Emulation Cemu and XCX not running as good as I heard.

Xalphenos · Feb 1, 2017

@Williamh695 Very nice discovery. I just tried it out and it makes a world of difference for XCX. I never had the bad fps that the OP of this thread had but after getting into NLA a little I decided the fps dips were frequent enough for me to call the game currently unplayable. I found some videos of XCX on youtube and there was one where a guy had an overclocked haswell i5 and was getting the same dips to 16 fps in NLA. Overall his cpu did fair better than mine but with the same dips I pretty much figured CEMU was the limiting factor here.

But wow what a difference that setting made. I definitely consider the game playable now. I ran through the same area around the BLADE tower with both the setting on and off. Each time I ran around the tower once to make sure nothing needed caching. Then I started the benchmark and ran around it again. Here are the results as recorded by fraps. All settings normal except 4k graphics pack is enabled.

2017-02-01 17:22:25 - Cemu
Frames: 2511 - Time: 106954ms - Avg: 23.477 - Min: 16 - Max: 31

2017-02-01 17:29:34 - Cemu
Frames: 2452 - Time: 86015ms - Avg: 28.507 - Min: 24 - Max: 32

I tried to make the runs the same both times but obviously I'm human. I remember running into a fence on one run. But I still consider the results to be quite valid. Obviously the game feels much better with a min fps of 24 as opposed to 16. Not bad for our "Prehistorical" CPUs eh?

@crimsonedge11 If you're still reading this. I noticed a while back that you have 12gb of ram. An odd amount for a sandybridge platform. I'm guessing 2x4gb and 2x2gb? This is completely anecdotal but I've read several people say that Sandybridge had a weak memory controller and that it was far better to only run one channel(2 modules) instead of both channels(all 4 modules). I would try removing the lower set of ram here, ensure that your best set is running in dual channel and try running the game again. Just a thought. Your results are just too far away from mine and even from williamh695s non overclocked cpu.

stelvia · Feb 10, 2017

host based or cycle based ?

your CPU - is good enough -- at least better then mine (Phenom II X4 Ghz) .. but i have more less stable 18 fps

crimsonedge11 · Feb 12, 2017

Xalphenos said:
@Williamh695 Very nice discovery. I just tried it out and it makes a world of difference for XCX. I never had the bad fps that the OP of this thread had but after getting into NLA a little I decided the fps dips were frequent enough for me to call the game currently unplayable. I found some videos of XCX on youtube and there was one where a guy had an overclocked haswell i5 and was getting the same dips to 16 fps in NLA. Overall his cpu did fair better than mine but with the same dips I pretty much figured CEMU was the limiting factor here.

Unfortunately his fix for thread optimization won't work for me. I can't find a similar setting in AMD control panel.

@crimsonedge11 If you're still reading this. I noticed a while back that you have 12gb of ram. An odd amount for a sandybridge platform. I'm guessing 2x4gb and 2x2gb? This is completely anecdotal but I've read several people say that Sandybridge had a weak memory controller and that it was far better to only run one channel(2 modules) instead of both channels(all 4 modules). I would try removing the lower set of ram here, ensure that your best set is running in dual channel and try running the game again. Just a thought. Your results are just too far away from mine and even from williamh695s non overclocked cpu.

I used to have 16gbs of ram, (4x4, now it's 3x4) and one stick of ram went bad, and I had to remove it. There is nothing wrong with the 12GBs that's left. It's been thoroughly tested for stability. I'm not getting any performance issues in any other games. Cemu is the only program I'm getting below average performance in. So I'm not even going to entertain the possibility that it's anything that's not Cemu related.

The motherboard I got is a mid-high end motherboard for Sandy Bridge, It's a Gigabyte Z68x UD4 B3 model, it was around $150, and I've never had any memory controller related issues with running 12-16gbs of ram.

I was having an issue with Citra (3DS emulator) for weeks. The problem ended up being a glitchy config file, that was caused by Vsynch. Disabling Vsynch wasn't actually disabling it in the config file, and I had to basically disable everything + Vsynch to get Vsynch to disable. And then re-enable everything except for Vsynch, and my FPS doubled. I'm thinking it's a likely possibility something screwy is going on here with Cemu that would explain my lower performance gains. Unfortunately I don't know of anything else I can do in Cemu.

1.7.1 didn't fix the problem. The performance is actually worse. And the over-bright texture issue is still present. Game is still unplayable FPS wise, and the brightness makes it unplayable even if the FPS was pegged @ 30fps. Frame rate aside, unless there is a fix for the brightness, the game will never be in a playable state IMO. It's literally so bright, that I can't see anything 10 feet in front of me during certain times. Complete white-out.

crimsonedge11 · Feb 12, 2017

Unplayable. 13-15fps is about average running around in this general area. With the worst dips being 8-9fps. The brightness actually gets even way worse than what you see in the screenshot, at least 3x this bad in the worst spots. I even tried setting the priority of Cemu to "real time" to see if that made any difference, and that only improved things by like a fraction of a frame on average. Not even 1 full fps. Maybe like 0.3-0.5fps.

FYI, I officially give up trying to make this emulator run decent. No further comments are necessary, I'm not even gonna read any more comments. if you're in my shoes there is no fix.

Xalphenos · Feb 13, 2017

crimsonedge11 said:
Unfortunately his fix for thread optimization won't work for me. I can't find a similar setting in AMD control panel.

Yeah I looked into this and discovered AMD has no similar option in catalyst. I recently ordered a rx470 for my family computer. I was pretty bummed when I found out they didn't have this feature. Oh well I knew what I was getting into when I decided to get the rx 470. From my research it seems "Threaded Optimization" is an opengl thing and well AMD sucks at opengl. I still love you though AMD.

crimsonedge11 said:
I used to have 16gbs of ram, (4x4, now it's 3x4) and one stick of ram went bad, and I had to remove it. There is nothing wrong with the 12GBs that's left. It's been thoroughly tested for stability. I'm not getting any performance issues in any other games. Cemu is the only program I'm getting below average performance in. So I'm not even going to entertain the possibility that it's anything that's not Cemu related.

The motherboard I got is a mid-high end motherboard for Sandy Bridge, It's a Gigabyte Z68x UD4 B3 model, it was around $150, and I've never had any memory controller related issues with running 12-16gbs of ram.

I was having an issue with Citra (3DS emulator) for weeks. The problem ended up being a glitchy config file, that was caused by Vsynch. Disabling Vsynch wasn't actually disabling it in the config file, and I had to basically disable everything + Vsynch to get Vsynch to disable. And then re-enable everything except for Vsynch, and my FPS doubled. I'm thinking it's a likely possibility something screwy is going on here with Cemu that would explain my lower performance gains. Unfortunately I don't know of anything else I can do in Cemu.

I've got an older board actually. MSI P67A-GD55 (B3) So just after the sata chipset problem was solved but before the z series chipsets came out. Bringing up stress tests or other games is really meaningless to emulator performance. Emulators like Dolphin and Cemu just don't behave like regular pc games. Even if the problem is CEMU then it's a problem CEMU has with your setup. If you're not willing to troublshoot it then there is pretty much nothing anyone on the forums can do to help. Cemu doesn't have much in the way of configurable options so the idea that it may be a glitched config file seems incredibly unlikely. Deleting all your cemu stuff and extracting a fresh copy of it should fix the issue if it was.

crimsonedge11 said:
1.7.1 didn't fix the problem. The performance is actually worse. And the over-bright texture issue is still present. Game is still unplayable FPS wise, and the brightness makes it unplayable even if the FPS was pegged @ 30fps. Frame rate aside, unless there is a fix for the brightness, the game will never be in a playable state IMO. It's literally so bright, that I can't see anything 10 feet in front of me during certain times. Complete white-out.

Yeah several people in the cemu release thread also reported lower fps. Not sure what the issue is since others still reported better fps. Maybe it has something to do with BMI extensions. I know BMI didn't come out until Haswell and that Dolphin can use BMI. I know what BMI does and can hypothesize how that can impact performance however I've no idea if that is whats going on here. Thankfully, possibly due to Threaded Optimization, My performance in the game remains the same.

I'm not sure about the overly bright textures. I initially had this problem as well. Along with purple night textures and some weird flickery textures. All those problems went away when I downloaded a complete shader cache from redit. I just removed my shader cache though and couldn't reproduce my initial problems. I don't recall upgrading my gpu drivers since I first started playing but perhaps I did. I'm still not on the latest nvidia drivers though. Anyway I'll pm you my shader cache for this game and see if that fixes your overly bright problems. I doubt it would fix your fps problems though and since you seem unwilling to attempt any changes on your end you'll probably be stuck with low fps until whatever cemu doesn't like about your setup gets fixed by happenstance.

EDIT:

crimsonedge11 said:
Unplayable. 13-15fps is about average running around in this general area. With the worst dips being 8-9fps. The brightness actually gets even way worse than what you see in the screenshot, at least 3x this bad in the worst spots. I even tried setting the priority of Cemu to "real time" to see if that made any difference, and that only improved things by like a fraction of a frame on average. Not even 1 full fps. Maybe like 0.3-0.5fps.

FYI, I officially give up trying to make this emulator run decent. No further comments are necessary, I'm not even gonna read any more comments. if you're in my shoes there is no fix.

I walked away for a few hours and made the rookie mistake of not refreshing before posting. Oh well if that's how you feel about it's your right.

To anyone reading this in the future Crimsonedge11's performance is completely abnormal for his setup. His Sandy Bridge i5 performs worse than an amd FX series and based on some posts worse than a phenom II. I do kind of agree though. No further comments are really necessary. The game runs fine on older sandy bridge cpus. If your lucky enough to have "threaded optimization" on your gpu then the game runs pretty close to perfect. Probably about as perfect as these old cpus are going to get.

FloatingFatMan · Feb 13, 2017

Don't give up so easily. For AMD users, the bloom issue is a known problem and can be helped somewhat with the following graphics pack.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/5pt7zs/rejoice_amd_users_a_fix_for_the_blinding_bloom/

I use it and it really does help a lot. As for the frame rates, I have an RX480 and also get really bad framerates, so you're not alone in this. I think a large part of the problem isn't so much that the drivers themselves are bad, but more that Exzap is an Nvidia owner and isn't as familiar with AMD cards. Hopefully, things will get better in time.

Remember, it's still very early days in Cemu's life. I don't think many emulators have been this far along at this stage in their lives before. Exzap & Petergov have done an astonishing job in so short a time.

stelvia · Feb 13, 2017

mangotowel said:
Theres an option somewhere (havnt used cemu in awhile) that sets the graphics render lower from medium. It gives huge performance boost with barely noticeable changes. (yea can't even go over 24 fps unless i change that if i remember correctly, and tats with a gtx 1070)

i noticed it also .. actually best for me was even - option High . .it's faster for 3-4 fps compare to option Fast

crimsonedge11 · Feb 13, 2017

If threaded optimization is that huge of a performance boost (200-250%+), then that's not my PC, that's because the devs didn't properly use my hardware. This is why I still say it's Cemu related. Optimization issues with regards to the program are not correct to blame on the end user.

I would donate to their project, but I remember reading remarks where the Cemu devs have acted like they're not interested in optimizing for AMD. If they make improvements for AMD users, like fix this massive performance gap, then I might consider donating $40-$50 to their project.

I don't remember if this project is open source or not, but if it is, all we need is 1 person who knows AMD to take a look and fix this. If the project isn't open source, then it needs to be for this reason.

An issue like this is something that could be fixed by 1 person who knows what they're doing. Just because threaded optimization isn't an option in AMD control panel doesn't mean AMD doesn't use something similar. In this case, Cemu isn't using it.

Dolphin runs just fine on AMD cards. I don't recall having any issues with Dolphin + AMD. At least not since 3.0 or higher. Every game ran full speed since 3.0.

Xalphenos · Feb 13, 2017

Your math is way off there. Threaded optimization based on my numbers yields a 40% increase in min FPS and a ~20%fps in average. And this is uniquely an XCX thing. Any other game i've played the percentage boost is minimal to non existent. Or not FPS related at all.

Well with what FloatingFatMan says we can lay this to rest. The problem is the AMD cards. It's unfortunate but there is nothing you can do short of getting a new gpu.

Yeah CEMU is closed source so I'm cautiously hopeful this will get fixed eventually but I'm not holding my breath. Like I said I picked up an rx 470 for my other rig and was hoping to play some cemu on it. I guess not.

Dolphin, even at 3.0, was quite a bit further along then cemu is now. It's really amazing games are running at all right now. Literally jaw dropping that some of them are fully playable at relatively perfect FPS. It seems like those of us with AMD cards are just going to have to wait for better performance. Or maybe williamh695 will drop another nugget of info on us.

Williamh695 said:
Then why is mine running great now? I think my processor great. More then enough to run everything I need. Now it runs CemU just fine with my non NVIDIA gpu. I was just testing, I can run it at 1080 but not 4k.

GITech · Feb 19, 2017

That link to Cemu compatibility and performance is great. Thanks for that!

I run Cemu from a RamDisk. This definitely helps for XCX as it has to load soooo many shaders constantly as you move around. I've explained exactly how and also a bunch of info on how to get better performance in one of the threads that is linked to in this thread: http://gbatemp.net/threads/massive-...haders-cemu-rescalc-mods-reshade-perf.461627/

There's all 4 of my threads about XCX in Cemu. You should be able to find everything you're looking for within them!

Enjoy!

Xalphenos · Feb 24, 2017

Just wanted to drop by this old thread and post up the performance increases with the latest version(1.7.2c).

My testing was the same as last time; two runs around the blade tower, benchmark on the second run. FPS recorded via Fraps.

Nvidia Threaded Optimization On:
2017-02-24 17:19:07 - Cemu
Frames: 2366 - Time: 80297ms - Avg: 29.466 - Min: 25 - Max: 32

Nvidia Threaded Optimization Off:
2017-02-24 17:24:44 - Cemu
Frames: 2229 - Time: 77625ms - Avg: 28.715 - Min: 23 - Max: 31

Cemu Development has really narrowed the gap. In comparison to 1.7.0, since I didn't test 1.7.1; Threaded optimization only gives a 2.6% performance boost in Avg FPS, down from 20%, and an 8.33% boost in min FPS, down from 40%.
1.7.2 without Threaded Optimization is now nearly spot on performance wise with 1.7.0 with Threaded Optimization. So without threaded optimization 1.7.2 has seen a boost of 20.072% in Avg FPS and 35.8974% in Min FPS over 1.7.0.

Any of you AMD GPU guys experience any performance boost on the latest build? I still haven't set up my rx 470 for testing.

My Specs for comparison:
i5-2500k @ 4.5ghz
16gb 2133mhz Ram
GTX 1070
Windows 10 x64

Emulation Cemu and XCX not running as good as I heard.

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