Thanks & GMA 4500 Configuration Guide
#1
My sincere thanks go to all PCSX2 team members who managed to make the emulator so good. Thank you.

I was very happy and impressed with the latest PCSX2 release (being able to run at my laptop) and decided to post a small guide here. I think it will be helpful for people with GMA 4500 laptops as there are many of them with that chip. Also, it covers small controls' problem.

First, read my specs, they are a bit of intriguing :-)
— Intel Celeron 1.66 GHz (but two cores :-), T1600 model;
— Integrated Intel GMA 4500 MHD (no self memory, shared with system);
— 2 GB of RAM (phew).

I always thought the above is a dead end for PS2 emulation, but it seems miracles happen sometimes. So here are the settings I use.

Important
UPDATE your Intel 4500 drivers to the latest. There was a new release from Intel recently which fixes many game problems and boosts performance noticeably.

General Emulation Settings
— All standard EE/IOP;
— Default VUs;
— Default GS (disabled frame skipping);
— GS Window.
I personally like to play in window. Yes, with translucent Aero windows and good game-being-played related wallpaper it's sort of even nicer atmosphere than fullscreen :-) Also, you can set a little lower resolution for window to get a little FPS boost. Having a 16:9 display, I do this: 16:9 aspect ratio, 1024×567 window size (desktop being 1366×768), disable window resize border (to not alter the configured size accidently);
— Enable speed hacks. INTC Spin, Wait Loop and mVU Flag hacks are enabled. The rest is default / disabled.
— Game fixes are not adjusted.

Plugins Window
Precisely as here, on the screenshot:
[Image: pcsx2plugslist.png]

GSDX9 Graphics
Precisely as here, on the screenshot:
[Image: pcsx2gsdx9.png]

The ZeroGS OpenGL plugin won't work for you — GMA 4500 has incomplete OpenGL2 implementation, use Direct3D plugins only.

LilyPad Controls
— First, you do not want Windows Messaging. It doesn't allow more than two keys pressed simulatenously. Enable DirectInput for keyboard, disable mouse and uncheck everything related to it. Mouse didn't work for me in LilyPad. See next screenshot for the rest:
[Image: pcsx2input.png]

— Second are controls themselves. If you play only with keyboard like me, then these settings should be convenient for you and more or less compatible with most games:
[Image: pcsx2pad.png]

The above enables movement in games using analog stick instead of D-Pad. Still, the config remains convenient for the rest of using numpad keys (4, 8, 5, 6) for D-Pad.

SPU2 Sound
Pretty standard, with latency set to 145. XAudio2 produces best quality for me.

CD/DVD
I disabled CD/DVD plugin. Use only built-in ISO driver with your game images to ensure maximum possible speed.

With above configuration I am able to get 30-60 FPS in FF X, FF XII and SH: Origins with no glitches, i.e. speed isn't good all the time, but playable and the emulation itself is very stable. These are the only PS2 games I care about. More resource demanding games won't run on such speeds, if at all. But you shouldn't complain because 45 FPS with such hardware specs are already a big surprise.

Now, if only I could get stable 45 FPS all the time instead of usual 35, I would be in PS2 emulation heaven. Please tell me if you know more ways of squeezing FPS out of Intel 4500. Any smart config tricks, OS tricks, etc. I hope there is still some room for optimizing emulator for GMA 4500 and I hope developers will figure it out.

                   

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#2
(10-11-2010, 06:12 PM)Garnet Wrote: — Enable speed hacks. INTC Spin, Wait Loop and mVU Flag hacks are enabled. The rest is default / disabled.

Have you tried using the EE Cyclerate or VU Cycle Stealing?
#3
(10-11-2010, 11:13 PM)Rezard Wrote: Have you tried using the EE Cyclerate or VU Cycle Stealing?

Thanks. I thought, looking at their red color, they would be too unstable.

I boosted EE & VU cycling to 33% & 25% respectively. Also, I switched from time stretch to asynchronous mix in SPU2 plugin settings.

Adjusted PCSX2 process priority to high and now SH: Origins performs noticeably faster, around 8-10 FPS added. A little speedup in FF X, but not as noticeable as in Origins. The most important thing is that it's all playable and enjoyable :-)

By the way, one can notice that I'm using DirectX 9 in GSDX, while Intel 4500 is actually capable of 10th. That's because DirectX 10 in this plugin gives me this:
[Image: pcsx2gsbug.png]

That's no matter enabled speedhacks or not, occurs only on character models. With DirectX 9 it's always clean.

Shoud I report somewhere?
#4
If anyone, report it to Intel. They've got pretty bad DirectX, OpenGL and OpenGL2 support.
#5
Integrated Intel graphics have never been good at DX10 (or opengl for that matter) as far as I know, you're actually lucky it doesn't just crash when you use it.
Core i5 3570k -- Geforce GTX 670  --  Windows 7 x64
#6
I thought Intel got only OpenGL 2 messed up.

Good it works in DirectX 9 with no flaws then.

Little hope it'll get eventually fixed with better drivers.
#7
SSSE3 better than SSE41 ?
#8
No, SSE4 is the fastest one of them all
[Image: newsig.jpg]
#9
(10-13-2010, 06:03 PM)ibm Wrote: SSSE3 better than SSE41?
No, it's my laptop CPU capable only up to SSE3 inclusive.




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