Dolphin Emulator Frustration.

[Smurfinater]

I want to preface this by saying I have a very capable pc, I can run BF4 1080p all settings maxed @ avg 86fps, and I can also max out bioshock infinite at 1080p

 

im running:

 

CPU: AMD FX 8350 8 core - OC 4.5 Ghz

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB, DDR3, 2133Mhz 9/11/11, (Tightened: 1866 8/10/10)

GPU: MSI 290x Lightning 4GB OC: GPU 1180 Mhz / VRAM 1600 Mhz base, eff 6400 Mhz

 

I cant get metroid prime trilogy to run smooth, by smooth i mean no audio flickering, huge momentary FPS drops, constant random video/audio stuttering. is this just the norm? should I stop wasting my time trying to get smooth game-play out of emulating any Nintendo system above N64? (I understand that there is the complication of not just raw power but emulating intended hardware environment) I have tried versions 3.5, 4.0, 4.2, x86 & x64 flavors of each. I have tried all manner of settings suggestions on the internet. I can get it playable but not enjoyable. Any metroid prime fans knows about the immersion aspect of the series, which is butchered by the above mentioned imperfections.

 

to re-iterate my question is this: has anyone here achieved smooth results with metroid prime series, or should I stop wasting hours, upon hours  of fiddling time and just buy a wii. PS: I own the game disks legit, Its just that the wii took a crap, and I want to re-enjoy this series, and I was also looking forward to the huge graphics bump you can get from good hardware that is touted by the dev and supporters.

 

 

Also: i have tried with just one monitor hooked up too.

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

 

AMD CPUs suck for dolphin, sorry, even an 8350 is only about half as good as an i5 in dolphin

[Master Disaster]

According to Dolphins Compatibility List you have to disable Wiimote Audio if using an actual Wiimote otherwise it should run fine, some minor issues but nothing major like your experiencing.

Check your video settings thoroughly.

AMD CPUs suck for dolphin, sorry

Had zero issues with a 280X?

[minibois]

-snip-

Have you tried following Tek Syndicate's video on Dolphin? Maybe you missed a settings or two, that makes it harder to run.

Otherwise I would probably recommend hitting up Dolphin's forum, because there you will probably have people that have experienced it.

 

You should be able to run Wii (and GameCube) games just fine, as I have seen them run pretty good on quite a bit of hardware over the years.

 

According to Dolphins Compatibility List you have to disable Wiimote Audio if using an actual Wiimote otherwise it should run fine, some minor issues but nothing major like your experiencing.

Check your video settings thoroughly.

Had zero issues with a 280X?

AMD CPUs suck for dolphin

[Glenwing]

Dolphin and emulators in general are not exactly stable software. I get graphical glitches, audio cutting out, looping, left and right audio suddenly going out of sync, FPS drops etc all the time in Dolphin... it's not a matter of hardware power.

[SleathX1]

AMD CPUs suck for dolphin, sorry, even an 8350 is only about half as good as an i5 in dolphin

Well thanks for saying that, my Athlon 750k sucks, to say the least.

[Smurfinater]

I am not using a wiimote, thankyou for that possibility though good for future info

[Smurfinater]

AMD CPUs suck for dolphin, sorry, even an 8350 is only about half as good as an i5 in dolphin

Although I can speculate on cpu compatibility, being that wii  hardware is amd gpu and IBM CPU you would think that niether amd or intel cpus would have a handicap or edge compared to one another when it comes to compute. however depending on how the emulation software is written it could very well be true, however, intels main advantage is single threaded, and even if i force the settings and the program on one core/thread it still come nowhere close to maxing out; cpu and gpu usage is near idle so there is plenty of headroom in my hardware, again I dont think its a raw power issue, neigh i KNOW its not because my hardware makes a wii look like a calculator. from what Ive seen its hit or miss with hardware on both sides of the cpu fence, so I dont think its purely a cpu manufacturer issue.

[Smurfinater]

Have you tried following Tek Syndicate's video on Dolphin? Maybe you missed a settings or two, that makes it harder to run.

Otherwise I would probably recommend hitting up Dolphin's forum, because there you will probably have people that have experienced it.

 

You should be able to run Wii (and GameCube) games just fine, as I have seen them run pretty good on quite a bit of hardware over the years.

 

 

I willl check into that after work thank you

[Smurfinater]

Dolphin and emulators in general are not exactly stable software. I get graphical glitches, audio cutting out, looping, left and right audio suddenly going out of sync, FPS drops etc all the time in Dolphin... it's not a matter of hardware power.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, being that even console ports rewritten for pc are never perfect, i guess I wil go on craigslist and pick-up a wii. Buy a whole system to play one game series *shudders*  

[Sintezza]

dolphin is indeed not realy great, its very unstable.

And next to that, its very bad optimized to use multiple cores.

Dolphin only uses one or two cores, so thats why it sucks on AMD.

On intel it works a littlebit better, but still its not that great, cause Dolphin sucks in general.

[ShadowCaptain]

Although I can speculate on cpu compatibility, being that wii  hardware is amd gpu and IBM CPU you would think that niether amd or intel cpus would have a handicap or edge compared to one another when it comes to compute. however depending on how the emulation software is written it could very well be true, however, intels main advantage is single threaded, and even if i force the settings and the program on one core/thread it still come nowhere close to maxing out; cpu and gpu usage is near idle so there is plenty of headroom in my hardware, again I dont think its a raw power issue, neigh i KNOW its not because my hardware makes a wii look like a calculator. from what Ive seen its hit or miss with hardware on both sides of the cpu fence, so I dont think its purely a cpu manufacturer issue.

 

 emulators do not work like that, a Dual Titan X PC with an 8 Core i7 cannot play a single PS3 game....its not about performance, its about how the emulator is written to take advantage of whatever hardware.. the performance of your PC is irrelevant

 

Quote from the official website FAQ,

 

"AMD: Due to very low IPC, AMD CPUs are poor choices for Dolphin. The FX8000 line of processors is the best they have, and even then most of those processors will be around half the speed of the 4670K’s performance with Dolphin."