Configuration Guide

From Dolphin Emulator Wiki
Revision as of 14:25, 1 October 2011 by DEnigma (talk | contribs) (→‎Config)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Configuring Dolphin the right way is very important to run games smoothly. This performance guide will show a "quick and dirty" example of how to speed up Dolphin. There is also a guide offering a Configuration Explanation. Open Dolphin and there are three configuration related buttons: Config, Graphics and DSP, which will open the options described below.

Config

File:Dolphin emulator config.png

Apply the following settings:

  • Enabled Dual Core - if your CPU supports it. Note: some games don't work with it.
  • Enable Idle Skipping.
  • If you use a processor with Hyper Threading, enabling "Lock Threads to Core" may give a small speedup.

File:Dolphin emulator configuration plugins.png File:Dolphin emulator configuration general.png

Graphics

File:Dolphin emulator graphics.png

  • From the three backends available, Direct3D9 is the fastest and most reliable back end available, OpenGL are the most accurate and Direct3D11 are somewhat between these two, remember also that OpenGL is the only backend available on Linux and Mac. It is recommended you use Direct3D9 unless you encounter problems.
  • Setting the "Fullscreen resolution" to your monitors native display resolution is recommended. However, a lower "Fullscreen resolution" may boost performance for users with inferior graphics cards. Also, if your monitor have an aspect ratio of 16:10 or 5:4, you need to enable "Crop" on Advanced tab to remove the black borders.
  • Set Internal Resolution to "Auto - (Multiple of 640x528)". If the emulation suffers from slowdowns, change it to "1x Native (640x528)" or lower, and go up from there until you can find the highest setting without slowdown.
  • Checking "Skip EFB Access from CPU" can provide a speed boost. However, some games like Super Mario Galaxy require this to be unchecked to function properly.
  • Make sure that "EFB Copies" are set to "Texture", and change them to "RAM" only when running a game that require it. You can also "Enable cache" when using EFB to RAM to gain a small speedup.
  • If you have a CPU with more than two cores, enabling "OpenMP Texture Decoder" might result in a speedup.

File:Dolphin emulator graphics plugin properties direct3d.png File:Dolphin emulator graphics plugin properties direct3d enhancements.png

File:Dolphin emulator graphics plugin hack.png File:Dolphin emulator graphics plugin properties advanced.png

DSP

File:Dolphin emulator dsp.png

  • DSP HLE emulation is the fastest DSP Emulator Engine, however it is somewhat unreliable. DSP LLE recompiler is more accurate and is required by some games, but also require a DSP dump to be placed at "Sys\GC" folder.
  • On Windows, XAudio2 backend are currently the best one because it provides some improvements in relation to DirectSound, but some games may have sound issues with it (the same apply for the ALSA backend on Linux).

File:Dolphin emulator dsp hle plugin settings.png

The Gamespeed is too fast!

Some games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl run on modern Systems too fast. There are three ways to slow the Gamespeed down to normal:

  • Framelimit Auto + Audio Throttle checked (recommended)
  • Framelimit Off + Audio Throttle checked
  • Framelimit Auto + Audio Throttle unchecked
  • Framelimit Off + Audio Throttle unchecked, Enable V-Sync (with a 60htz monitor refresh rate)

How can I play in 720p or 1080p?

To play in 720p go to "Graphics -> General" and change the Fullscreen resolution to 1280x720. For 1080p simply choose 1920x1080.