High EE, Low CPU usage??? don't understand

[Blyss Sarania]

That's BS, because I'm 90% of the way through the game and most of the time I'm getting 60fps. So yeah, it is gonna happen on this machine, fortunately. I just want it to be 60fps 100% of the time if possible. Maybe that isn't possible, but that's a far cry from the game not being playable at all.



I assumed it only ran on 1 core, so i expected to see 1 core maxed and the others doing nothing, but they're all doing nothing. That's what i'm not getting. Even in the most demanding scenes, the cpu's barely flinch. (according to the cpu monitor)

Okay, ignore me who has been providing support on this forum for a year, and has completed the game in PCSX2 myself.

Have fun. I won't bother trying to explain core usage to you.

[RadicalxEdward]

The reason pcsx2(and just about any other emulator out there) can't just use as many cores you throw at it is because of timing. For an emulator to work properly lots of things have to occur at the right time, sometimes components need to run in lockstep, or one needs to run in an exact ratio to another. If you just split up the work onto multiple cores you'd have to do a lot of extra work making sure everything is being finished at the right time, which could easily negate any performance advantage you'd get from running on more cores.

lol hard to keep up with edited posts. I went to reply and actually read an update IN the reply window ha ha.

anyway, do you think this timing necessity is why i'm not getting perfect performance despite the cpu not working hard?

[Nobbs66]

You're not going to see maxed cores. There are going to be idles threads to keep everything in sync(IOP, EE, 2 VPU's, COP2, SPU2, IPU, VIF, and GIF). Without this incredibly tight timing, games would have horrible glitches and be unplayable. It's also a really bad idea to ignore the person who has almost 10,000 posts in 1 year 3 months. Blyss is right. There isn't much you can do

[RadicalxEdward]

Okay, ignore me who has been providing support on this forum for a year, and has completed the game in PCSX2 myself.

Have fun. I won't bother trying to explain core usage to you.

A. I said I "assumed" it ran on one core, not that it does. I was referring to before I posted when I was trying to troubleshoot this.

B. Your other point was that my cpu was incapable of running the game at even "acceptable" levels. which is just flat out not true. ie bs. if you don't wanna help no one is forcing you to. I appreciate any factual advice you give. I don't know everything. If you notice, when people give factual info or suggest ways to help, I respond accordingly. when they just say "can't do it" then that's bs

---

You're not going to see maxed cores. There are going to be idles threads to keep everything in sync(IOP, EE, 2 VPU's, COP2, SPU2, IPU, VIF, and GIF). Without this incredibly tight timing, games would have horrible glitches and be unplayable. It's also a really bad idea to ignore the person who has almost 10,000 posts in 1 year 3 months. Blyss is right. There isn't much you can do

Thanks for the info. That makes more sense now.

And as for Blyss, I don't care how many posts a guy(or gal, either or lol) has. Doesn't mean he's the forum god. I wasn't insulting him or anything like that. I pointed out he was wrong about something. We're all wrong about stuff sometimes. Including myself. Nothing bad about that. But he just wanted to get mad at me for it, and that's his prerogative.

[Blyss Sarania]

A. I said I "assumed" it ran on one core, not that it does. I was referring to before I posted when I was trying to troubleshoot this.

B. Your other point was that my cpu was incapable of running the game at even "acceptable" levels. which is just flat out not true. ie bs. if you don't wanna help no one is forcing you to. I appreciate any factual advice you give. I don't know everything. If you notice, when people give factual info or suggest ways to help, I respond accordingly. when they just say "can't do it" then that's bs

It depends on what you define as "acceptable."

With a single threaded performance of 1600, most cutscenes will run at ~55FPS. Most battles will run at ~50FPS. A few mech battles will run at ~30FPS, but those are rare. You have 300 less single threaded performance, so I wouldn't expect you to even reach that level.

That is, unless you are using a ton of speedhacks, which could change the game. It could also break the game.

Anyway, the reason you will almost NEVER see max core usage without software mode in PCSX2 is because the EE and GS run on separate cores, and have to stay synced. Aside from plugging in your laptop and setting your power plan to high performance, there is nothing you can do. You can choose to believe me, or not.

[markyrocks69]

Originally posted by Refraction

If you have come here to ask this question, the answer is here, there is no point in making a thread about it. Look down the list for your hardware, you will get a fair idea of your system and how it will perform, if there are any additional hardware reply below with the additions, DO NOT reply if you are just going to ask "Will my system work? i have blah blah" because all you will get is a warning.

Will my game work?

If you have reasonable specs to those posted below but want to know if your game works, check out the Compatibility List before posting.

Processors:

Won't work or barely do anything:

Intel Pentium
Intel Pentium II
AMD Athlon (non-XP)
AMD Thunderbird
AMD Duron

Will work, but very slowly, possible problems:

Intel Pentium III
Intel Celeron (any P3 and above series)
AMD Athlon XP
AMD Sempron
AMD Turion
AMD APU C-**, E-***, Z-01, E2-3**, A4-3***

Will work without compatibility problems, but will run slowly:

AMD Athlon 64 Single Core
AMD Opteron Single Core
AMD Athlon FX Single Core
Intel Pentium IV (4)
Intel Pentium D - Probably works best in this group
Intel Pentium M (Dothan)

Will work at a reasonably playable speed (this does not mean full speed):

AMD Athlon FX Dual Core
AMD Opteron Dual Core
AMD Athlon X2 (and Turion laptop equivalent)
AMD Phenom
AMD Phenom II
AMD APU A6- 3***, A8-3***
Intel Core 2 Duo (and laptop Core Duo equivalent)
Intel Core 2 Quad
Intel Core i 5
Intel Core i 7

Laptop Processors:

We do not recommend the use of any laptop machines on the emulator unless otherwise mentioned above, if it supports SSE2 then it may work. if it does not have SSE2 then it is likely it will be extremely slow and have emulator compatibility problems.


Graphics Cards:

Won't work (or very unlikely to) - Maybe possible with GSDX Software Mode (V. Slow):
Geforce 3 or below
Geforce 4 MX series - confirmed to be working but very slowly
ATi Radeon 8xxx series and below
ATi Radeon 9100
Most onboard graphics cards (excluding the GeForce 61X0 series and 5200 Go)

Will work but require GSDX - Very poor performance:

Radeon 9200 - Reported to work with ZeroGS too!
Radeon 9250
Intel GMA950 - confirmed to work
Geforce 4

Will work on both graphics plugins, but possibly poor performance

Radeon 9500 to 9800 series
Radeon X300 to X8x0 series
Geforce 5200 (Go included) to 6500 series (also including
Geforce 61x0 onboard series)
Geforce 7100

Will work at a reasonable to very good level of speed with both plugins:

Geforce 6600 series and above (excluding above mentioned)
ATi Radeon X1300 series and above - need confirmation for X1300

Recommended Processors:

Intel Core 2 Duo / Core i3 @ 3.2Ghz or faster
Intel Core i5 / i7 @ 2.66Ghz or faster
AMD Phenom II / Athlon II (X2, X3 or X4) @ 3.4Ghz or faster

Recommended VGA cards:

Nvidia Geforce 9600GT / 8800GT or better
ATI Radeon 4750 or better

Other Hardware Recommendations:

512 mb or above of System Memory:
Windows XP With Service Pack 3
Windows 2000
Windows XP 64 With Service Pack 1

1 GB or above of System Memory:
Windows Vista 32/64
Windows 7 32/64


And that's it! Nothing else is very important when it comes to system requirements, i hope that just cuts down the number of "Will it work" threads!

http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Sticky-Wi...y-computer

[RadicalxEdward]

It depends on what you define as "acceptable."

With a single threaded performance of 1600, most cutscenes will run at ~55FPS. Most battles will run at ~50FPS. A few mech battles will run at ~30FPS, but those are rare. You have 300 less single threaded performance, so I wouldn't expect you to even reach that level.

That is, unless you are using a ton of speedhacks, which could change the game. It could also break the game.

Anyway, the reason you will almost NEVER see max core usage without software mode in PCSX2 is because the EE and GS run on separate cores, and have to stay synced. Aside from plugging in your laptop and setting your power plan to high performance, there is nothing you can do. You can choose to believe me, or not.

lol where do you get that i'm not believing you? this has nothing to do with belief. It's not like i'm trying to start this game and want to get it perfect, I'm almost done with the game. And I agree 30fps is unacceptable and would suck. 50-55, is acceptable, but obviously not perfect,and 60 is ideal.

Currently, most of the game is running 55-60 fps, including battles.
Battles where there are 3 AGWS (mechs) and like 5 or 6 enemies it drops to 40 something when it's showing everything at once which is annoying, but like you said, that's rare.

I also don't have any speedhacks setup. (they're all unchecked) BUT the autospeedhack thing is checked, so idk what it's using in the background.

Considering you've run this specific game and obviously have a lot of experience with fps and core usage for this game in pcsx2, what would you expect my core usage to be for the 2 cores it is using when EE is really high? I'm trying to find a point in the game to specifically check, but I know i've never seen even a single core go above about half, but i'm not always looking at that while playing.

Overall, I will try the MTVU setting you guys talked about, and the slider mentioned somewhere in an earlier post and let you guys know if it helps. Thanks for all the tips.

[Blyss Sarania]

I really can't estimate your core usage, because it will vary based on many many different things.

MTVU may help or may hurt, we have reports of it going either way. It won't hurt to try though.

[RadicalxEdward]

Ha ha, that's awesome marky, that's exactly what I get. "reasonable speeds" lol Thanks for that info. I was only searching for this specific issue so i hadn't seen that before but that's great to have!

[Blyss Sarania]

Just FYI those requirements are horribly outdated because they were written several years ago.