Homebrew Question Improve gamecube emulation performance?

HBubli

Well-Known Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
Oct 30, 2020
Messages
88
Trophies
0
Age
24
XP
341
Country
Germany
I am using lakka and tried to play super smash bros melee with the dolphin emulator. I overclocked the switch to the maximum safe clock and its still lagging. Any tips or options i can change to improve performance?
 

GothicIII

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
831
Trophies
0
Age
36
XP
2,235
Country
Gambia, The
What do you expect? The Switch is from a technical standpoint a complete potato.
It needs to emulate a powerpc architecture on ARM. This is a very hard task and without insane gamespecific speedhacks it never will reach fullspeed GC emulation even on native resolution.
 
  • Like
Reactions: HBubli

bad361

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2018
Messages
1,168
Trophies
0
Location
Moscow
XP
2,447
Country
Russia
I am using lakka and tried to play super smash bros melee with the dolphin emulator. I overclocked the switch to the maximum safe clock and its still lagging. Any tips or options i can change to improve performance?
Tweak the Emulated CPU Clock Speed setting. Try finding the right balance between fullspeed and the playability. Lowering CPU clock speed basically makes the game run fullspeed at a lower framerate. For example Simpsons Hit and Run is not fullspeed at 100% clock speed and full OC (cause it runs at 60fps natively which is a lot for switch to handle), it has lots of slowdowns and stutters, but if you lower the cpu clock speed to 30-40% the game becomes fullspeed but at 30fps (still very playable). Same happens with a lot of games, PoP Warrior Within and Two Thrones, Crash Tag Team Racing etc. Sometimes you need to lower it down just to 80-90% to get rid of slowdowns and stutters. The only downside is that all the cutscenes will be at a lower framerate too. Iirc SSBM needs 80% cpu clock for "fullspeed".

...but yeah, if you want better GC emulation, you are better off getting some recent 150$ Android phone which will probably have more powerful cpu than Switch.
 
Last edited by bad361,

HBubli

Well-Known Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
Oct 30, 2020
Messages
88
Trophies
0
Age
24
XP
341
Country
Germany
Tweak the Emulated CPU Clock Speed setting. Try finding the right balance between fullspeed and the playability. Lowering CPU clock speed basically makes the game run fullspeed at a lower framerate. For example Simpsons Hit and Run is not fullspeed at 100% clock speed and full OC (cause it runs at 60fps natively which is a lot for switch to handle), it has lots of slowdowns and stutters, but if you lower the cpu clock speed to 30-40% the game becomes fullspeed but at 30fps (still very playable). Same happens with a lot of games, PoP Warrior Within and Two Thrones, Crash Tag Team Racing etc. Sometimes you need to lower it down just to 80-90% to get rid of slowdowns and stutters. The only downside is that all the cutscenes will be at a lower framerate too. Iirc SSBM needs 80% cpu clock for "fullspeed".

...but yeah, if you want better GC emulation, you are better off getting some recent 150$ Android phone which will probably have more powerful cpu than Switch.
Thank you!
 

The Real Jdbye

*is birb*
Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
23,328
Trophies
4
Location
Space
XP
13,904
Country
Norway
I am using lakka and tried to play super smash bros melee with the dolphin emulator. I overclocked the switch to the maximum safe clock and its still lagging. Any tips or options i can change to improve performance?
For the best performance usually you'll set the emulated CPU clock override to 40% and leave it there. In my testing any higher led to more audio issues (crackling, stuttering) and any less negatively impacted framerate. Some games are just nowhere near running at what I would consider playable performance even with that, and Melee is one of those games. F-Zero GX is another. And pretty much every Wii game I tried save for Super Paper Mario was also unplayably slow.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dracari and HBubli

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • Xdqwerty
    what are you looking at?
  • BakerMan
    I rather enjoy a life of taking it easy. I haven't reached that life yet though.
    Xdqwerty @ Xdqwerty: sigh