Emulator

Sorry I forgot to say that I'm using the DX9 plugin, the OGL one doesn't load.

Dream Fountain works fine on my machine (with OGL plugin). Does the OGL plugin give
you an error message? Have you installed the latest Nvidia/ATi drivers?

Dream Fountain runs at about 1 fps on mine, I have an ati x1950xt gfx card and use
d3d 9 plug in (ogl is very slow for me)

I have an ATI X16OO Mobility, and even with the latest drivers, ogl doesn't load, no
error message, the emu just crashes.

so would you say that this issue only applies to ati cards?

Can confirm with DX plugin and both PAL and NTSC versions of the game. Similar
slowdowns (although not nearly as pronounced) appear in the "Corneria" map. This
problem does not occur while using the OGL plugin, but since I have an ATI card the
OGL plugin is nearly unusable to begin with.

The issue is only experienced with the DX plugin, and may be caused by the "water
reflection" which isn't working with this plugin on this stage.(?)
Speed is great with the OGL plugin, and water does reflect the scene correctly.

btw i'm using a Nvidia card for the OGL to works this way.

Can confirm for:
ati-amd x1600, directx, x86
intel gma4500hd, directx, x64

I can also confirm this problem with the DirectX plugin as well (drops to 1fps,
etc). However, it does load and also works very well in OpenGL now. I'm using SVN242
x64 (Windows XP Pro). My card is GeForce 8600GTS. Dual-Core is enabled and
OptimizeQuantizers = True.

OpenGL emulates the water reflection, while DirectX doesn't. I think that might be
the issue for sure. Take a look at the picture, very nice Dolphin Team. :)

I'll confirm this issue as well.

The following stages, Fountain of Dreams and Venom (US), cause the emulator to slow
down massively.

In particular, in Fountain of Dreams it goes to less than 1fps.
In Venom it goes to 8 fps.

This is of course regardless of the amount of characters on screen.

I've got a Core 2 Duo E6000 and an Ati HD3870, i get 60 fps on 2D and 30 on 3D as
expected, with some small exceptions (besides the ones just mentioned)

I'm running version 667 with Dual Core mode enabled, however it is evident the issue
persists since no one touched the DX plugin enough :P.

In the OpenGL plugin, this is less of a problem since at least i get 6-7 fps on
Fountain of Dreams, but the slowdown on Venom persists.

Is there any way to bypass the emulation of the reflection instead of trying to do
it? it's really annoying when you get that stage and i goes to 0.40 fps :P.

Can confirm this is still an issue with DX plugin and r1067.