Gamecube Dolphin Low FPS

[NostalgicGamer]

Alright I've seen a lot of threads about this so sorry to make another one but I feel this is different enough for a new thread ^^.

The game I've been working with is SSBM and in menus and light gameplay I get 50-60 FPS which looks good, but during gameplay it can dip to 15-30 FPS and can really hinder gameplay. Based on some other problems I've seen (5-10 FPS) I know this may be nitpicky, but I feel like my system should be able to handle gamecube games...

So first here are my settings, most of these are copied from this page http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/performance.htmll.

Spoiler warning:

I tried tweaking a few but few of them made any difference (also "Skip GC Bios" seems to check itself each time, even if I uncheck it, though I'm not very concerned about that).

I have directX 11, but when choosing "Direct3D 11" instead of "OpenGL" I get this error: "Failed to load d3dx11_42.dll, update your DX11 runtime, please"
I have updated DirectX 11, and also I have several games that use DirectX 11 without any problem.

System Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.00 GHz
Ram: 3 GB
Windows 7 64 bit
nVidia GeForce 8800 GT


Will spending time getting DirectX 11 to work help any? Are there other emulators that produce better results?

Thanks! And I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place, please move if need be.

[Kouen Hasuki]

DirectX11 to me feels like the fastest BUT as far as I remember your 8800GT is DX10 (My HD4870 is DirectX10.1 and Is compatible somewhat with DirectX11 Modes) So im not sure if that could be the reason for it as you are on Windows 7.
It might also be worth you trying the latest DirectX Redist Version of a DirectX release Rather than the Web Installer, I Always find even after the web installer the Redist always seems to find more updates.

Failing that OpenGL is the worst for speed however, Try DirectX 9

[NostalgicGamer]

Ohhh, ok I feel dumb, yea my card does not support DirectX 11. And directX 9 does work now even though it wasn't working before, but the framerate for OpenGL and DirectX 9 is about the same. So is this the best that dolphin can do? or are my computer specs holding it back? I find it hard to believe that my specs can't handle gamecube games.

[Gare]

D3D9 plugin tends to run faster than OpenGL, I think. Other than that, your settings look okay. "Enable EFB copy To Texture" gives the most noticable FPS increase, but you already have that enabled. You might also try unticking stuff like Native Mipmaps. There's also Disable Fog and Disable Lighting, but I wouldn't expect much from those. Try ticking Lock Threads to cores and DSP LLE on thread and see what happens.

In any case, try experimenting a bit - try the game on both the latest SVN build and some older ones as well. Or even the official 2.0 one. Lastly, skim through this thread and see if you find anything helpful. Although I suspect that your CPU might be the bottleneck here.

[drag0nbus7er]

try going to DSP under under the configure button and disable audio throttling, i had to do that in order to get ssbm working on my pc, doesnt work for all games but it does work for it.