Dolphin input lag update makes emulator faster than Nintendo GameCube

Dolphin is well-known as the market's leading Nintendo GameCube & Wii Emulator, but as an open-source project, there's almost always room for improvement and new features. One of the greatest new improvements have just arrived, though, in particular for fans of CRT monitors and the minimal latency of the original Nintendo hardware.

For those who are unaware, a key disadvantage of software emulation is increased input latency compared to the original hardware. This is especially present on Android phones and cheap emulation devices, but is also present on PC and even official emulation solutions. Rather notoriously, Nintendo Switch 2's own GameCube emulation solution for Nintendo Switch Online is actually very high in latency—even worse than Dolphin prior to this update. While that latency was improved with an update earlier this month, it's sadly still worse than original hardware.

Dolphin, though...Dolphin has broken through. Arguably, Dolphin and other software emulators broke through a long time ago anyway, since games like Super Mario Sunshine and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild got transformative mods that would enable 60 FPS gameplay long before the official Switch and Switch 2 versions of those games would be released. But that's cheating—of course doubling framerate would reduce input latency. Those games at the intended 30 FPS caps would still be less responsive than on original hardware.

Until now, that is.

Dolphin's developers consulted with two outside sources—Fizzi from Slippi.gg and Arte, who developed a GameCube controller adapter with a photon sensor—in order to provide the above benchmarks. Played on a CRT television, Super Smash Bros. Melee scored a clean, expected 62 milliseconds in input lag. But Dolphin's new default settings on a 144 Hz monitor (still 60 FPS in Melee) were even lower, at 56 milliseconds. Dolphin's new "Rush Frame Presentation" feature reduced it further, to 53.3 milliseconds. And Dolphin's new "Immediately Prevent XFB" feature gave an even better result, at 37 milliseconds, though that feature can cause severe graphical issues with certain games.

Those of you unfamiliar with Slippi may be wondering how "Slippi Melee Hacks" is scoring so impossibly low in input lag. That one's not quite a fair comparison, since it's a modified version of both Dolphin and Super Smash Bros. Melee targeted for online play, but it's a great point of reference for faster-than-native software emulation.

The full Dolphin December 2025 progress update blog post includes more interesting improvements including the addition of RetroAchievements support on Dolphin for Android. Hopefully, these latency improvements also make their way to Dolphin's Android version, since it would further improve performance for Ayaneo Pocket Vert and other software emulation-focused handhelds.