They can break compatibility, so they should only be used when needed for particular titles. You can skip the Hacks and Advanced tabs since their defaults are the optimal settings for most games. Leave all other options at the default settings. Choose a Post-Processing Effect to improve the graphics further or add interesting effects that can radically change a game’s look – like acidtrip or sketchy. Set Anisotropic Filtering to 16x for better perspective rendering and cleaner textures.

Choose an Internal Resolution that’s appropriate for your monitor and add some anti-aliasing to remove jaggies from diagonal lines and curves. The Enhancements tab options are the most interesting since they allow us to upgrade the games over what the original consoles could present. They may add some delays before a game starts or produce some mini-pauses during gameplay while leading to an altogether smoother experience. Try out the other options if Dolphin is slow on your PC. The shaders are algorithms that run on the GPU, affecting how graphics look. This option tells Dolphin to use multiple threads for creating and storing shaders. If you have a relatively modern PC, set the “Shader Compilation” option to Asynchronous (Ubershaders).

If you have a high-end PC and aren’t anxious about Dolphin’s performance, you can disable the “Show FPS” option. This way, when a game starts, it will take up the whole screen and cover every other window.

If you’re using Dolphin on your TV or a media center setup, you may want to enable the “Use Full-Screen” option.

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