Indeed, PCSX2 relies on CPU speed above pretty much all else, with GPU power slightly behind. You'll want something like prime95 to stress test the CPU, and coretemp to monitor the CPU temperature. The Q9300 should be easily stable up to 75C, and possibly higher, though all chips are unique, so some will be stable at higher or lower levels. But 75C is a good place to aim for.

When overclocking, you'll need to go into your BIOS and increase the fsb frequency. This frequency, multiplied by the listed multiplyer, will give you your overall speed.


For instance, there's my BIOS. You see the Frequency, 7 items down is currently at 275Mhz, and the clock ratio (multiplyer, 2nd item) is x14. 275 * 14 = 3850Mhz, or 3.85Ghz

Its best to increase the fsb 5Mhz at a time, then run prime95 for an hour or so. If it crashes, you've clocked too high at your current voltage, and you need to ease it down, or increase the voltage going to your CPU and other components. Just raising the fsb won't increase temps too much, but raising the voltage will. Its just a case of taking it slowly.

I think I may make a quick overclocking guide for the forum, would you mind me doing that, Shadow? Maybe a sticky too?

thx for quick answers guys

1st option to skip game videos and watch them somewhere else is good for me only if they ripped from the game in original quality (not in youtube-quality). i guess someone already done this, so Shadow lady if u know where to download them please wtite me link where i can download full quality game videos

2nd option is tempting for me too cuz its much more comfortable to play the game without stuttering in videos
so iviv if you decide to write a guide for overclocking please write me a link to it (cuz forum searching is not too friendly to me)

thanks in advance

http://www.ffinsider.net/final-fantasy-10-2/fmv.php

FF Insider have the FMVs available to download, and use filefront which always maxes out my connection. Just grabbed one, and the hi-res ones are 640x416 which is the PS2's native resolution, so that's the highest quality you're going to get as far as I know.

As for the guide, I'm working on it at the moment, should be done in about 10-20 mins I would guess.

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6003/65880637.jpg

thats my usual cpu temperature, loaded by prime95 and measured by realtemp
as u can see i have temperature 75C without any overclocking
so i think in my case, overclocking is not acceptable at all ((

thanks for FMV links

(12-24-2010 05:42 AM)Shadow Lady Wrote:  Press F9 while the FMVs are playing (switches to software renderer) and press it again after to return to normal.

Not much you can do about the speed but overclock your CPU, you'd need ~4GHz to get full speed on the FMVs.

Yeah, my CPU is @ 4 ghz and the FMVs run a miserable 20-30 frames per second, but then again, my processor is what I consider 'half-speed' compared to every other CPU, so you can only call that about 2 ghz of real work and 2 ghz of wasted time.

My issue hasn't been with the FMV, quite the opposite actually. My game speeds up and slows down at short, seemingly random intervals. My FMVs run fantastic.

Even with my CPU there's some weird slowdown at the very end of the first FMV. It's over 60fps throughout and then suddenly it drops to like 2fps. Never really played beyond the first battle though so I can't say if other FMVs are like this

I agree with the CPU overclocking - I OCed my quad core from 3.0 GHz to 3.6 GHz for each core and now the intro FMV runs on the max FPS in hardware mode (with messed up graphic, of course) and about 45 - 55 FPS with software renderer (still not good enough to watch).
But there is another thing that came on my mind while testing it: I'm starting to think that (sorry Square, I'm crying inside while writing this) the messy graphic is the main problem. You see - while playing FF X, the game slows down every time I go to the game menu. And while playing FF X-2 FMVs in software mode, sometimes there is to be seen the "rest" of the game's main menu.
Simply put, there seem to be TWO screens for PCSX2 and your asskicking PC to render. If only there was someone who could "wipe out" the "bacground screen", it might help a lot.
Sorry if I'm the one hundered and first guy who thinks of this, I don't have the whole life to read everything

If you just want to play FFX-2 without roasting your CPU, just use an older version of this emulator.
pcsx2-r1888 for example works perfectly in software grafix mode. Hardware mode will lead (as unfortunately in ALL versions of PCSX2) to unwanted distortions in videos. Its playable and completable with it.

Newer versions of PCSX2 are much much slower with ff x-2 and will give you no advantages (e.g.the same distortions in HW-mode with resolutions above native).

My PC is a I7 860 @2,8 GhZ and I don't even need speedhacks to run this game at constant 50 fps (it's the german PAL Version).

(01-31-2011 10:53 AM)RobertAsticles Wrote:  If you just want to play FFX-2 without roasting your CPU, just use an older version of this emulator.
pcsx2-r1888 for example works perfectly in software grafix mode. Hardware mode will lead (as unfortunately in ALL versions of PCSX2) to unwanted distortions in videos. Its playable and completable with it.

Newer versions of PCSX2 are much much slower with ff x-2 and will give you no advantages (e.g.the same distortions in HW-mode with resolutions above native).

My PC is a I7 860 @2,8 GhZ and I don't even need speedhacks to run this game at constant 50 fps (it's the german PAL Version).

Does the game run without graphic/sound bugs?