FPS Slowdown
#1
So, I'm fairly new to the PS2 emulation scene, and I'm running into an issue that I can't seem to solve. For reference, here are my PC Specs (courtesy of STEP Wiki Site). It's an ASUS G75 laptop, about 3 years old.

I'm currently using the 1.2.1 stable build, with the GSDX 2.0 beta in order to utilize the Hardware fix for the Snowblind engine games (namely, CoN). For my emulation settings, I am using Preset 2 with the mtVU hack, but all other settings are box-standard.

GSDX settings are DX11 Hardware, 2x Native resolution, FXAA, Texture Filtering, 8-bit textures, and Anisotropic Filtering of 2x. Due to having a quad-core processor, I've got my extra threads set at 3, but I don't know how much that affects hardware mode.

The problem I am running into is with the Snowblind games (BG: DA, BG: DA II, CoN, CoN:RtA). The issue is that I'm getting massive slowdowns when near fire, or large areas of rendering. However, it is not FPS loss, as the game is still running smoothly, but just a LOT slower. The slowdown affects audio as well, and causes a bit of input lag. The effect is much less prominent when I've zoomed in to shrink the rendering area, but obviously that makes playing the game a bit more difficult since I can't see very far around my character.

Note: The slowdown issue is present when running in Software mode, as well. There doesn't seem to be a difference between running in software or hardware, even though I have a fairly decent GPU...

Obviously, I know that these are some of the most difficult games out there to emulate properly, and you need to have a fairly powerful computer to do so. However, I've heard most people tend to drop frames, but I haven't read too much about gamespeed slowdowns. Is there a way I can remedy this, or is this a CPU/GPU bottleneck problem?
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#2
What does your FPS counter report on the slowdowns?

These games do suffer from severe fps drop spikes in taverns and so forth as the games absolutely eats memory.
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#3
(06-23-2015, 03:55 PM)refraction Wrote: What does your FPS counter report on the slowdowns?

These games do suffer from severe fps drop spikes in taverns and so forth as the games absolutely eats memory.

I'm not home at the moment, so I can't check right now, but the game usually sits between 40-60 fps, even during the slowdowns, iirc. I'll take some screencaps once I'm home for lunch.

Edit: Game dips down to around 25 in the flashiest of areas, but mostly in the 40s-50s.
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#4
I've been playing Return to Arms over the past few days, I get a steady 60 FPS on all the planes. I suffer a massive FPS drop standing directly next to a save statue (like 25-40 FPS) and maybe 40-45 FPS sometimes while standing next to torches. And as I noted in my own post for some reason the first island with fironia or whatever her name is runs slower than the planes do. Also, this game definitely eats memory lol and I like how the git build shows the memory allocations!
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#5
Honestly I would be interested to know what kind of FPS you get with that setup... I really feel that it is a memory issue. While monitoring my system It seems that the bottleneck isn't my CPU/GPU it is my FSB (I would like to buy some 1600 MHz RAM to help alleviate that issue Tongue ). In looking at your system though Your STP is 1634 compared to my 1275(stock) and you have 1600 MHz RAM compared to my 1333 MHz, so I would think if we're getting similar FPS then it is indeed the inefficient overuse of memory. And if refraction or someone else wanted to see the log from my GIT build showing the memory stuff I could post it Tongue
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#6
I've attached two shots of the window, FPS is up at the top obviously. I tried to grab a video clip of the game, but that tanked my FPS even more.

The one that's running at 31 fps is also causing everything on the screen to move and sound around half speed or normal. The one that's running at 55 fps has me moving at around full speed with no audio issues.

Is there something that could be causing the frame rate drops to be affecting the play speed? Is it possible that the FPS is somehow tied to the gamespeed?


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#7
(06-23-2015, 07:01 PM)tregolani Wrote: Is there something that could be causing the frame rate drops to be affecting the play speed? Is it possible that the FPS is somehow tied to the gamespeed?
of course it is.
It's how a PS2 works
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#8
@tregolani

You do realize that fps is the amount of frame effectively renderered per a second , right ? Which is actual inidicator of the speed of the game.
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#9
One has to mention that for pc games it is different. But ps2 games are actually tied to the rendered fps unless the games themselves remove this contract.

To solve audio issues you can go to:
lilypad -> synchronization mode -> async mix.
This works most of the time when video and real time are not too much out of sync.
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#10
(06-23-2015, 07:27 PM)willkuer Wrote: One has to mention that for pc games it is different. But ps2 games are actually tied to the rendered fps unless the games themselves remove this contract.

I generally only game on my PC, so I was not aware that consoles tied gamespeed to FPS. Blush My bad!

Just wanted to play these older games of mine on a PC, since I'm a bit of a cheat and like to savestate....
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