4k 60fps metal arms dolphin settings (finally)

Finally figured it out.

After a lot of testing and tweaking, on Dolphin 5.0, I've managed to get this game running very smoothly with minimal hiccups, and at 4k to boot. I haven't seen this done anywhere else to this degree of smoothness so let's get right to it.

Let's do a rundown.

My setup:

• i5 6600k @ 3.5Ghz
• 16GB RAM
• R9 390x
• Windows 10
• Dolphin 5.0

Most of my settings are pretty basic, but I'll go over everything that's important.

Under Config (General Tab):

• Enable Dual Core. This definitely speeds the game up and prevents hitching.
• Disable Idle Skipping. I thought for sure this would just tank the game, but in my testing this is actually one of the biggest things that prevents the game from doing its traditional "hiccup" every time something big happens, like you see in most emulation videos. This alone makes the game run much better. Turn this off.

Under Advanced Settings in the Config Menu, you should see an option for CPU Emulator Engine. Use JIT Re-compiler (this should be the recommended option). All the other modes I tried didn't work as well. JITIL made the audio sound a little smoother, but gave me big slowdowns when the game was under heavy load.

Next, head over to the Audio tab.

For the DSP Emulator Engine, use DSP HLE emulation (fast). I found that this game definitely has an issue with the sound rendering. Whenever there's a lot of sounds happening at once, the game likes to hiccup and skip. This is a game-side issue by far, as it happens on the actual native versions as well. This setting mitigates this a lot. Use XAudio2 as the Audio Backend. OpenAL sounded nightmarish.

Before we keep going in this section, head over to Graphics. You'll need to change some settings here to help things along.

If your card supports it, I highly recommend the Direct 3D 12 backend. The smoothest one by far for me. I haven't tested it much, but the D3D 11 didn't seem too far behind in performance. More hiccupy, but we'll get to that later.

I used Fullscreen and Vsync enabled. Seemed to help stability. I set my resolution to my native monitor's resolution. This is not the resolution the game will be rendered in. Also, Force 16:9, just for niceness. No impact on performance. I would enable "Show FPS" as well, for getting a good idea of how well the game is running.

Go over to the Enhancements tab.

Until we get the game running better, and for a good baseline, keep the Internal resolution to Native. Yes it will look like ass. Be patient. This will help for initial stability.

• Do not turn Anti Aliasing on. The game looks really good even at 720p, and higher you won't even notice. All it does is add chug and hiccups. Leave that shit off.

I found almost no difference in performance with Anisotropic Filtering. Leave it at 1x until later, again just for baseline.

Here's where my knowledge falters a little. I don't really know what Scaled EFB copy does, but it seems to make the game run better. Leave it on, or enable it.

• Enable Per-Pixel Lighting. This makes Glitch's headlamp work.

• Enable Force Texture Filtering. This seemed to help performance. Can't tell you why.

You can enable the Widescreen hack to make the game look better. It'll cause some rendering issues on the side of your screen, but nothing terrible. Turn if off if you find it distracting.

Hacks tab. I don't know what most of this does. I think all of my boxes were checked by default. The only thing I messed with on this was Texture Cache which I took the slider all the way to Fast. This definitely helped things along as well. Seemed to make the transitions in loading less "hangy". Game still looks great with this in Fast.

I have nothing selected in the Advanced tab.

We should be good to go now. Run the game and make sure it's actually booting up. It shouldn't be perfect right now, but it should be running, booting up, and acting pretty stable. If you can get through the menus without any weird slowdowns or artifacting or anything, we're on par. Once you're in game, it should run fine, other than the classic "hiccuping" problem that everyone no doubt has dealt with if you've ever tried to emulate this game before. As long as it's stable, continue. If not, maybe try tweaking a few things based on your own setup.

Okay, now for the grand reveal. Go back to Config and hit up the Advanced tab.

You'll now see a CPU Clock Override option. Enable it. I know it says all its warnings about the game crashing and burning, but this was my golden ticket. Before I started bumping this setting up, I was getting hiccups and stutters galore. Turns out, this is actually a very well programmed game and doesn't depend on CPU cycling for any of the physics or game speed or anything. I immediately saw results, and the game stopped its hiccuping and freezing almost immediately. Turns out, it just needed more power to work with. God bless you Swingin' Ape...

Anyway, I would recommend creating a save state just before an area with a lot of activity. Fortunately, the second level "Do Ore Die" is actually a very good testbed for this, as the opening section is quite active and full of explosions, sounds, and enemies (all things that make this game die a little inside). Once you're through the cutscene, make a save state and use this to test your settings. Slowly bump up the CPU clock speed until you start getting slowdown (you will, don't just crank it up to 400% and expect results). The game will start sounding tinny and frames will begin to drop. My sweet spot was 243%

Once you've found your sweet spot, you should notice the game running pretty much flawlessly. Even with all the explosions I could throw at it, the game's hiccuping was almost completely non-existent and the few times it did was almost unnoticeable. It was like night and day for me, and I hope it is for you as well.

Now that we have the game running like sweet butter, you can play with the internal rendering settings. I was able to get the game running stable at 4k with very minimal problems. The game looks great and runs better than it ever did on PS2, GC, or Xbox. Again, Anti-Aliasing isn't really necissary at this level of resolution, and it only caused the game to hang up for me. I did not have any problems with Anisotropic Filtering. Crank that bitch up if you can. Makes the textures look really ahead of their time.

If you notice the game slowing down or hiccuping in a certain section, my advice is to turn the resolution down, and maybe try tweaking your CPU clock speed down a little.

That's pretty much it! I wanted to share this somewhere because I've been trying for ages to find a way to play this game in all its glory, the way it was meant to be. Looks like thanks to Dolphin, it's possible. I hope this guide gives you guys the success it gave me.

If you've never played this game before, do so. It's the best.

Best of luck everybody! Viva La Gizbot City!

Submitted by TelstarGlitch | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016