Dolphin Guide

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Dolphin is a GameCube/Wii emulator for PC and mobile. It's quite easy to set up, but here are some tips to make your experience with it better.

Using the GCI Folder

Dolphin's Memory Card Manager is crap. Please try not to use that. It's buggy as hell and just baaaad.

Using a GCI folder is easy:

  1. In Dolphin, go to Config -> GameCube -> Set Slot A: to "GCI Folder"
  2. Go to this directory in file explorer: "Documents\Dolphin Emulator\GC\USA\Card A" (USA is region, which can be USA/EUR/JAP for you)
  3. In this folder, you can copy/paste any save file into that folder.

Lag Reduction

Dolphin is not a technically demanding program, but it does require a decent PC at the least. Having these settings should allow you to run a game at native resolution at a constant 30fps, but there is no guarantee as it's still largely based on your system specs.

Having the latest version of Dolphin, or at least one that's 5.x, is ideal.

These settings will work with most games, the only difference being the Hyrule Field speed hack is only for TP.

Note: If you only lag in Hyrule Field, skip all of this and just enable the Hyrule Field speed hack under TP -> Properties -> Patches and that will help a lot!

Config settings

General

  • Enable Dual Core
  • Enable Idle Skipping (if applicable)

Graphics settings

General

  • Backend: Direct3D 11+
  • Adapter: Your GPU (NOT Microsoft or integrated)
  • Render to main window

Enhancements

  • Native resolution
  • Disable fog
  • Everything else off

Hacks

  • Skip EFB Access from CPU
  • Store EFB Copies to Texture Only (tick this if your GPU is better than your CPU)
  • Ignore Format Changes
  • Defer EFB Copies to RAM (tick this if your RAM is better than GPU)
  • Disable Bounding Box

Game settings

Right click game -> properties

General

  • Enable Dual Core
  • Enable Idle Skipping (if applicable)
  • Synchronize GPU thread
  • Speed up Disc Transfer Rate (speeds up loads, so disable this if you're doing races or if you want vanilla loads)
  • DSP HLE Emulation

Patches

  • Hyrule Field Speed Hack (for TP)

AR Codes

Note: If you still lag with the above settings, you can further reduce lag by adding codes to remove particle effects, bloom, post processing effects and more

Note II: I am not posting the codes here because the sites they're on are flagged as a trojan, so be warned when looking through codes, you are treading risky territory. But if you insist, Google "twilight princess ar codes reduce bloom" and you should get gc-forever link that shows [ralf] in description. There's a lot of codes in that page that can reduce lag.

Note III: Some of those codes may also break the game. iirc the no twilight effect one prevented Fyer's spirit from being in Lake Hylia, so you could never get to Zora's Domain