Frame Skipping
#1
I saw the 'frame skipping' option and used it in the first time I used PCSX2 but I did not see any of its effects. Theoretically if I set it to draw 3 frames then skip 1 frame, a game originally running at 45 FPS can reach full speed. I gain no FPS increase at all, and even some graphics glitches in certain games. What is the purpose of this option and what games in which it is effective?

Btw I want to ask about the blur effect appearing in GoW2 when setting resolution higher than native (see this topic). Is that effect "meant to be there" like the blur effect in FFX or it is a bug/technical side effect?
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#2
Frame skipping will only ever be of any help speeding up the game if your video card is what's causing the slowdown... The problem is that the vast majority of times slowdowns are because you can't emulate the guts of the PS2 fast enough (EE, VUs). It doesn't matter how many video frames you skip if you still have to wait for the core of the "PS2" to work on everything else.
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#3
(09-08-2011, 06:43 PM)Livy Wrote: Btw I want to ask about the blur effect appearing in GoW2 when setting resolution higher than native (see this topic). Is that effect "meant to be there" like the blur effect in FFX or it is a bug/technical side effect?

It's meant to be there and just as FFX the effect works fine in native res, the problem is when you try to use higher resolutions since the games were meant to be run at the native PS2 resolution (and in a PS2 and standard TV at that Tongue2).
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#4
I don't see it doing me much good at all, but I have a P4 3.00 Ghz, and slow gfx card. It just makes the screen flicker, and makes it virtually unplayable for me. I heard it does this in newer GSdx versions, but I don't know... I wonder why it flickers... hm...
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#5
Tested. I locked my GPU clock at 300 Mhz (original 680 Mhz) and ran God of War 1. It ran slowly at 45 FPS. The GPU usage hit 100% all the time while EE, GS, and VU are around 60% -> 80%. Using frame skipping brought it to 55 FPS, with 100% EE. You're right Koji.

A game running at full speed with 45 FPS using frame skipping is not as smooth as a PC game running at 45 FPS. I wonder if the frame skipping option reduces the actual framerate.
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#6
Part of the problem is that the 60'fps' isn't really 60fps most of the time, rather it's the refresh rate of the game... It's really 60hz (how often an NTSC television refreshes)... many PS2 (and console games in general) are actually at much lower framerate. For example, Persona 3 has a true framerate of 30fps that is then doubled to meet the ntsc refresh rate of 60hz... So if you have the game running at 50fps, it's really running at half that (25fps). There are, of course, games that truly run at 60fps on the PS2, but they are fewer in my experience at least... Several games run lower than that even at 15fps... And on occasion you have games with a variable frame rate, such as shadow of the colossus.
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#7
(09-09-2011, 05:49 AM)Shadow Lady Wrote: It's meant to be there and just as FFX the effect works fine in native res, the problem is when you try to use higher resolutions since the games were meant to be run at the native PS2 resolution (and in a PS2 and standard TV at that Tongue2).

Hooked my laptop to my 32 inch TV a few minutes ago to compare PCSX2's output with that of the PS2. At native res they looked the same (because I use a component cable for the PS2, not the composite one). On 2x scaling, the blur effect in GoW2 was still there on the TV. Using the alpha hack removed it, but the color was not as good as it used to be.
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