Emulator

Expanded report here: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-howto-using-gameini-settings-per-game?pid=395622#pid395622

I'm all for it :D

But I doubt most users are fine with the performance impact :/

I've been using single core mode ever since I got my new computer. The extra stability is great.

Most users should bother themselves to turn Dual Core ON explicitly. Having it ON by default implies everything should run fine (unless documented in Wiki) which obviously isn't the case.

I have been running everything single core until a few months ago, it runs fine enough except if you have a crappy CPU.

EDIT: @MajoRoesch, ok, then the Dolphin Wiki needs to be revised for Dual Core bugs on a game-per-game basis. I will open following related PR.

Don't! The wiki already makes note of dual core bugs on affected games.

It doesn't. I just opened one Dual Core related bug for Metal Gear Solid not reported on the Wiki page.

Then make note of it on its page in the Dolphin Wiki if hasn't already.

You can argue that we should've turned it off and let users turn dual core on themselves if they want good speedup but not everyone knew about this. In addition to that, it has other uses like allowing devs and wiki editors to document dual core related issues thanks to most users who had left it on by default.

The main reason for dual core to exist and left on is because not all PC are capable of play games at full speed. It's a significant speed boost with small issues.

You guys need some patience. Any single person touching the wiki about this stuff is probably going to make a lot of mistakes. It varies greatly between computers, games, etc. Single Core and Dualcore also have different CPU/GPU timings right now which is a bug, causing other stupid stuff to leak into these issues.

Because the games affected will keep changing, because each computer acts differently, because the builds will affect things, I mostly recommend users handle it on their own. After the next release we'll have to seriously look into removing dualcore as we know it.

"Then make note of it on its page in the Dolphin Wiki if hasn't already."
Or better yet, open a PR so the bug gets fixed, which I just did.

"allowing devs and wiki editors to document dual core related issues thanks to most users who had left it on by default."
Users as guinea pigs... no thanks.

"Single Core and Dualcore also have different CPU/GPU timings right now which is a bug, causing other stupid stuff to leak into these issues.
Because the games affected will keep changing, because each computer acts differently, because the builds will affect things"

The more reason to turn it off by Default, something that is so unstable and unpredictable shouldn't be a default. I guess loads of posts (and PRs) are filled with this and that glitch, searching for a working version and ultimately after a few days and posts realizing that the culprit was Dual Core, and nothing related to it will be addressed because you know... "dat shit happens randomly between versions".
Be honest and make people a favor by giving preference to stability. Dual Core is not going to be removed anytime soon because the tendency is to do multithreaded programs, not cripple them to single core, I'm fine, but turn it off while you can't tame it.

lol. Fixing dualcore without a performance penalty is (to my knowledge) impossible. Users hate performance penalties. Sorry to break it to you, but this issue is just one of many. in fact, there are way better bug reports involving dualcore already. This is no offense to you or your effort to fix it; this is a tough problem.

The solutions are this: implement locking, fix up deterministic dualcore, replace the current dualcore with deterministic dualcore OR use SyncGPU by default. A third option would be to move where the threading is, but, again, all of these options carry heavy performance penalties in games. 20% - 50%. Sometimes it's slower than single core.

Again... this issue report isn't really useful or going to solve anything, and I think I just want to file it away as a duplicate of our "dualcore is broken and can't be fixed" issue. Anyone object to that?

Also as for touching the wiki: if you can buy every possible computer part and test it in the game and find the exact patterns and whatnot, fine. Dualcore bugs are not something any one user can tackle. Disabling it by default won't happen. If we did that, users would be confused at the performance loss and just use older builds. In fact, that's also why we can't remove it or switch SyncGPU/Deterministic Dualcore on. We're trapped by the decisions of the past.

I don't understand all the fuss.
Dual Core is an erratic half-assed feature. You can't tame it, you don't accept bug reports because "they solve themselves between builds".

I gain nothing with this bug report, I already have turned it off, but users deserve better, not flicking characters (1080º Avalanche) or missing text (MGS), without knowing why that happens and the wiki saying nothing about it.

"If we did that, users would be confused at the performance loss and just use older builds"
You deem them stupid (and using crappy pre or lower than i-XX CPUs), they are clearly not. A user that is capable of downloading and configuring a completely different version is capable enough to tick a DualCore checkmark for the "slow" game. That's how it should be supposed to work. Add a note on The Performance Guide: https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/guides/performance-guide/

The only users that would require such an underestimation are Android users, which would most likely sport weak CPU's and not bothered to tweak a single setting.
In the last year and a half Dolphin has gained an overall of 100% speed gain thanks to optimizations, you missed the oportunity (again) to time that with disabling Dual Core, at worst you will disappoint those users that one year and a half back couldn't run games.

*What number is the "dualcore is broken and can't be fixed" issue? That kind of assesment is unconstructive, I'm promoting a change in either the GUI or the Wiki, we already know Dual Core is broken, let's do something about this stagnant state.

Honestly I was going to write up a more detailed response but your tone makes me not really care. If you don't like dualcore... turn it off.

eckso wrote:

"Then make note of it on its page in the Dolphin Wiki if hasn't already."
Or better yet, open a PR so the bug gets fixed, which I just did.

Please stop saying PR when you mean issue report. You have not made any PRs that fix dual core bugs.