Emulator

3D clocks??????

I think he is refering to the clock speed of the card, when workload is put in the
card "3d mode" kicks in and the clock speed in mhz is increased from its idle state.
Maybe the load of the emulator is not enough for the card to exit idle "2d mode".
The important question is, ¿how does the emulator run?
Use gpuz to monitor the clocks.

i think its an x2 issue. i have a 4870 and the clocks engage fine in both d3d and opengl

I have checked my nvidia GTX 275 and it stays at its idle 100 mhz clock rate, some
times it goes up to 300 mhz briefly , I think an x2 card has much more power at idle
to satisfy dolphin´s needs. Maybe if you use high levels of AA at high resolutions
you can tax the card enough to check that power states works when needed.
Whatever, I dont think that idle power states of gpu neither cpu are doplhin´s
responsability, thats a driver, hardware layer.

Thing is every game I have turns on 3d clocks when I go fullscreen, but it seems that
dolphin does not. If I compare performance 2d clocks to 3d there's a big jump : f
zero goes from around 30 fps to 49-55 and ssbb from 28-30 to near perfect 60.

What graphical settings are you using on dolphin?
Your problem sounds strange, but Maybe if you turn on 4x AA in dolphin D3D plugin,
the 3D clocks will kick on the GPU and will be forced to stay there (take note of the
performance impact).
I cant understand the performance hit in dolphin, as it´s easy on the GPU.
Crashes is never a good sign, even when forcing full throttle, the system shuld be as
stable as in normal use.

If I don't force full throttle the emulator runs fine (i left f-zero on loop for
hours). As soon as I turn on 3d clocks by forcing them dolphin crashes with 10
seconds to a few minutes with a looping sound crash (using windows 7 64 bit). I can
play any of my other games (I mean like pc games on steam or elsewise) without any
crashes. Dirt 2 was left looping benchmark run for 24 hours and did not crash.

What power supply do you have?
Dolphin es really heavy on the CPU, if you over that are force the GPU to full power,
maybe you are pushing the PSU too much, more than regular games.
But the problems dont seem to be dolphin related, they manifest in dolphin but are
not caused by it.

q6600 at 3.6 ghz, prime95 24 hours stable. 620hx psu.

Lowered clocks to stock 2.4, ran dolphin in 2d mode and no crashes. Ran 3d forced
clocks, crashed again.

Interesting thing I just discovered: I haven't tried to use opengl in a while so I
did now. opengl turns on 3d clocks once fullscreen no issue and my windows color
screen mode goes to basic and then back to glass once I quit out. Works fine with
msaa on and off.

It seems that dx9 is unable to turn on the 3d clocks for some reason, and I have no
option to select MSAA for that only SSAA.

"my windows color screen mode goes to basic and then back to glass once I quit out."
What do you mean? are you running dolphin in compatibility mode for it to disabling
themes or something ?

Opengl plugin is more complete so is demanding, and for that it runs slower.
For testing DXD9, SSAA 9x shuld do :)

Nope running it normally with no compatibilities set, but once opengl turns on it
disables my theme for some reason. SSAA 9x makes my fps insanely low in dx9 but
doesn't turn on 3d clocks either.

Guessing you're using Vista. Microsoft doesn't support OpenGL entirely in Vista,
where it has to disable Aero to run OpenGL programs. Windows 7 doesn't have this problem.

I'm using windows 7 ultimate 64 bit.

"my windows color screen mode goes to basic and then back to glass once I quit out."

Check Issue 2095 . I'm having the exact same issue as you with dolphin and Aero...

Anyone else with an hd4870x2 can test this?

same problem, on 4870x2 in dx9 plugin, clocks will stay in 2d mode