Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

Ok thanks guys.
Fact is, my GPU is fairly good, but my CPU barely qualifies (i5 750) so i figured, if there's one bottleneck anyways, it'll be the cpu.
Still, i'll try to tone down the internal resolution, no sense in stressing the gpu if i can't even notice the difference. :)
 
UrbanRats said:
Ok, so i manage to run REbirth.
Now i'm wondering what should i set in the "Enchancement" section.
I put 4x native res (2560x2112) and 4xSSAA, and the game runs ok (i have a GTX580) but maybe it's an overkill? I have no idea what i'm doing but in-game, the 3d models do look very sharp and sweet.
Oh, fullscreen resolution is 1080p.

On the other hand, Mario Sunshine has some visible slowdowns and i think some shaders from the water are missing (i remember some sun reflections, that are present in the FMV, but not in-game).
Click to expand...

I'd tone down the AA and keep the resolution where its at. I don't usually notice an IQ difference when res is that high for aa to kick in (usually better performance/improvement ratio), and it's usually more reliable in not kicking up graphical artifacts as a result. Also max out the anisotropic filtering, doesn't usually have a hit on performance at all.

edit: made a quick comparison

ysUds.jpg
 
jediyoshi said:
I'd tone down the AA and keep the resolution where its at. I don't usually notice an IQ difference when res is that high for aa to kick in (usually better performance/improvement ratio), and it's usually more reliable in not kicking up graphical artifacts as a result. Also max out the anisotropic filtering, doesn't usually have a hit on performance at all.
Click to expand...

This, you don't need AA when it's at 4X res.
 
mesmerMAN said:
thx, but now my main problem is i think i have a dvd drive that is not compatible. just my luck...
Click to expand...

That's par for the course, compatible ones are few and far between.
Usual method is ripping with an actual wii onto some kind of storage device (usb hdd, flash drive) using a homebrew app like CleanRip.
 
jediyoshi said:
I'd tone down the AA and keep the resolution where its at. I don't usually notice an IQ difference when res is that high for aa to kick in (usually better performance/improvement ratio), and it's usually more reliable in not kicking up graphical artifacts as a result. Also max out the anisotropic filtering, doesn't usually have a hit on performance at all.

edit: made a quick comparison

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ysUds.jpg[/img]
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip.
 
Thinking of selling my Wii when I get a new PC and use Dolphin. Any reason not to?
I don't play online on my Wii (:lol) and I don't have VC/Wiiware games.
 
I am having a major issue not having the audio being choppy while playing Xenoblade. I followed Durante's setup (what I could anyway with the latest build, which made some of his stuff outdated), and I have the latest version of Dolphin downloaded.

Specs are I7 (8 CPUs), four gigs ram, Gefore GTX 570, and for my audio, Realtek HD.

If I need to add anything else (or if someone want to place their Xenoblade setup here, and I'll see if that does the job), then let me know. I want to finally play Xenoblade while I have a few weeks to myself.

Edit: I am also trying to get an emulated Motionplus build for my Dolphin. I download the item stated in the forum, but I keep hitting a sdl.lll error each time I acquire it. Anyway to resolve this?
 
scar tissue said:
Thinking of selling my Wii when I get a new PC and use Dolphin. Any reason not to?
I don't play online on my Wii (:lol) and I don't have VC/Wiiware games.
Click to expand...

Banned, but I'm sure you're still reading.

Main reason not sell your Wii is compatibility, if you're not concerned about online and VC/WiiWare titles. Dolphin is tremendous, and improving, but it's not perfect and not all titles are truly error free. A lot have audio issues, and plenty have graphical abnormalities, while some don't work at all. Best bet is to browse the Dolphin Wiki for the titles you'd be interested in emulating and see what issues emulation has.
 
EatChildren said:
Banned, but I'm sure you're still reading.

Main reason not sell your Wii is compatibility, if you're not concerned about online and VC/WiiWare titles. Dolphin is tremendous, and improving, but it's not perfect and not all titles are truly error free. A lot have audio issues, and plenty have graphical abnormalities, while some don't work at all. Best bet is to browse the Dolphin Wiki for the titles you'd be interested in emulating and see what issues emulation has.
Click to expand...

That said, I think it's amazing how fast Dolphin evolved in the last 2 years. When game works perfectly, its just so satisfying. :P

4.0 was supposed to come soon but now I think they're targeting something like 3.5 or 3.9 to work on it a bit more. I'm using 3.0-802 and I just encountered a glitch in Skyward Sword that closes Dolphin when you reach the first trial of the flames, which wasn't happening in previous revisions. Things like this reminds me that I can't wait for the next, true stable release.

Dolphin will be the platform of choice for GC/Wii games in a near future. Same thing for PCSX2.

Kokonoe said:
Not to meddle, but he didn't say he was selling his games did he? He only said he was selling the console itself.
Click to expand...

You need to have the console to achieve legit emulation and like EC said there's still some technical issues that makes playing on the real thing better.
 
EatChildren said:
Banned, but I'm sure you're still reading.

Main reason not sell your Wii is compatibility, if you're not concerned about online and VC/WiiWare titles. Dolphin is tremendous, and improving, but it's not perfect and not all titles are truly error free. A lot have audio issues, and plenty have graphical abnormalities, while some don't work at all. Best bet is to browse the Dolphin Wiki for the titles you'd be interested in emulating and see what issues emulation has.
Click to expand...

Not to meddle, but he didn't say he was selling his games did he? He only said he was selling the console itself.

Seik said:
You need to have the console to achieve legit emulation and like EC said there's still some technical issues that makes playing on the real thing better.
Click to expand...

Ah I see, well good thing I still have my original Gamecube. (two of them to be precise)
 
Kokonoe said:
Not to meddle, but he didn't say he was selling his games did he? He only said he was selling the console itself.
Click to expand...
Check Scar's post history. Pretty sure the ban wasn't for the intention of selling his Wii.

But a question on performance. I know that Dolphin is heavily CPU dependent and i5-processors (such as the highly recommended 3570K). But what should I expect from the GPU? At what point does that become the bottleneck?
 
Tried an old rip of Xenoblade just now. Was surprised to find I can actually run it smoothly on my PC at 1080p at 3x the internal resolution. Looked absolutely gorgeous. Makes me want to replay it :D

Also gave it a shot with 3D vision, the environments looked stunning, though unfortunately there are a few issues in cutscenes/effects.
 
FillerB said:
But a question on performance. I know that Dolphin is heavily CPU dependent and i5-processors (such as the highly recommended 3570K). But what should I expect from the GPU? At what point does that become the bottleneck?
Click to expand...

The gpu will become a bottleneck when you do stuff like supersampling x4/x9 at high internal resolutions.
 
What build of Dolphin are you all using?
I'm trying out Zelda SS on dolphin but it seems to be crashing a lot, like one time it crashes before going into the second silent/twilight realm.(hopefully not a spoiler :P)
 
zbarron said:
How were you able to? I get things rendering at the wrong depth.
Click to expand...

just beat Zelda ss. besides some shitty programming with regards to onscreen text and hand holding, I really enjoyed it. as far as rendering/depth it worked perfect for me. the cutscene introing the last boss is just sublime in 3D, damn! overall in 3D - only issue I got was some minor shadowing with far away things but I think that might be attributed to my gen 1 glasses.

here are my settings when playing in either 2 or 3D (actually I cant play in 2D anymore):
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=80C7DCC9A572A073!1120&authkey=!APEwpZ8-SDaBLG8

I also use sweetfx with default settings.

note: I don't enable 3D vision in the dolphin program as it crashes when you end your session. my computer automatically runs it in 3D so not sure why they even put that there. also, rendering at a res above 1080p doesn't work in 3D - I think it may have to do with my monitor. you will have to play with the depth and conversion in game to find your sweet spot. I imagine you know how to do this with the NVidia shortcuts.


and as a bonus here are some wind waker 3D grabs:
http://photos.3dvisionlive.com/eddiifox/album/50d2a5b7a3e0676c66000002/
fucking phenomenal!
 
En-ou said:
just beat Zelda ss. besides some shitty programming with regards to onscreen text and hand holding, I really enjoyed it. as far as rendering/depth it worked perfect for me. the cutscene introing the last boss is just sublime in 3D, damn! overall in 3D - only issue I got was some minor shadowing with far away things but I think that might be attributed to my gen 1 glasses.

here are my settings when playing in either 2 or 3D (actually I cant play in 2D anymore):
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=80C7DCC9A572A073!1120&authkey=!APEwpZ8-SDaBLG8

I also use sweetfx with default settings.

note: I don't enable 3D vision in the dolphin program as it crashes when you end your session. my computer automatically runs it in 3D so not sure why they even put that there. also, rendering at a res above 1080p doesn't work in 3D - I think it may have to do with my monitor. you will have to play with the depth and conversion in game to find your sweet spot. I imagine you know how to do this with the NVidia shortcuts.


and as a bonus here are some wind waker 3D grabs:
http://photos.3dvisionlive.com/eddiifox/album/50d2a5b7a3e0676c66000002/
fucking phenomenal!
Click to expand...

Could you please post your specs and dolphin version?
 
Does an OCed 3570k make a big difference in dolphin? To like 4.4GHz for instance

Mine is at stock speed (turbo 3.8GHz under load), just wondering if i should bother OCing it.

I'll eventually OC anyway, but now it is doing its job perfectly.

Also another are Xenoblade, Monster Hunter Tri, and Zelda SS completely playable and/or beatable on Dolphin without any glitches?
 
Seik said:
You need to have the console to achieve legit emulation and like EC said there's still some technical issues that makes playing on the real thing better.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by "legit". If you mean legal, it's 100% perfectly legal to use Dolphin without owning a Wii or GCN console AS LONG AS you use legally aquired games and don't use LLE audio (which requires a DSP bios dump from a console you own).

Aside from that, there is no copy righted code in dolphin so it's completely legal to use without a console.

edit: Madridy it depends, are you experiencing slowdowns? If so then yes. Any slowdowns that can't be fixed by turning your video settings down (in emulators) is CPU dependent. In general, CPU frame rate in emulators like dolphin and pcsx2 scale linearly. That is, a 15~% increase in CPU speed (3.8 to 4.4) should give you about 15% better FPS. If you're already hitting full speed in most of the games you play, you of course won't see a difference there.
 
Negaiido said:
Could you please post your specs and dolphin version?
Click to expand...


Dolphin-win-x64-v3.0-865

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 12/23/2012, 14:20:24
Operating System: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.121023-1503)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz [stock, haven't overclocked it yet]
Memory: 8192MB RAM

DirectX Version: DirectX 11


---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 560 Ti
 
tiku said:
I think everbody should have played MGS by this time (i did), but a spoiler tag would prevent some damage to happen xD
Click to expand...

Tell me that ... I just saw one that seems pretty big in those screenshots :-(
I am just starting MGS for the first time, on my PSP GO.

My fault obviously, I should have been more careful!
 
En-ou said:
Dolphin-win-x64-v3.0-865

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 12/23/2012, 14:20:24
Operating System: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.121023-1503)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz [stock, haven't overclocked it yet]
Memory: 8192MB RAM

DirectX Version: DirectX 11


---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Click to expand...

My zelda crashes with this dolphin version and the settings you mentioned.

I get the error:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Dolphin.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 50d71f2e
Fault Module Name: d3dcompiler_43.dll

After trying to go to the twilight/silent realm.
 
Madridy said:
Does an OCed 3570k make a big difference in dolphin? To like 4.4GHz for instance

Mine is at stock speed (turbo 3.8GHz under load), just wondering if i should bother OCing it.

I'll eventually OC anyway, but now it is doing its job perfectly.

Also another are Xenoblade, Monster Hunter Tri, and Zelda SS completely playable and/or beatable on Dolphin without any glitches?
Click to expand...

Yes! Clock speed makes a huge difference!
 
En-ou said:
Are you using the same dolphin settings as me? Skyward sword has never crashed on me in the 70 hrs i put in. If you want I can zip my whole dolphin folder and send it your way. here it is: http://sdrv.ms/TmcMbY
Click to expand...

Thank you :)
It didn't crash for me on the spot I mentioned.
Some things do seem strange, my fps is quite low in that version. It's not 3.0-865 by the way, it's 3.0-243. :)

My specs:

i7 3770k 4.6 Ghz
GTX 670 overclocked
8 GB RAM
 
Did my dolphin inexplicably break? Suddenly I'm getting like 20 fps in SMG :

1) regardless of resolution / AA setting
2) haven't changed any setting to begin with
3) GPU is in "sleep" mode while playing the game, as in using like 20% performance at a very low clock.

Anyone know how/why this could've happened?
 
Dolphin 3.5 Release Announcement

New features:

  • Gamecube BBA support: Gamecube games supporting online mode using Nintendo's BBA (ethernet adapter) can now be played online on Dolphin. This includes Mario Kart: Double Dash 8 players mode support, as well as Phantasy Star Online.

  • Gamecube microphone support: The 6 Gamecube games using a microphone (Mario Party 5/6 for example) can now use your system configured microphone to get audio input.

  • WBFS support: If you dumped your games as WBFS files in order to play your dumps on a real Wii, you can now use the same WBFS files on Dolphin. WBFS includes features such as compression and splitted files (to avoid the FAT32 4GB file size limit).

  • Free replacement for the DSP LLE ROMs: DSP LLE normally requires you to dump ROMs from your real Wii. This free replacement, while working only with some Mario and Zelda games, removes this requirement.

  • Wiimote support on OS X Mountain Lion: The latest version of Mac OS X brings several Bluetooth changes, breaking Wiimote support with Dolphin 3.0. Dolphin 3.5 supports real Wiimotes, including MotionPlus addon, on OS X 10.8.

  • TAS and recording improvements: Read only mode, better determinism, more checks to avoid using wrong settings or wrong version of a game when playing back a movie, bongo recording support.

  • FreeBSD support: Rather theoretical than anything else, but worth a note. OpenGL backend may or may not work for you.

  • UI refinements: New wiimote configuration dialog, improvements to the game list sorting, minor changes to simplify usage.

  • Wii disc integrity checking: Use Dolphin to check if your dumped Wii game is corrupted.

  • Improvements to the custom textures feature: Improved stability, added support for custom mipmaps, removed texture size limit.

  • Shader cache optimizations: Reduced stuttering to a point where Red Steel 2 got playable with full FPS.

  • A lot of minor emulation fixes: Texture preloading implementation, better FIFO emulation, HLE audio fixes, more accurate DSI/FPU exceptions, ...
Click to expand...

Download
 
  • Gamecube BBA support: Gamecube games supporting online mode using Nintendo's BBA (ethernet adapter) can now be played online on Dolphin. This includes Mario Kart: Double Dash 8 players mode support, as well as Phantasy Star Online.
Click to expand...

gPUb5.gif


Need more details about how this works. Time to start checking their forums!

GAF KIRBY AIR RIDE TOURNAMENT WHEN?
 
Corky said:
Did my dolphin inexplicably break? Suddenly I'm getting like 20 fps in SMG :

1) regardless of resolution / AA setting
2) haven't changed any setting to begin with
3) GPU is in "sleep" mode while playing the game, as in using like 20% performance at a very low clock.

Anyone know how/why this could've happened?
Click to expand...
Do you use Mac? If you do, reset SMC. I've had that same problem (also was affecting some native games), and that fixed it.
 
damn, that's a proper update right there. been sleeping on this for lack of overclocking my CPU, 2013 might finally be the year to break into it
 
Tagg9 said:
Holy shit, that change log is bloody amazing.
Click to expand...

Although for anyone following the build releases, most of these features are months old. I'm glad they pushed out another 'proper' release though as the thought of people just jumping on recently and downloading a version almost 1.5 years old is a bit scary.

1st Course said:
Anyone know how can I move my save states from the old dolphin folder to the new one?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing copying your old Dolphin\User\StateSaves folder and pasting over the new one would be fine.
 
Negaiido said:
Thank you :)
It didn't crash for me on the spot I mentioned.
Some things do seem strange, my fps is quite low in that version. It's not 3.0-865 by the way, it's 3.0-243. :)

My specs:

i7 3770k 4.6 Ghz
GTX 670 overclocked
8 GB RAM
Click to expand...

your fps shouldn't be low, your system is more powerful than mine. not sure what is the issue there.

and btw, xenoblade looks friggin awesome in 3D!!
 
Shader cache optimizations: Reduced stuttering to a point where Red Steel 2 got playable with full FPS.
Click to expand...

Shit yes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Dolphin XR PCVR & Standalone wii/Gamecube/N64 Emulator
1
1K
TintoConCasera replied
Ecco the Dolphin and Tides of Time games are getting remastered + 3rd Game Announcement Soon
2
59
398
Ristifer replied
Dolphin Emulator gets Retroachievement support
12
1K
keefged4 replied
Sega has filed trademarks for 'Ecco' and 'Ecco the dolphin'
2 3
103
4K
MrCunningham replied
Switch 2 upgrades look worse than Wii U emulation upscaling
2 3 4
198
10K
nkarafo replied
Top Bottom