Great performance improvement
#1
Hello guys, I'm back to give you some feedback for the latest revision I tested, 7aa554b, with games I had problems getting consistent 100% speed on my notebook. I used some specific scenes from each game to test the improvement in each release and had a significant improveent in this build. I'll test the newer build later and share more info on this topic, because I'm typing from a smartphone right now.

Some details:
Games tested: 
Shadow hearts(unexpected improvement on hw mode)
Shin megami tensei: digital devil
Crash twinsanity (specificaly the main menu Animation effects)
Final fantasy 12 during heavy fight effects)
Kingdom hearts
Breath of fire dragon quarter
May be more that I dont remember now

Hw specs:
I5 2450m @3.1ghz
Gt 630m oc'd a bit
Nvidia driver v. 375 (I guess)

Pcsx2:

Preset 2;
Gsdx w/ dx11 renderer
Native resolution 
Mipmap fast mode
Everything Else at default

Ps: I usually put the system resolution = internal rendering resolution. It seems that the image gets less distorted by stretching and shows less or no FPS drops. The same happens on ppsspp Android version. I have some theories about why this happens, but ill share my ideas here later.

At last, great work, guys. Awesome work.

EDIT:

Well, I tested older versions of pcsx2 to make some comparisson between them with shadow hearts(the worst game to emulate that I played on pcsx2 until now) and for some reason the performance on blue castle was good with them too. It is strange, since I remember bad fps at the save area at the blue castle (80~90%) and severe fps drop at the dead woods passage at the entrance of blue castle(60%), which still happens on the latest build. I wonder if the improvement on the save area at blue castle is something related to the new nvidia drivers or even windows (I use w10 for gaming)...

OpenGL renderer is slower, but I can see that some graphical glitches are fixed on hw mode in some games, like the shadows on SMT: Digital Devil Saga.

Whatever is happening here, it is good, anyway. Any improvement is welcome. Smile

There are so many variables that matter when you have a weak machine like mine that anything can have some impact in the emulation task. Now I can't really say if it is the new pcsx2 revision changes or if by using it I ended overwriting some bad old files from older revisions to get the better performance.

The thing with the resolution is something that I always see happening. When I stretch the window or go fullscreen with the internal rendering res != system res, the fps oscilate or drop until I reduce the window dimensions back to how it were before. On ppsspp android version, I always put the system resolution at "auto" to be always equal to the internal res, resulting in less aliasing(blurry, but with less aliasing) and more consistent fps on my moto g. On dolphin I notice some performance impact too.

I also noticed that when I upscale final fantasy 12, there are times that the emulator crash when it is playing some cinematics or in some transitions between cinematics <--> gameplay. Playing at native res fixes the issue. Idk if it is something known already, but I'm sharing it here now because its something I saw happening with me recently.

I'll check other games and update the thread. I hope its not just placebo effect, lol. At least I'm sure that I saw some improvement at shadow hearts blue castle, Crash Twinsanity menu, Breath of fire DQ (overall improvement. I don't remember specific situations that made fps drop, but I remember that the gameplay wasn't smooth like it is now. Sorry for not being able to isolate events that made fps drop in this game. Much time without playing it).

Rogue Galaxy seems better overall too, except with a glitch with the text that is darker than it should be. Is there a fix for it on HW mode? neither DX11 or OGL seems to fix this issue.

I'll check if there is any improvement in some places where I remember fps usually dropped on Kingdom Hearts.

EDIT2:

I tested Shadow Hearts again and tried something that worked before some time ago but created a "Ghost frame" issue. I set constant frame skip to 1skipped to 1 drawn. As expected, the ghost frame appears. But changing interlacing mode and/or rendering mode to software does the trick, it seems. Smooth animations, with 0 fps drops on blue castle, battles or the dead woods at the blue castle entrance. No ghost frames either. I'll test it more later with Kingdom hearts then report back. Idk, maybe there is a big improvement in Shadow hearts too. I hope so.
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#2
It is likely due to my latest change. Smile
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#3
^ wizard
[Image: XTe1j6J.png]
Gaming Rig: Intel i7 6700k @ 4.8Ghz | GTX 1070 TI | 32GB RAM | 960GB(480GB+480GB RAID0) SSD | 2x 1TB HDD
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#4
Nah, I got a License from Intel to install their development suite. (Which include a profiler called VTune)
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#5
Both Gregory and Refraction released a couple of new builds that improved performance so it's no surprise Smile
CPU: I7-4770 3.9GHZ
Motherboard: Asrock B85M - DGS
RAM: Hyper X Savage 2x8GB 1.6GHZ CL9
GPU: GTX1070 8GB GDDR5
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit
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#6
I have some ideas to improve the VU-GS thread communication. Hopefully it would yield an extra speed boost on VU limited scenes
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#7
I also have a small vu change which might provide an extra couple of fps in some games (futurama with mtvu off yielded a 2-3fps increase)
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#8
Based on I experienced I wouldn't call it a "great performance improvement". It's 1-3 FPS at most. Tongue2
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#9
(12-25-2016, 09:41 PM)refraction Wrote: I also have a small vu change which might provide an extra couple of fps in some games (futurama with mtvu off yielded a 2-3fps increase)
Cool

(12-25-2016, 11:35 PM)FlatOut Wrote: Based on I experienced I wouldn't call it a "great performance improvement". It's 1-3 FPS at most. Tongue2
Some functions was greatly improved Wink The impact on the whole emulator is smaller. That being said it is potentially bigger on some effects (in particular for dual cores)
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#10
Yeah, maybe I overreacted a bit after noticing improvements in games that I didn't expected to see any at all until I put my hands in my next machine. For strong computers the difference may be more marginal, but for weak PCs it may be more significant.

By the way, sorry for my bad english.
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