While playing SOTC today I was screwing around with Cheat Engine and stumbled across the value that displays the game's real framerate. I couldn't figure out how to lock it but I did screw around a bit more to see what effect pcsx2's speedhacks had on it. I'm posting this here for future reference

RESULTS (from first area, in real fps*):

EE 1, VU 0 (default; for beast PC) <maybe currently impossible to get 100% 60vps>
60fps explore (rarely 30), 30fps battle

EE 2, VU 0 (for good PC) <better fps than real ps2>
30fps explore (rock solid), 20-30fps battle

EE 3, VU 0 (for decent PC)
20-30fps explore, 15-20fps battle

EE 1, VU 1 (for decent PC)
20-30fps explore, 15-20fps battle

Any other combination results in 10-15fps battles, so don't bother. Also, other speedhacks have no effect on real fps, but MTVU hack will boost your virtual fps. In other words it will compensate for a weak PC, but it won't make the emulated PS2 more powerful. That requires a a feature not yet implemented. With an OC'd EE, you should be able to play the entire game in real 60fps, and probably some others... Of course you'd need a PC from the future, or a record overclock

*If you don't know the difference between real and virtual fps, basically the game can be running as low as 10fps real and you'd still see 60fps virtual in pcsx2 because technically it's supposed to run at 10fps and therefore it's full speed.

VU all the way with this game, also u can check in the gsdx options, the effects hack.(agressive crc)

Yeah VU hack is a necessity for weak PCs. It kills the real fps though and results in choppy animations, so definitely avoid if you get virtual 60fps with any of the 4 above configs.

Although even with the first config I'm not sure it's possible to get real 60fps through the entire game... If you'll notice in the screenshot the EE is almost maxed out but the virtual fps isn't 60. What's odd to me is that SOTC wants to run at 60fps on PCSX2 when I could've sworn the game never got above 30fps on PS2. Maybe I've got it all wrong though, hopefully a dev can explain

Edit: Here we are... http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/shadow-o...erformance

Okay I'm too lazy to read this but best speedhack combination for me is VU and EE both set on 2 and everything checked in speedhacks menu, MTVU in first place.