Low FPS on Mario Kart 7

Citra Support
#1

No matter what graphics settings I play around with, whether it be Vsync, hardware acceleration or internal resolution, Mario Kart 7 never runs at a good FPS. Only the title screen runs at 60 FPS, single player menus at 40, and races at 30 or below. I am not sure if my system is the issue, but here are my system specs:

  • Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, OS build 19041.546
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile GFX
  • GPU: AMD Radeon RX 560X Mobile
  • Citra Version (found in title bar): Citra Canary 1862
  • Game: Mario Kart 7

My log: citra_log.txt (22.8 KB)

#2

System Information for Support

Client Version                                Canary 1862 HEAD-64fcc11
Operating System                              Windows 10 (10.0)
CPU                                           AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx  
Graphics API                                  OpenGL 3.3.1
Graphics Renderer                             Radeon RX 560X
GPU Driver Version                            20.4.2 26.20.15029.27017
CPU JIT                                       [x]
Hardware Renderer                             [x]
Hardware Shader                               [x]
Hardware Shader, Accurate Multiplication      [ ]
Shader JIT                                    [x]
System Region                                 1
Shader Disk Cache                             [x]

Here’s some issues I found with your log that might help.

  • Due to AMD’s poorly optimized OpenGL driver, you may experience slowdowns.
  • Enabling Accurate Multiplication is recomended in certain games. If you are experiencing graphical glitches, try enabling this option.
#3

Radeon doesn’t work well with OpenGL applications on Windows, it is another story on Linux (e.g Ubuntu).

You can try turn off Hardware Shader in the Advanced tab in the graphics options.

#4

I already tried turning it off. It had zero effect.

#5

System Information for Support

Client Version                                Canary 1862 HEAD-64fcc11
Operating System                              Windows 10 (10.0)
CPU                                           AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx  
Graphics API                                  OpenGL 3.3.1
Graphics Renderer                             Radeon RX 560X
GPU Driver Version                            20.4.2 26.20.15029.27017
CPU JIT                                       [x]
Hardware Renderer                             [x]
Hardware Shader                               [x]
Hardware Shader, Accurate Multiplication      [ ]
Shader JIT                                    [x]
System Region                                 1
Shader Disk Cache                             [x]

Here’s some issues I found with your log that might help.

  • Due to AMD’s poorly optimized OpenGL driver, you may experience slowdowns.
  • Enabling Accurate Multiplication is recomended in certain games. If you are experiencing graphical glitches, try enabling this option.
#6

I see.

Your other options are:

  1. Dual boot Linux. The Mesa drivers on Linux has much better performance for OpenGL.
  2. Buy a new computer with Nvidia, if you had a desktop computer instead of a laptop you could simply swap graphics cards but you can’t on laptops.
  3. Wait for someone to add like Vulkan to Citra which might not fix the issue given how complex the 3DS’s PICA200 GPU is to emulate. It is also not happening anytime soon.
  4. Wait for AMD to optimize their drivers for OpenGL on Windows which probably will never happen.

Sorry for the inconvenience :frowning: one of my older laptops with i7-4710MQ and GeForce 840M can have 100% speed in Mario Kart 7 on Windows, but it has Nvidia so that is why.

Old screenshot:

image
image1919×1037 720 KB

At 4x resolution I only got 55fps or so, the screenshot is at 2x resolution.

Citra Performance on Intel iGPU - Linux beats Windows
#7

Looks like the first option is my only way around this lol.

Edit: Will Ubuntu serve fine?

#8

Yes it should, though there are some issues with flatpak version so you might need to use a manual build that you can get from here:
https://github.com/citra-emu/citra-nightly/releases
https://github.com/citra-emu/citra-canary/releases

You also might need to install additional dependencies and add chmod +x on citra-qt by using the terminal. You can see some info here: Citra crash pokemon X

#9

Ok I know I’m late, but I finally got my lazy ass to install Ubuntu and I am pleased to report that Mario Kart 7 runs butter smooth now. Thank you for all the help.

2 Likes
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#10

I just tried out citra on linux (manjaro - xfce via USB live system) and was very suprised about the performance increase compared to windows:

  • game tested: Mario Kart 7 with native resolution
  • system: laptop with Intel i5 3230m (intel HD 4000 graphics) and 4GB RAM
  • windows: 47,4 FPS (speed = 79%)
  • linux: 92 FPS (speed = 154%)

That’s a big performance gain of 94%. Thanks for the tip tywald! So it’s all thanks to the Mesa Drivers giving better opengl performance.

2 Likes