1 week with PCSX2, informed opinion.
#1
Well After a week with PCSX2 i have come to the following conclusions…
now before I get flamed or hated on we all love the PS2 thats why we are here.
This is not a troll post merely an informed opinion of someone thats been around a long time playing video games.
To someone out there who thinks PCSX2 is a viable alternative to a REAL PS2.

Test System
Intel i7 4790k @ 4.2ghz overclocked.
8gb RAM
Nvidia 550Ti

Output to 1080p Panasonic Plasma (beautiful TV)

This is a great machine its VERY fast and nothing really makes it break a sweat…
Boots Win7 in 5.8 seconds to desktop from power on….

Now..
I have over 300 PS2 games. iv been playing the thing since 2002. ( yes a little late)

I tested about 40 games over the week that Iv had the emulator running.
There was not one game where I could just bang it into the DVD rom drive, click boot and play the game..
I spent ALOT of time in the menus tweaking this and that. trying to get my games to run as good as they did on the PS2.
Same goes for any emulator. You need to tweak them ,thats a given. if you hate tweaking then stop reading now
and go buy a REAL PS2.

With out going into all the boring details I will give you the Pro's and Con's of this emulator vs the real PS2.

In software mode I did not get any game that was below 60FPS. even the 30fps games like GTA San Andreas ran very fast.
this isn't always a good thing.

EVERY game i played had a glitch or another. some severe others not so. You will be going to the PCSX2 Wiki site ALOT.
because every single game has a problem at this point in the emulators life. get used to it.
There are usually fixes on that page, almost all of them say "F9 back to software mode"...

Now..
about software mode..
Software mode looks terrible. marginally worse than the hardware Component output of the PS2.
Colours are terrible, motion is ok, a little blurry (unless you turn off bilinear filter which makes things like way worse but crisper)
compatibility is good but really there is no point to this. Go buy a PS2. and the de-interlacer is not very good.
The native PS2 output is of very high quality. with sharp clear pixels, saturated colours and liquid smooth animation synced to vertical retrace.
The Emotion engine is a computer science work of genius.
PS2 Pixel pumpers like Burnout Takedown on a real PS2 is MILES better than on PCSX2. especially over 480p.

About hardware mode..
PCSX2 uses  your video card shaders to emulator the GS calls. It can also rescale the PS2 internal resolution at a multiplier.
However once you enable this your FAST CPU really isn't doing that much anymore. the video card is actually doing more at this stage.
There is ALOT more glitches in hardware mode than in software mode. Expect to tweak ALOT only finding out later there is no fix for your problem.
You will also need the older GSDX renderers from the previous versions of PCSX2 because some games get broken from new releases.
Like DMC 1.

About actually playing the games…
I was using a USB to PS2 control adapter and configured by PS2 controller on lillypad. works good. except for the 10ms input lag…
This can get worse when you have Vsync on. which, lets face it,you want on all the time because every real PS2 game has it on.
Actually playing games like this is well, not natural. Doing guard impacts on Soul Calibur for example is more difficult.
This makes twitchy games like DMC3 harder. because just frames are also much harder to pull.
A real PS2 has no input lag at all. which brings me to the sound.

From the input lag from the controller and sound is also laggy. by default about 120ms (HUGE). I brought this down immediately to 50ms then down to 40ms.
A fast CPU is good. however Guitar hero was marginally harder to sync up. (not to mention the glitches)
So you are fighting a lag war between the video, the sound and the input. its not pretty.
The sound emulator sounds terrible… just terrible… I have my PS2 running through a 2.1 setup and the sound is just amazing..
crystal clear highs and deep bass.
The PS2's SPU is a wonderfully quality piece of silicon thats very hard to emulate. IMHO the PCSX2 sound emulations is the worst part of it.

Final notes..
There was not one single game that looked better on the emulator on the SAME Tv as the crisp output of My V8 PS2 Console.
Some games ran better like the above mentioned GTA san andreas however the graphics were so glitchy its not even worth it.
Shadow of the colossus was the only game that looked and ran better than the PS2 version. at 3x internal resolution and a solid frame rate this was fun.
however with the amount of tweaking it needs to run properly it really makes no sense. The gameplay is slow and button presses aren't critical
as it would be in a game like Tekken 5 for example. It looked better than the PS3 version but really…not worth it.

There is really nothing that PCSX2 offers thats beats a real PS2 except for the internal resolution rescaling.
And really all this is doing is eliminating the jaggies on some games, The textures are still low res…
But games like Silent hill looked worse in higher resolution because the games loses the gritty feel.
If you don't own a PS2 console and just wanna fart around with some old games and not serious into gaming. then yeah play with PCSX2
but coming from a old guy who knows something. You can't beat the real thing.

I admire the coders that have put the effort into the program. Its no trivial thing to do at all.
So keep up the good work and thank you.

I hope this has helped some people who are considering selling the consoles, DONT DO IT.

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#2
Quote:If you don't own a PS2 console and just wanna fart around with some old games and not serious into gaming. then yeah play with PCSX2
but coming from a old guy who knows something. You can't beat the real thing.
just a little something that the guy doesn't seem to know : you need a real PS2 to use pcsx2 anyways.
so, pcsx2 can't replace a real PS2...
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
#3
(02-29-2016, 02:01 PM)vectorunit2 Wrote: however with the amount of tweaking it needs to run properly it really makes no sense.

What are you talking about?
#4
(02-29-2016, 02:01 PM)vectorunit2 Wrote: There is really nothing that PCSX2 offers thats beats a real PS2 except for the internal resolution rescaling.
Here's a few:
- Fully customisable controls, including using peripherals like racing wheels on PS2 games that don't support them.
- Widescreen patches(though this can technically be used on real PS2's, it isn't as easily applied).
- Other game fix patches and easier access to cheats to improve a game or just to get a more enjoyable personal experience.
- Save states and faster loading times after converting the PS2 discs to ISO's.
#5
(02-29-2016, 02:39 PM)FlatOut Wrote: Here's a few:
- Fully customisable controls, including using peripherals like racing wheels on PS2 games that don't support them.
- Widescreen patches(though this can technically be used on real PS2's, it isn't as easily applied).
- Other game fix patches and easier access to cheats to improve a game or just to get a more enjoyable personal experience.
- Save states and faster loading times after converting the PS2 discs to ISO's.

+unlimited memcards, easily manageable thanks to the memcard folder feature
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
#6
How about not just PCSX2 but the like 20 emulators I have on my machine, because putting all my consoles from NES on up plus the game collection for each of them onto 1 TV would be an absolute nightmare Tongue
Desktop:
Ryzen 7 5800X | MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R | MSI X570 unify | 32GB DDR4@3600 MHz (14-14-14-34) | EVGA RTX 3070 FTW3 Ultra
1TB + 2TB WD Black SN770 | Windows 11 Pro x64
#7
(02-29-2016, 02:01 PM)vectorunit2 Wrote: There is really nothing that PCSX2 offers thats beats a real PS2 except for the internal resolution rescaling.

Custom shaders, EE overclocking, slow motion/turbo, compressed ISO images, etc.
#8
Quote:Final notes..
There was not one single game that looked better on the emulator on the SAME Tv as the crisp output of My V8 PS2 Console.

Please enlighten me how this looks the same and not better than on a PS2 console.

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AMD Ryzen 5 3600 @ 3.60~4.20 GHz | Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3200
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super @ 6 GB | Samsung 980 1TB | Windows 10 Pro x64 (22H2)
#9
I've been using it for about a week too and until there is 100% compatibility its not as viable a choice as a PS2 under the tv. Obviously higher resolutions, FSAA, etc are a sight to behold on old favourites but there are too many shortcomings for me.

If only the PS2 had a vga-out like the Dreamcast before it, it wouldn't look as horrible as it does on a modern tv Sad
#10
PCSX2 is not perfect but pretty good already with most of the games.

However, I'd love to have some options to filter the software mode like better scanlines. GLSL from MAME is really good.




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