Homebrew How do I make Citra run fast?

[Gameboyandwatch]

When I try to run games with Citra it's laggy af. What do I do to make it stop lagging so badly?

EDIT: Here are my specs:

https://gyazo.com/2374f140d62804148e336553f9faf16d

 

[mashers]

The performance of an emulator depends on the resources in the host computer. Try closing as much software as possible to free up some memory. If it's still laggy then you might need to upgrade your computer to get it to work better.

 

[Gameboyandwatch]

The performance of an emulator depends on the resources in the host computer. Try closing as much software as possible to free up some memory. If it's still laggy then you might need to upgrade your computer to get it to work better.

Damn it. I thought it was just the beta emulator. What would I have to upgrade to make my computer smoothly run Citra?

 

[Clector]

It runs from Interpreter so it it"s going to be slow even with a very powerful PC in most of games, you need to wait until a Recompiler is implemented to have games running at a near full speed.

 

[mashers]

Damn it. I thought it was just the beta emulator. What would I have to upgrade to make my computer smoothly run Citra?

Depends what the configuration is now. But in general, a faster CPU, more RAM and a better graphics card will improve the performance of an emulator. From what @Clector has said, there may be a limit to what is achievable with this software at present.

 

[Joom]

Yeah, that i3 there is your bottleneck. I'm also going to assume you have integrated graphics. Both of these things really aren't good for emulating any sort of 3D games. And as mentioned above, a recompiler is really needed for this emulator. Also, product ID ≠ license key. Just saying.

 

[mashers]

I've never used Windows 10, but if I had to guess I'd say it's probably quite a 'heavy' OS using lots of resources. You could try a more lightweight OS for running Citra and see if it performs better under those conditions.

Not wanting to start an OS war. I'm just basing this on previous versions of Windows... Happy to be proven wrong though

 

[Joom]

Eh, I'd say 10 and 7 are roughly in the same ballpark, with 10 being less of a resource hog due to the lack of Aero compositing. OP could disable some desktop 3D effects, but I doubt it'd help much.

 

[mashers]

Eh, I'd say 10 and 7 are roughly in the same ballpark, with 10 being less of a resource hog due to the lack of Aero compositing. OP could disable some desktop 3D effects, but I doubt it'd help much.

Do you think that running under a lightweight Linux distro could help? Just out of curiosity. I've never used Citra except for testing Gridlauncher on my Mac, never for games.

 

[Joom]

Do you think that running under a lightweight Linux distro could help? Just out of curiosity. I've never used Citra except for testing Gridlauncher on my Mac, never for games.

No clue. It all depends on the video rendering backend Citra uses on Windows, which would be guaranteed to either be OpenGL or software rendering on Linux. If it uses DirectX on Windows, it wouldn't really be an even way to tell which is better.

 

[Davidosky99]

From your specs that i3 and those (insufficient) 4 GB of RAM are definitely a bottleneck. Damn in my laptop which has an i5 and 8 GB of ram it barely runs and it has an nvidia graphics card(2 GB). On my i7 desktop it runs flawlessy btw. Thing is for things like this that arent optimized you need loads of power

 

[orangy57]

I've never used Windows 10, but if I had to guess I'd say it's probably quite a 'heavy' OS using lots of resources. You could try a more lightweight OS for running Citra and see if it performs better under those conditions.

Not wanting to start an OS war. I'm just basing this on previous versions of Windows... Happy to be proven wrong though

Windows 10 actually has better performance than all other versions of Windows, but I'm not sure about Windows Vs. Linux.

 

[Delrik]

So I have figured out a way to have way better performance with no problems. If you go into C:\Users\(yourname)\Desktop\Citra\Citra Imagicarts.com Version 2\Citra Imagicarts.com Version 2\user\config and then open the qt-config.ini file up and go down to frame skip, change "0" to "1". This will make your frames double and performance will skyrocket. Now to solve the problem you have created... Double speed game frame rates. Download Dxtory and you can select Citra head and limit the fps to 30, and it will technically be 60. make sure v-sync is off in the Citra settings, and if you have Nvidia Control panel or AMD, turn of V-sync off for Citra and make it so you have high performance if you still have lag issues. And that will solve all the issues

 

[chahina]

open the qt-config.ini file up and go down to frame skip, change "0" to "1".

I couldn't find this property inside the specific file you mentioned, any clues?
I am using Citra Bleeding Edge|Head-6530c71

 

[Cyanoide]

Frameskip as been retired from qt-config.ini so you can't change it now...

My computer's config is : i7 7700HQ, nvidia GTX1060 and 8Gb RAM but the emulator is still laggy : ~60% speed on every game I play...

 

[Deleted member 423843]

Try custom builds or some dev builds, may be faster

 

[BARNWEY]

Windows 10 actually has better performance than all other versions of Windows, but I'm not sure about Windows Vs. Linux.

Windows typically gets better test results in benchmarks and is faster in gaming, but Linux is faster for computing due to how lightweight it can be...

 

[Joom]

Windows typically gets better test results in benchmarks and is faster in gaming, but Linux is faster for computing due to how lightweight it can be...

Depends on the game. If something is properly optimized for OpenGL it blows DirectX out of the water.

 

[BARNWEY]

Depends on the game. If something is properly optimized for OpenGL it blows DirectX out of the water.

Yeah, but sadly most developers don't like to take the time

If stuff was properly optimized for OpenGL, Windows 10 would definitely get replaced by Zorin as my host OS....

 

[CadenKiss]

The frameskip is back for me, and I was having the same problem so ill see if the frame skip fixes it.