Slow CPU? Optimization tricks for games like soulcalibur 3 and tekken 5
#1
Tongue 
Hi! I've just registered to PCSX2 forums. I wanted to share something with users (like me) who don't have a strong CPU. I have a Core2quad Q9550 and an ATI Radeon HD 6970 2GB. Unfortunately PS2 emulation in 32 bits is extremely complicated for my config and specifically for demanding games like soulcalibur3.
Althought I managed to get 49~53fps with this CPU and a dev build : pcsx2-v1.5.0-dev-630-g67e9559-windows-x86 (compiled by Gregory).

(By the way isn't there an alpha 1.6 64 bit build available for testing ?, oops ... I'm impatient sorry xD).What did I do to get these better results ?
First in emulation properties:
EE/IOP >>> Set EE/FPU round mode to "nearest". Clamp mode remains to "normal" even if "none" can slightly improve FPS (in order to avoid bugs and glitches if "none" is selected)
VUs >>> Same thing.
GS >>> Tick "deactivate frame limiting"


Windowed mode : Tick "deactivate resizing border" (sorry I don't remember the exact name in english) and choose widescreen if you want to play in wide screen.

Speed hacks : tick INTC spin detection, wait loop detection, mvu flah hack and mtvu.

Last steps for plugins :
SPU : Mixing settings : nearest/ fastest bad quality. I ticked "disable effects processing".
                                   renderer: Xaudio2, Sync mode : Timestretch.
         Click on "configure" to lower as much as possible settings for "sequence lenght", "seekwindow size" and "overlap" to get another good speed up.
Hopefully I didn't get any bad sound with both soulcalibur 3 and tekken 5.    

GSDX  : Direct3D9 , interlacing : auto , allow 8 bit textures , internal resolution : custom (1000) (1000)** [No need to tick align sprite hack with these settings]. Native resolution didn't  change anything at all for me in terms of FPS. Texture filtering : Bilinear PS2, CRC hack level Full, logarythmic z and Alpha Correction

** 60hz mode/resolution is required to get a proper display for custom "1000:1000" resolution (you can set it to 1200:1200 as well)
Not bad for a low end configuration xD [Image: tongue.gif]
Reply

Sponsored links

#2
none of this will help
[Image: gmYzFII.png]
[Image: dvedn3-5.png]
Reply
#3
(04-25-2016, 07:23 PM)Nobbs66 Wrote: none of this will help

Core2quad cpus are slow for PCSX2 and I can guarantee you it improved speed, it made me win over 15fps. Getting to ~50fps in game in SC3 with a slow CPU just by using this configuration is nice. For tekken 5, I got full speed because this one is less hard to emulate (full speed except in 2 arenas). I didn't have to use VU cycle stealing (which produces some kind of frame skip, well that's not frame skip but it just deteriorates animations.
Reply
#4
I don't think EE/VU rounding should affect speed much. At least I never saw such things happen. Clamping is a different story.

Deactivating the frame limiter is a good idea as long as you are below full speed and the demands don't vary too much. (The menu is probably quite fast, or?)

The sound options might be a good hint. However I would always try to play in async mix and not in timestretch.

gsdx options really depend on the gpu. I guess you get comparable results with dx10/11.




The best what you can do with a corer2duo or core2quad is overclocking though. You can get something like a ~20% performance increase. That would be another (stable) 10FPS for you.
Reply
#5
(04-26-2016, 12:16 PM)willkuer Wrote: I don't think EE/VU rounding should affect speed much. At least I never saw such things happen. Clamping is a different story.

Deactivating the frame limiter is a good idea as long as you are below full speed and the demands don't vary too much. (The menu is probably quite fast, or?)

The sound options might be a good hint. However I would always try to play in async mix and not in timestretch.

gsdx options really depend on the gpu. I guess you get comparable results with dx10/11.




The best what you can do with a corer2duo or core2quad is overclocking though. You can get something like a ~20% performance increase. That would be another (stable) 10FPS for you.
Well EE and VU rounding setting contributed to improve things for these games. Indeed I had already tried async mix and I had some weird results. In my post I talked about this pcsx2 dev release :
pcsx2-v1.5.0-dev-630-g67e9559-windows-x86. it was just producing click and pop audio without any improvement on speed. By curiosity I retried it with the latest build i got pcsx2-v1.5.0-dev-640-g8ec1461-windows-x86. At this moment gregory might have already published new builds xD. Anyway I retried async mix and no surprise I had these clicks and pops back BUT this time I felt like there were less slowdowns in stages/arenas where they happened. They had less negative impact. Emulating this game (soulcalibur3) is weird because sometimes an arena will have slowdowns and the very same arenas won't in other game mode and/or if different characters are used.
OC humm yes you're right but I can't anymore for temp reasons. I'll have to fix it but I'm lazy xD. I used to get from 2,83 Ghz to 3,41 Ghz. An ideal OC would be 3,8 or 3,9Ghz because it would allow my CPU to properly support EE extra-cycles.
Reply
#6
I've just tried a new orphis build. v1.5.0-dev-650-g726b901
It gave me a more consistent frame rate. ahhh PCSX2 1.6.0 x64 is the most awaited release xD

[url=https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/commit/726b901dc5d6d6a186fd5d61ae272198771c6e3c][/url]
Reply
#7
X64 is still pre beta. Even if it would work it would probably be slower due to missing optimizations. Even if perfectly optimised the performance increase will not be as dramatic as most users hope. Maybe it is even negligible.

Btw stable releases are more optimised and possibly yield better fps. However gregory is improving so fast that there is often a significant functional difference between stable and git release.
Reply
#8
Yes you're right many users are expecting it to be a way faster. Ouch it hurts (when I read what you expect for future x64 releases).
Let's hope gregory and other devs continue on cleaning the recompiler, make a HLE BIOS and IOP (as I could read in developer section) and then port improvements.
Anyway I have to say thanks to developers for their commitment while being just a few to work on this project.
Reply
#9
You will get a bigger perf increase if you replace your AMD GPU by an Nvidia GPU.

X64 won't provide a major speed boost, actually could even be slower on CPU that have a small CPU cache. No need to wait, you could buy a top notch CPU now Tongue2 I can tell you a 4Ghz modern CPU will provide you a major speed boost.
Reply
#10
Yes unfortunately it's even useless to try OpenGL backend because AMD/AIT made weak drivers for this API. My CPU has 12MB L2 cache if I'm right (no L3/L4).
I can't invest in a total new configuration (haswell/skylake) architecture right now.
I'll wait for kabby lake CPUs to be released. Unfortunately 7nm will take longer to be made
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)