Performance Guide

Foreword

Emulation is typically quite intensive, its very hard to run perfectly, and Prime Trilogy is one of the more intensive games to emulate on Dolphin.

Even after these steps your game may stutter from time to time. This usually gets better as you play the game, because even with Compile Shaders Before Starting enabled, Dolphin still does some shader work.

Ideal Hardware

The ideal CPU for Metroid Prime: Trilogy should reach 3GHz CPU clock speed or higher.

Your CPU should be an Intel i5 or newer, or an AMD Ryzen or newer.

Single Core performance is the most important for Dolphin. The majority of processing happens on your CPU, this means a good GPU helps but isn't as important.

Why is emulation so intensive?

What is the best hardware for Dolphin?

Contents

• Game Properties
• Graphics
  • General Tab
  • Enhancements Tab
  • Hacks Tab
  • Advanced Tab
  • PrimeHack GFX
• NVIDIA users

Game Properties

If you do not see your game in the list, please refer to this.

You can go to the Game Properties by right clicking your game and selecting Properties.

• Enable Dual Core allows for much better performance. This places some graphics processing on a new thread, but can cause visual glitches & desyncs. Ideally you want this on.
• Synchronize GPU thread causes a slowdown, but resolves many visual glitches. Ideally you want this off.
• Speed up Disc Transfer Rate makes doors open faster. May cause stutters when loading new rooms. This can be fixed by increasing the Emulated CPU clock speed to 150%, but it requires slightly stronger hardware. Some people prefer this to be off for the authentic slow door opening experience.
• DSP HLE (fast) overrides the audio engine (found in Config > Audio). HLE can give a significant performance increase but may be less stable/potentially poorer audio than LLE.

The other settings do not need to be on for Metroid Prime: Trilogy

Graphics

General

Backend

The video backend is very important for better performance.

• Direct3D12 is good for consistent high fps.
• Vulkan is good for high fps and works better than Direct3D12 on some hardware.
• Direct3D11 is good for stability and can solve some glitches.
• OpenGL is slower and sometimes has glitches.

Shader Compilation

Shader Compilation is a common cause for stuttering, especially when entering new rooms.

We recommend Hybrid(Asynchronous) Ubershaders.

If you have high-end strong GPU, Exclusive(Synchronous) Ubershaders can help even more with reducing stuttering at the cost of high GPU performance. (Warning: This is very performance heavy and only recommended if you have a very high-end GPU)

Compile Shaders Before Starting compiles the shaders when you start the game, rather than as you play the game. Compiling shaders blocks the CPU thread, thus causing stutters and slowdowns. The first time you run the game can take between 2-10 minutes however the next time you launch the game will be much faster as it only needs to do this once.

Enhancements

• Internal Resolution the higher this is, the better the game looks and the more performance is used. If you're suffering from low framerate, lower this to 720p or native.
• Anti-Aliasing on some systems this can cause a serious performance drop. Setting this to None makes no major impact on graphics.
• Anisotropic Filtering can make the game look better with very little hit on performance. Setting this to 16x will cause no problems for most systems.
• Scaled EFB Copy makes higher resolutions look better, this slightly increases the GPU load. Systems with a dedicated GPU will probably not notice any performance decrease.

Hacks

• Store EFB Copies to Texture Only increases performance in some areas and reduces the performance drop from various events like entering water. Without Auto Toggle EFB enabled this will break Scan Visor in Prime 2 and Prime 3.
• Ignore Format Changes gives a slight performance increase.
• Fast Depth Calculation gives a performance increase, but in rare cases may cause texture flickering.

Advanced

• Backend Multithreading gives a small performance increase for Vulkan.

PrimeHack GFX

• Auto Toggle EFB copies to Texture disables Store EFB Copies to Texture Only while the scan visor is active in Prime 2 and Prime 3.
• Disable Culling is a more intensive setting as it disables the normal culling the game does. This setting is automatically enabled on FoVs above 94.