Need Dolphin core general performance tips

General
#1

I’ve been a user of regular Dolphin for a long time and can run games effortlessly on my current setup. However, I’m trying to use the Retroarch dolphin core to play Samurai Shodown Anthology with Retroarch’s CRT shaders, and the performance in-game is not quite full speed.

This is a bit puzzling because I’m running the game at 1X internal resolution, while I can run it at 6X on the regular build without breaking sweat.

Are there any basic performance settings for the dolphin core I should consider?

#2

The biggest difference for me when using the Dolphin core, was setting stand-alone Dolphin exactly how I wanted it, and then copying it’s User and System folders over the ones RetroArch created.

Since that, I’ve not touched stand-alone. I get Gamecube bootup logos, and outside of some WiiWare titles, everything seems to work great.

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#3

Thanks. I did experiment with individual settings but that is definitely worth a try. I’ll check and see.

#4

Well, it did not make any difference in the end. Ironically, this is a 2D game which doesn’t require that much power to run. Oh well.

#5

Last thing on this: it actually runs better with D3D11 but then the slang shaders only show a black screen, and no other shaders are available.

#6

You can try this. Go to Video>Fullscreen Mode, and make sure to enable “Start in Fullscreen Mode”, and disable “Windowed Fullscreen”

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#7

Thank you for the tip, although I am already set up that way. I will initiate a separate topic to inquire about slang shaders not working for me with D3D11.

#8

Not working for me. Resident evil, wiiware, several wii games are not working… just as an example.for me some configs are missing like gamecube controller in wiimode or shaking and IR functions for the remote

#9

I wonder if the issue is hardware-related in your case, or perhaps the rips need to be verified. The game does work for me but it won’t do shaders with D3D11.

#10

I have only verified redumps :smirk: And it is “port” related, as you can see in other threads

#11

On my 8 years old PC I played Mario Kart: Double Dash!! with good FPS. Now on my new PC the FPS decreased a lot, impossible to play.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
2x G Skill RipjawsV F4-3200C16-8GVKB (16GB)
Gigabyte RX 5500 XT OC 4G (GV-R55XTOC-4GD)
#12

The cause of the slowdown was the driver of my generic joystick. I uninstalled the “SPEEDLINK STRIKE Gamepad” driver and installed the “USB Network Joystick”.

Device Name: Generic   USB  Joystick
VID: 0079
PID: 0006

IMG_20200709_001824808
IMG_20200709_0018248084096×2304 1.6 MB

Driver: USB Network Joystick

2 Likes
#13

I’m experiencing very similar issues, also have similar hardware, although tried the core in a completely different computer and also noticed a huge performance difference.

It just feels as if the Dolphin core for Retroarch was a very old version of Dolphin. Have you been able to make it run better?

#14

I haven’t touched this in a long time, to be honest. I just settled for running it slightly under full speed. It runs full speed with DX11 but last I checked, I could not use slang shaders with it.

#15

I think that was actually fixed fairly recently. It was a problem with d3d11 hardware contexts not being compatible with shaders for some reason. I forget who fixed it, though. Anyway, you should give it another shot :slight_smile:

#16

I can get slang shaders to load just fine on nvidia cards using vulkan. If I use an AMD card I can only use slang shaders when using glcore, vulkan just keeps crashing and dx11 / 12 both have the black screen issue with shaders.

I wish this worked more consistently as I really prefer retroarch with shaders than just plain standalone dolphin :slight_smile: