I'm using my copy of the FFXII Collectors edition, and I've noticed that for the most part (in menus and most areas with a few people) the FPS stays at a constant 60. However during random cutscenes, city areas with lots of people, and battles with many enemies the framerate tends to drop to as low as 40FPS. The game then literally starts running in slow motion instead of just slower. Is there any way to alleviate this issue? I have the NTSC version so I know you have to keep 60FPS constant or else it starts doing the slow motion thing. I've noticed lowering the resolution(It's running at an internal 1920x1080) doesn't do anything to help and I'm running the game with all the speedhacks on. Is there anything else I could do to help get rid of the slow motion problem? Or at least make it so that it becomes more playable when it gets to these parts? Is the PAL version not as intensive?

My specs:

Athlon II X4 2.8GHZ
Radeon HD5770
4GB RAM
Windows 7 64bit

Which PCSX 2 version are you using?!? and also try the SVN version which u can get here: http://pcsx2.net/svn.php and turn on the MTVU hack, since you use a Quad-Core CPU.

I'm using 0.98, is there a noticeable difference using the SVN version?

SVN version itself maybe not soo much, but MTvu speedhack will give you a difference as by default PCSX2 uses only 2 cores of your cpu, with MTvu it'll use 3. Also if you didn't do yet, along with MTvu you can set all other recommended speedhacks(but maybe don't touch the non-recommended ones, through you could experiment with them, keeping in mind they can actually slow down the game too;P). Seeing you have amd gpu, you could also try enabling "allow 8 bit textures" in GSdx config(and then eventually trying to lower internal res). Couse with radeons loads of ps2 games are being limited by it's fairy low(in compare to similar Nvidia) memory bandwidth, and changing internal res doesn't do much while it can still possibly be limited by gpu.

Thanks, the SVN update fixed my problems completely. I'm currently in the sewers, so I don't know how it will affect the gameplay outside in open areas, but I'm now getting a constant 60FPS even during fights with multiple enemies. I'll fiddle around with those other things you mentioned should it start going lower again.