I’m running Windows 10 and using a 240hz monitor.
Before i report this i have to say that the standalone version of Dolphin runs perfectly. All games run smooth, with no microstutters, frame pacing or sync issues.
Using RetroArch though, seems to give me synchronizing issues. 60fps games (like Mario Kart) run fine but when i run a 30fps game (like Mario Sunshine) i’m getting slowdown/audio crackling after playing for 20 seconds or so. The game will continue to run with crackling audio and slower frame rate until i bring up the RetroArch menu. The moment i resume, the game clears up and runs fine… for about 20 seconds. Then starts to crackle again.
Obviously, the core can’t keep up with this monitor in the same way the standalone Dolphin can. Every other core doesn’t seem to have this issue either. Everything moves and sounds smoothly since i have “sync with exact refresh rate” enabled (it’s a freesync monitor). It’s only the dolphin core that has problems.
Now, i tried disabling “sync with exact refresh rate” and that fixes the crackling/slowdown issues. But that makes all games run like crap since they don’t sync with the screen anymore and that makes the framerate/frame pacing uneven.
I also tried other things. Disabling/enabling windowed fullscreen, GPU sync, Vsync, frame delay, etc. Tried every option that had anything to do with synchronization but no dice. So i ended up using the standalone instead.
I wonder why does this core have these issues. Usually, other standalone emulators have sync problems on fast monitors like this but in RetroArch, these issues are eliminated. With Dolphin it’s the opposite (standalone is fine, RetroArch has sync issues).