Ok, by the looks of it everyone here is hardcore hardware fans. Sadly I dont have the money for fancy quad cores or SLi's though

I have a very sad Intel Atom (1.8GHz, dual core 512KB L2) with 1024mb DDR 266MHz and Intel 945 GPU. Is there anyway I can make the emi run faster on this?

I've found that the emulator runs really really slowly and I'm wondering how come you need such a powerful system when the Emotion Engine on the PS2 only clocks at a mere 400MHz?

Would PCSx2 run in a server supporting two Opteron 2.8Ghz processors, Radeon 9800Pro (256mb) and 8GB DDR 3200? If so what sort of speed would we be looking at?

Thanks all

Simple answer: For your first question is no. There is no way you'll get playable results out of the intel atom processor.

The problem isn't simply with the emotion engine... You also have to complete emulate the VU (vector units) which handle graphics in a completely different way than PCs do. On top of that, you have several other component like the IOP (which is basically the main PS1 processor x2) and you have to coordinate the timings between all of these to be perfect, or else you break a lot of games.

As for the second part of your question, it would run better... but the video card would likely cause slowdowns (as it only supports DX9) and it would still run into many occasions where the CPU too wouldn't be able to keep up.

(12-25-2009 03:21 AM)matthewpjgrant Wrote:  Ok, by the looks of it everyone here is hardcore hardware fans. Sadly I dont have the money for fancy quad cores or SLi's though

I have a very sad Intel Atom (1.8GHz, dual core 512KB L2) with 1024mb DDR 266MHz and Intel 945 GPU. Is there anyway I can make the emi run faster on this?

I've found that the emulator runs really really slowly and I'm wondering how come you need such a powerful system when the Emotion Engine on the PS2 only clocks at a mere 400MHz?

Would PCSx2 run in a server supporting two Opteron 2.8Ghz processors, Radeon 9800Pro (256mb) and 8GB DDR 3200? If so what sort of speed would we be looking at?

Thanks all

Quad core or SLI isn't needed at all. Also 8GB memory is over the top. 2GB is enough already.

Just get a modern around 3ghz C2D (E8400 is nice and cheap) or any Core i5/i7 (just for the fast architecture, not for the four cores) and a medium graphics card. Nvidea GT240/250 or ATI 4670/4770 is already enough.

A c2q clocked between 2.0-3.0ghz is STILL MORE hardcore compared to a 3.0ghz c2d.

Too bad most programs and games dont NEED more cores and still rely on higher clocks to run them faster. That is because nearly all apps and games are only single-threaded and would only need 1 core. PCSX2 optimally runs at 2 threads hence the need for dual cores because of Multi-threaded graphics synthesizer (MTGS). Anything more is not necessary and becomes a waste.

Quad-cores are marketed as being the end-all-be-all cpu to joe public, not surprising that alot of people have low-clock quaddies. Problem is, games and apps are still developed with core clock in mind and not more cores since a dual core is cheaper and more mainstream-y than quads, Far more performance improvements can be seen with higher clocks and higher instructions per second compared to stretching an app to use more cores when the other program aspects are not worth being placed on a sepearate thread i.e game input. It pretty much feels like being deceived, in a sense...

Whether by intentional marketing or just basic human misconception, people look at a processor and go "A 3ghz dual core is like 6ghz... so a 2ghz quad core is like 8ghz!" which further fuels the issue as well.