors do not know the system. If they don't, the emulators tend to be faster actually (because of less emulation)! But as they know more, it gets slower due to more emulation...
Nintendo themselves couldn't create a better emulator on a PC, as you would see... It just isn't possible. And I'm sure you'd hear the same from a lot of others.

Now. I'm not insulting you or calling you anything, okay? You are just a little misguided with wrong information. That will be all.
 

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