Hello. First time poster, long time user. Since no one seems to be discussing this directly, I'd like to at least see some thread dedicated to it.
It seems that, since Mid March, the latest revisions of Dolphin have undergone a major revamp in the graphics rendering department. Quite frankly, i find the new results to be very positive and encouraging. For those who haven't caught on, read the post on the main page about the new Pixel Processing methods. Overall, this revamp has done wonders to fix numerous glitches. This, combined with other revisions has, in my experience, changed the nature of what is now possible with this emulator. Overall? I greatly applaud the improvements.
Furthermore, thanks to recent less discussed revisions in the emulator (seemingly having something to do with the asynchronous sound debate? I'm not entirely sure) Zelda Ucode compatability in HLE emulation now seems far, far less glitchy. This, almost by default, has seemingly reduced the CPU requirements of many popular titles to some extent since now HLE emulation can play them (not perfectly) but smoothly enough. Being able to play Mario Galaxy 2 with audio in HLE at full speed is an impressive and shocking addition... though I have yet to test if the grand star crash still happens. I suppose these are two unrelated improvements, but I still felt it important enough to call out both.
With the tradeoff of the latter, I have however noticed a sudden and unexpected performance change in the former. I do not wish to address this issue as a way of complaining, I merely wish to discuss how the community should approach these changes and new requirements and what those of us who wish to cater future hardware toward's dolphin's optimum performance should consider.
Simply put...
Because of the offloading of graphical workarounds and the increased GPU tasking, Dolphin is now a GPU taxing beast for the first time in years. I now find my less than 2 year old GPUs now struggling to run titles that were previously not bottlenecked. Twilight Princess now struggles to hit proper framerates in even more basic areas (not just the Hyrule Field) at 1080p with a 2 year old Nvidia GPU, and despite what the post implies, this framedrop now seemingly occurs in both OpenGL and Direct3D modes. I suppose there could be CPU requirements I could be overlooking, (as that is certainly what plagued Hyrule Field), but I suspect it's more the results of the increased GPU processing. I'm also noticing what seems to be an increase in GPU demand for the Prime games (notably trilogy 1-2 and regular 3).
Is this trend going to continue? Should we start encouraging users to purchase AMD GPU/Nvidia CPU combos for maximum performance? Are users like myself with less than a GTX 780 now effectively boned on some titles? (GPUs are easier to upgrade than CPUs, so I'm not as miffed as you'd think). If we prefer NVIDIA GPUs, will something like the future GTX 860 have better integer calculation, or is that only a premium we can expect in x80 price level cards and above? I am not necessarily complaining, just curious. In essence, does Dolphin now require 400$+ GPUs to get full speed at 3xIR+? Or will this 'truly' be optimized over time? If not, what AMD alternatives now work best with Dolphin?
Again, this is not a blanket criticism stating MAKE IT FASTER like some tend to do. I merely want to bring to attention the fact that it may be time to change the nature of how we discuss Dolphin's future hardware demands (slightly less CPU demand, heavier GPU demand). I'm also very interested in hearing how the new revision is working for other users.
It seems that, since Mid March, the latest revisions of Dolphin have undergone a major revamp in the graphics rendering department. Quite frankly, i find the new results to be very positive and encouraging. For those who haven't caught on, read the post on the main page about the new Pixel Processing methods. Overall, this revamp has done wonders to fix numerous glitches. This, combined with other revisions has, in my experience, changed the nature of what is now possible with this emulator. Overall? I greatly applaud the improvements.
Furthermore, thanks to recent less discussed revisions in the emulator (seemingly having something to do with the asynchronous sound debate? I'm not entirely sure) Zelda Ucode compatability in HLE emulation now seems far, far less glitchy. This, almost by default, has seemingly reduced the CPU requirements of many popular titles to some extent since now HLE emulation can play them (not perfectly) but smoothly enough. Being able to play Mario Galaxy 2 with audio in HLE at full speed is an impressive and shocking addition... though I have yet to test if the grand star crash still happens. I suppose these are two unrelated improvements, but I still felt it important enough to call out both.
With the tradeoff of the latter, I have however noticed a sudden and unexpected performance change in the former. I do not wish to address this issue as a way of complaining, I merely wish to discuss how the community should approach these changes and new requirements and what those of us who wish to cater future hardware toward's dolphin's optimum performance should consider.
Simply put...
Because of the offloading of graphical workarounds and the increased GPU tasking, Dolphin is now a GPU taxing beast for the first time in years. I now find my less than 2 year old GPUs now struggling to run titles that were previously not bottlenecked. Twilight Princess now struggles to hit proper framerates in even more basic areas (not just the Hyrule Field) at 1080p with a 2 year old Nvidia GPU, and despite what the post implies, this framedrop now seemingly occurs in both OpenGL and Direct3D modes. I suppose there could be CPU requirements I could be overlooking, (as that is certainly what plagued Hyrule Field), but I suspect it's more the results of the increased GPU processing. I'm also noticing what seems to be an increase in GPU demand for the Prime games (notably trilogy 1-2 and regular 3).
Is this trend going to continue? Should we start encouraging users to purchase AMD GPU/Nvidia CPU combos for maximum performance? Are users like myself with less than a GTX 780 now effectively boned on some titles? (GPUs are easier to upgrade than CPUs, so I'm not as miffed as you'd think). If we prefer NVIDIA GPUs, will something like the future GTX 860 have better integer calculation, or is that only a premium we can expect in x80 price level cards and above? I am not necessarily complaining, just curious. In essence, does Dolphin now require 400$+ GPUs to get full speed at 3xIR+? Or will this 'truly' be optimized over time? If not, what AMD alternatives now work best with Dolphin?
Again, this is not a blanket criticism stating MAKE IT FASTER like some tend to do. I merely want to bring to attention the fact that it may be time to change the nature of how we discuss Dolphin's future hardware demands (slightly less CPU demand, heavier GPU demand). I'm also very interested in hearing how the new revision is working for other users.