Hi everyone, I know these questions get asked a lot, but after exhausting just about every options configuration I can think of (and following the guide), I still haven't been able to figure out why I'm getting slow downs at certain parts in game.

My specs are:

3.33 ghz Core2Duo E8600
Nvidia GTX 560 ti 448 core 1280MB
8GB DDR2 RAM

According to the spec requirement page, it seems like I'm at least at the recommended specs (my processor is right at the line though), so I figured I could run most games at full speed.

So far, the only two games I've tried have been Final Fantasy XII and Dark Cloud, and while I didn't get much slow down in FFXII, Dark Cloud gets down to about 50 in the intro cut scenes and the sound starts going really slow as well, which is probably the most annoying part.

Is it normal for certain intense cut scenes to slow down on this emulator, or is my CPU too underpowered? It seems to happen more frequently during certain cutscenes (Dark Cloud especially), but I'm afraid it might happen in-game too later on, during more intense situations (with many models being rendered and whatnot.)

Honestly, I don't think it would really bother me if I could just get the sound to stop slowing down. I've tried messing with the different sound settings (even the Async option) and nothing seems to work. As soon as the FPS dips to even 55, the sound is noticeably slowed and it's driving me nuts heh.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask around and see if anyone had any pointers on what I can try. I've spent an hour or so, troubleshooting so far, but nothing seems to make a difference.

Thanks in advance .

Use GPU-Z and monitor your GPU usage %.

Use task manager (or perfmon) to monitor CPU usage %.

Even if the EE and GS don't get near 100%, that doesn't mean either your GPU or CPU isn't maxing out. (Though the opposite seems true for EE.. it hits 42% and my CPU usage is barely hitting 10%)

My 670 can do 6x native for a lot of games, but even in some parts of those games it hits max and wrecks the emulation, despite GS never going over 25%. (3072x2688 is too much for a single card it seems, suppose I expected too much from Kepler)

I've gotta drop it down to 5x normally to get around those parts then put it back up when I'm beyond them.

Course, I need to drop it all the way down to 4x if I do livestreaming, especially at higher framerates.

Oh and, yes, your CPU is quite old and the clock performance is quite inferior to Sandy/Ivy bridge. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/54?vs=288

(07-16-2012 05:17 AM)DAOWAce Wrote:  Use GPU-Z and monitor your GPU usage %.

Use task manager (or perfmon) to monitor CPU usage %.

Even if the EE and GS don't get near 100%, that doesn't mean either your GPU or CPU isn't maxing out. (Though the opposite seems true for EE.. it hits 42% and my CPU usage is barely hitting 10%)

My 670 can do 6x native for a lot of games, but even in some parts of those games it hits max and wrecks the emulation, despite GS never going over 25%. (3072x2688 is too much for a single card it seems, suppose I expected too much from Kepler)

I've gotta drop it down to 5x normally to get around those parts then put it back up when I'm beyond them.

Course, I need to drop it all the way down to 4x if I do livestreaming, especially at higher framerates.

Oh and, yes, your CPU is quite old and the clock performance is quite inferior to Sandy/Ivy bridge. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/54?vs=288

Thanks for the post. After monitoring the usage, it looks like the EE is reaching maximum (or close) during the parts that it's slowing down. The GS usually never goes past 50 or 60% though. My CPU was getting into the 80s at times, but it never maxed. And the GPU barely ever went past 20%.

What's even more strange is that it doesn't seem to matter which resolution I use. I had it custom set to my HDTVs res (1920x1080) and it ran the same as when I used "Native" - no slower or faster.

Is there anything I can do to keep the EE from maxing out? That seems to be what's bottlenecking me.

Post ur pcsx2 configuration(video, emu settings)

Just use speedhacks, if you use any older grab any new svn build from official download.

Now go to config>emulation settings>speedhacks and additionally to what's already turned on(all recommended speedhacks are mostly completely safe in here;]), experiment with the slider speedhacks, EE cyclerate to 2 and VU cycle stealing to 1 should be pretty safe in both of those games. Don't set them too high through, you can get opposite effect, and in Dark Cloud it actually causes nasty screen shaking. If you want you can try MTvu speedhack as well, it's not really soo nice on dual cores, but worth trying, and if you do, get to GSdx config and select "allow 8 bit textures" as well - this option affects GPU mainly, and will actually increase your gpu load(but decrease gpu memory transfer usage) for sure, but it also affects GS thread over cpu and will decrease it by fair bit, giving you better results of MTvu on your c2d.

Not much else to do other than OC your cpu if it's still not fast enough;3.

(07-16-2012 09:06 AM)miseru99 Wrote:  Just use speedhacks, if you use any older grab any new svn build from official download.

Now go to config>emulation settings>speedhacks and additionally to what's already turned on(all recommended speedhacks are mostly completely safe in here;]), experiment with the slider speedhacks, EE cyclerate to 2 and VU cycle stealing to 1 should be pretty safe in both of those games. Don't set them too high through, you can get opposite effect, and in Dark Cloud it actually causes nasty screen shaking. If you want you can try MTvu speedhack as well, it's not really soo nice on dual cores, but worth trying, and if you do, get to GSdx config and select "allow 8 bit textures" as well - this option affects GPU mainly, and will actually increase your gpu load(but decrease gpu memory transfer usage) for sure, but it also affects GS thread over cpu and will decrease it by fair bit, giving you better results of MTvu on your c2d.

Not much else to do other than OC your cpu if it's still not fast enough;3.

Woot! I tried adjusting everything like you suggested and it's working much better now - almost perfect . The EE usually doesn't even get into the 80s anymore; it seems more even with the GS reading now. My CPU will jump up to max sometimes though and it will start running slower again, but it seems to only last a couple of seconds. I guess I really am "just at the line" of the recommended spec with this CPU heh.

In any case, it's running much better and I'm hoping it will stay at that performance level for most of the game. I'll try a few other games later and see how they perform. By the way, I had another question - I read that you can use one of the CD plugins to run actual game discs with this emulator, and since I have a bunch of PS2 games lying around, I was wondering if you had a suggestion for which CD plugin to use and if there are any special settings I should use for it?

As for Overclocking, I'd really love to try it (especially since I've heard my particular processor works well with it), but I'm afraid I'd screw something up. I've never done it before, and with all the voltage tweaking and other stuff that I'm not too familiar with, I have a feeling I'd get lost. Maybe if I could find a decent guide for it, preferably by someone familiar with this type of core2duo.

A big thanks once again for the help . You wouldn't believe the headache this was giving me haha. I only hope my CPU can handle the other games as well.

Quote:I read that you can use one of the CD plugins to run actual game discs with this emulator, and since I have a bunch of PS2 games lying around, I was wondering if you had a suggestion for which CD plugin to use and if there are any special settings I should use for it?

Use Gigaherz CDVD and simply configure it to your DVD drive's letter. Keep in mind reading directly from discs can cause some slowdowns, especially in some games where there is a lot of reading from the disc

You can run from the game disc, but shouldn't. Pcsx2 works MUCH faster with iso`s, Cd`s need to spin up and down which does cause pausing and stuttering in games. ImageBurn^is a free software that allows the creation of iso`s.

(07-16-2012 11:42 AM)Bositman Wrote:  Use Gigaherz CDVD and simply configure it to your DVD drive's letter. Keep in mind reading directly from discs can cause some slowdowns, especially in some games where there is a lot of reading from the disc

(07-16-2012 11:46 AM)omnikam Wrote:  You can run from the game disc, but shouldn't. Pcsx2 works MUCH faster with iso`s, Cd`s need to spin up and down which does cause pausing and stuttering in games. ImageBurn^is a free software that allows the creation of iso`s.

Ah I didn't think about that. In that case, I'll just give ImageBurn a try and see how it goes. Thanks for the advice .

I actually had one other question about another issue I've been dealing with. For some reason, my games will randomly crash after awhile, and I'm not sure what could be causing it. It's happened in every game I've played (about 4 so far) and I'm not really sure what to tweak in order to fix it.

Any ideas?

Edit: Also wanted to add that it was doing this before I tweaked the speedhacks and such, so I don't think that's responsible.