So i heard GSdx doesn't like ATI?

[zero29]

first: thanks for your answer, air
second: could you please name one or more of these "unfriendly games"? i would really like to test them myself, especially the handful of 3d exceptions.
third: how are the chances that with future driver updates/further plugin developement the gsdx/ati relationship will get better?

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list
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again: this thread is not about nvidia vs. ati. such lists always depend on the type of benchmark you use, performance in pcsx2 with gsdx surely wasn't part of the testing for that list.

[Sythedragon]

You can't rate a graphics card performance based on "emulation benchmarks"

I was stating the list in a general matter, I'm no fanboy of either company...

[Bositman]

Yes,but the purpose of this thread is not graphics card performance in general but with PCSX2 and especially the slowdowns with some Ati cards in some games so your list doesn't give any info on this matter...
So please post something relevant or don't post at all

[Air]

second: could you please name one or more of these "unfriendly games"? i would really like to test them myself, especially the handful of 3d exceptions.

Final Fantasy 12's intro tutorial.
Digital Devil Saga's opening menu (and much of DDS in game as well, although the impact isn't quite as substantial there)
Disgaea 1&2's Storyboard screens (like when the announcer talks when you first start a new game).
Disgaea 2's character reincarnation screen.
Any Ice spell special effect in Disgaea 1 or 2.

These are ones I know of off the top of my head that are way slower on ATI than on Nvidia. In the case of the last few the scenes still run pretty fast because they're very simple scenes, but the Gsdx cpu usage readout is still waaay higher than it is on a Geforce. I'm also pretty sure Shadow Hearts 1 is even less playable on ATI than on Geforce, although tht one's harder to confirm because it's also very DX10-favorable iirc (ie, I'm not sure how much of it's slowness is ATI and how much is DX9).

But really many games incur some amount of texture transfer botlenecking on ATI. It's only thanks to the fact that the ATIs tend to be better overall raw pixel-pushing performers that they make up for the general bottlenecking they get across most titles in Pcsx2. So in the long run for the majority of titles it's not really a noticeable disadvantage. (that and far more games are still cpu limited anyway)

[elite]

I would like to contribute to this a little - btw hi Air again )
First read http://forums.pcsx2.net/thread-2602-page-4.html thread - it was originally dual vs quad cpu benchmark but later it was little more info about GPU`s too and u will find some useful info.

There used to be slowdowns on ati 3xxx and older series because theyr texture units was weak. then there was RUMOR about 4xxx series offloading too much into cpu. My radeon 3870 really have about half speed of texture fillrate than say nvidia 8800gt, but I found that from 4xxx this got better. Because this, I did found that games like rogue galaxy, ff12 etc.. will work full speed on my card only on "native" internal resolution, otherwise they can go to even 1/2 speed when on 1600x1200. 1024x1024 was still pretty ok with only very little slowdowns sometimes in specific games >>

Air, I found that FF12 when on 1600x1200, in beginning that cutscene when u get into doors where are bodies murdered, emu slowed down to near-FREEZE on m y 3870. When I lowered internal rez. to native, it was full 60fps with fps-limiter on, on 1024x1024 it was full fps with very short slowdown to about 50+fps. somebody with nvidia and same spec can go figure to compare...

As for driver offloading to CPU, some of latest catalyst drivers had in release note text claiming that "cpu intensive games will run quicker/better now..", which could be just this problem solved... maybe.

Otherwise, as from my previous link, my 3870 was lagging behind gtx-260 10fps(+- 62 vs 72) in xenosaga I in 1920x1200 internal rez., which we could consider texture heavy. New ati`s have stronger tmu`s, drivers was probably resolved too, and thus until somebody show us NEW benchmark with new gpu`s and drivers, I do believe these rumors about ati are past.

[seinfeldx]

that would be great, 4770 seems like a awesome deal for pc games if it gets the same fps as GTS250 on pcsx2 then it would own nvidia, i am just hoping for nvidia to lower prices so ati does that same and it gets to <=85€.

[PsychoMike]

source of the quotes: http://forums.pcsx2.net/thread-6120.html

Amd/Ati is currently a bad choice for pcsx2/GSdx. It doesn't matter how much "power" the vga card has compared to the ps2's gs.
All that matters right now is that some operations GSdx does are very slow on ATI hardware.
Same for the cpu really. It has 2 cores, kinda nice clockspeed and all. Still it's lacking in SSE performance, and that makes it perform very bad in pcsx2.

It means that some code path GSdx uses is fast on nvidia cards and slow on ati cards,so most probably a driver issue from the part of Ati. So I guess you could call it a defect preventing the ati cards to use their true potential since they perform way worse than their nvidia counterparts with relatively same specs.

i would really like to hear more about this issue. e.g. what are the code parts responsible for which are slower on ati cards? does it apply to dx9 or dx10 performance or both? does it mean that the emulation speed is generally lower with an ati card or are just scenes or games with e.g. more complex effects affected? and is the exact reason for it known, so that i may send ati an email to request a fix or better driver support?

tia

p.s.: my games run fine on my rig, ffx is almost fullspeed even @ 3840x2160 without any speedhacks, i'm just curious.

You know i agree. I upgraded my radeon X850 pro to a Saphire Radeon HD3850 512MB and the performance didn't make much of a difference for the most part-- i think i gained 7 fps. I even overclocked it to 810/1028 using ati tray tools and still no difference
I really wanna see the ATI cards with better support for GSDX

---

It's because Gabest doesn't have an ATI to test out his code. MAYBE if we could somehow donate him money, or an hd4xxx itself, maybe he could test the code with it.

I doubt an old x1600 AGP works, and well, I can't donate it anyways
But I think I can donate money, just not much. Although the problem is not with every card. My hd4870 runs the same as with some of the latest nvidia cards (i think), so, dunno :/

I love your idea

[zero29]

Final Fantasy 12's intro tutorial.
Digital Devil Saga's opening menu (and much of DDS in game as well, although the impact isn't quite as substantial there)
Disgaea 1&2's Storyboard screens (like when the announcer talks when you first start a new game).
Disgaea 2's character reincarnation screen.
Any Ice spell special effect in Disgaea 1 or 2.
...

don't have any dds or disgaea games, so i tried ff12 @ 1920x1080. the tutorial seems to run fine at 60fps all the way, only two very short drops to 40-50 fps. if that is all i'm about to see from this bottleneck, then i'm fine with it (which doesn't mean that i don't expect further improvements )

[elite]

U see I told u it was because weak TMU`s in older cards - and maybe older drivers haha
If u play FF12 at specs u have in your sig., which mean cpu at only 3ghz especialy, then u get really great fps in that game. I doub nvidia would do any better. There are no "hidden" or nvidia specific functions in gsdx as far as I know, plugin use standard DirectX API - in which also ATI excel. It most likely work the way it extract textures on fly which are generated by emu and then applying them on objects, thats why it would use DX API that use TMU`s and not some procedural shaders. I dont see how else it could work to not use TMU`s so much - for emulator. ATI had simply TMU:shaders ratio diff., long time already, nvidia used 1:1, then 1:2, now in g200 1:3 and upcoming cards are supposed to be 1:4. U can see for example g9x series have generally bigger texture fillrate than gt200: gts-250 47gt/s vs gtx-260 37gt/s >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_...200_Series (gts-250 is NOT gt200 chip!)

[theway]

ironic considering the PS2 has an ATI GPU.

You are wrong

PS2 doesn't use ATI nor Nvidia GPU