Dolphin (emulator) - the best stability tester

[Yuriman]

Just wanted to report that I've found the Dolphin Gamecube/Wii emulator to be the best stability tester for me. At a voltage on which Prime is 48 hours stable and LinX will do 100 loops, Dolphin crashes within minutes. For whatever reason, the parts stressed on my Ivy Bridge chip by Dolphin are the most sensitive to voltage.

My preferred method of testing is to open Wind Waker (since I have a legit copy of it) and just stand around somewhere. It doesn't have to be the focus window, it'll crash even if you have it minimized. Loading Prime in the background doesn't seem to speed up finding errors, but it doesn't slow it down either. I prefer to open Prime anyway as it loads the rest of the cores and gets the temperature up. Uncapping framerate doesn't affect crash-rate either.

EDIT: A link to Dolphin for those of you interested: http://forums.dolphin-emulator.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6

I recommend DefenderX's builds but Lectrode's and ExtremeDude2's are also compiled via ICC and make use of AVX.

 

[Borealis7]

could just be a badly programmed emulator that crashes like any other bad program...

 

[borisvodofsky]

could just be a badly programmed emulator that crashes like any other bad program...

Well, we're assuming he CAN run it stable at lower clocks.

Just like how Unreal engine is extremely sensitive to overclocked graphic cards, while most other game engines don't give a rats ass.

 

[borisvodofsky]

But TBH, gamecube and Wii suck. They didn't even get any Super robot war releases.

 

[Yuriman]

could just be a badly programmed emulator that crashes like any other bad program...

Except that once I get the voltage high enough, I can leave it running overnight without a crash. It crashes at a voltage where LinX is stable.

Suggests to me that if changing a hardware setting results in stability, it's the hardware's fault.

Well, we're assuming he CAN run it stable at lower clocks.

Just like how Unreal engine is extremely sensitive to overclocked graphic cards, while most other game engines don't give a rats ass.

Exactly. It's highly sensitive to an unstable CPU.

 

[fastamdman]

LinX and or IBT with sp1 aka avx > all for stability testing.

 

[HeXen]

Emu's seem to be buggy enough on stable clocks. whats wrong with prime 95 or some other hardware stresser? i wouldn't use apps that require some tricky coding techniques to test stability. crashing with dolphine doesn't mean it finds errors, so much as the app itself is error prone and not optimized well with your CPU

 

[Yuriman]

Emu's seem to be buggy enough on stable clocks. whats wrong with prime 95 or some other hardware stresser? i wouldn't use apps that require some tricky coding techniques to test stability. crashing with dolphine doesn't mean it finds errors, so much as the app itself is error prone and not optimized well with your CPU

I believe that if Dolphin crashes *consistently* after about 5 minutes at 1.242v but runs 24 hours at 1.248v, it has nothing to do with the coding of the emulator and everything to do with the stability of the processor.

LinX and or IBT with sp1 aka avx > all for stability testing.

At clocks/voltages where LinX will eventually crash, for me, Dolphin typically crashes much more quickly. There may be cases where my CPU would be stable running Dolphin for much longer than LinX, but I haven't run across one yet.


EDIT: This is similar to another issue I experienced recently. I've run my 4870's memory at 1100mhz for years and had never experienced a problem. Recently I downloaded Rift and was annoyed at a flashing, glitchy UI. Eventually I tried dropping my graphics memory clocks by 20mhz and the glitchy UI immediately went away. Utilities designed to test for graphics artifacts *still* report my card as stable at 1100mhz, but I know it's not so. Apparently Rift, for whatever reason, is more sensitive to GPU memory clocks than anything else I've used, because it consistently artifacts at that clock and clears up when I lower clocks a little.

 

[fastamdman]

Just because a program crashes though doesn't mean the clock isn't stable. I bet that program would crash on stock clocks. You can argue what you would like, but poor coding on a program is one thing, as dolphin is compared to a properly coded program to actually stress your cpu. There is no way a program like dolphin is a "better" stress tester than IBT with avx.

Make sure you are stressing all your ram and maximum settings with avx when using ibt/linx otherwise its not as stressful. There is a reason these two programs will raise your cpu temps over 10 degrees more than prime95. They are the most stressful programs we have out right now for stability testing.

If you are fine in p95/ibt, you would be fine in anything. Also LinX shouldn't take long to find stability. I would say less than an hr and you will find true stability.

 

[Ghiedo27]

Programs that can identify an unstable cpu quickly are great, but they provide a good starting point more than a final decision on voltage for me.

I'd rather run my CPU a bit cooler at a more conservative voltage. If it doesn't crash with the programs you run as part of normal use, then it's stable enough imo. Why not dial the voltage down a bit over time until you get some instability? Then you just bump it back up a notch and call it good.

Obviously if you use your box for serious productivity that's a whole other story (and hopefully a story about backups).

 

[fastamdman]

Ghiedo27 - Horrible idea in my opinion. That's a good way to have data corruption, bad windows installs, and all sorts of things. Unstable rigs are not safe rigs and I wouldn't trust them with a 10 foot pole. What might be stable one day won't be the next when you load up a different game. It's just going to cause to much headaches having "good enough" stability. If you want a lower temps, use the lowest stable vcore or drop the overclock down.

For most people your temps will be just fine for daily stuff anyway. No matter what game you are running, you won't have temps like IBT shows you.

Either way, don't run an unstable machine at the end of the day. If you fail IBT, your machine is NOT stable and shouldn't be trusted with anything of importance. I wouldn't even type an essay on an unstable rig.

 

[Yuriman]

Just because a program crashes though doesn't mean the clock isn't stable. I bet that program would crash on stock clocks. You can argue what you would like, but poor coding on a program is one thing, as dolphin is compared to a properly coded program to actually stress your cpu. There is no way a program like dolphin is a "better" stress tester than IBT with avx.

Except that once I get the voltage high enough, I can leave it running overnight without a crash. It crashes at a voltage where LinX is stable.

Suggests to me that if changing a hardware setting results in stability, it's the hardware's fault.

I believe that if Dolphin crashes *consistently* after about 5 minutes at 1.242v but runs 24 hours at 1.248v, it has nothing to do with the coding of the emulator and everything to do with the stability of the processor.

???

I fear you're not reading my posts.

 

[fastamdman]

Yuriman - What mhz is your cpu running at?

 

[Yuriman]

4500mhz

 

[fastamdman]

So you are telling me you are IBT/LinX stable, WITH AVX at 4500mhz and 1.248 vcore.............? Doubtful. No wonder you are having programs crash.

 

[Kristijonas]

I fear you're not reading my posts.

He isn't.

 

[fastamdman]

Yes I am. Just because a program crashes with .006 less voltage doesn't mean it's a hardware/voltage issue. There hasn't been enough evidence provided to prove that it's the vcores fault. If he is stable in ibt/linx with avx, he would be stable in dolphin. That program will NOT stress out his system half as much as those programs. Just because it crashed at x voltage and not at x+.006 doesn't mean it won't crash at x+.006. It just means it hasn't crashed yet.

A poorly coded emulator is not a good stability tester, plain and simple.

 

[Yuriman]

Just an FYI, the latest Dolphin builds are compiled with the Intel C++ Composer/Compiler (ICC) and make use of SSE4.2/AVX.

If you'd like, I can post a screenshot in the morning of LinX running for 8-12 hours at 1.248v, and again tomorrow night at the 24 hour mark.

Just because it crashed at x voltage and not at x+.006 doesn't mean it won't crash at x+.006. It just means it hasn't crashed yet.

While it doesn't prove 100% that Dolphin is a good stability tester, I think a big, flashing red light and siren should be going off in your head if increasing your voltage causes a program to stop crashing. It's beyond a reasonable doubt if it's consistent and repeatable.

Btw a link to Dolphin for those of you interested: http://forums.dolphin-emulator.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=6

I recommend DefenderX's builds but Lectrode's and ExtremeDude2's are also compiled via ICC.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Wii graphics are super shitty. The emulator makes a huge improvement.

Same goes for Dreamcast nulldc. It's amazing to run 25x16. LOL

 

[Yuriman]

So you are telling me you are IBT/LinX stable, WITH AVX at 4500mhz and 1.248 vcore.............? Doubtful. No wonder you are having programs crash.

7 passes in, headed to bed. Will give you an update in the morning.

 

[borisvodofsky]

Jesus, this thing runs Hot.

 

[Yuriman]

LinX is as hot as it will ever get, even Prime won't get it above the 70's. Performs on par with Sandy at 1-300mhz higher and draws significantly less power:

 

[borisvodofsky]

It's less, but not consequential. because idle draws are so low on both processors of which they spend most of their lifespan.

 

[Yuriman]

So you are telling me you are IBT/LinX stable, WITH AVX at 4500mhz and 1.248 vcore.............? Doubtful. No wonder you are having programs crash.

Just rolled past LinX pass 178.

 

[fastamdman]

Yuri - for some reason I thought you were running a 2500k or 2600k sb processor. Either way though nice chip, looks like its stable. Dolphin should run just fine. Also, if you use the "all" feature for ram, you should be able to get a higher memory amount to stress the memory more.