optimizing Persona 4 to it's very best

[tabasket]

Well i only got the glitch when I had all of the flag setting and over/underflow speed hacks checked, so anyone not getting it probably has at least one of those 5 turned off.

And about being able to talk about the alternative builds, at least now people can talk freely about some kind of new pcsx2 version other than 9.4

[Krakatos]

Well, once again I must say that there is a difference between unofficial build as in, compiled from svn and unofficial as is, modified by someone.
As said, if you compile by svn, you can talk about the build and even post bug reports about it.

But now, let's take a look at those "modified, faster builds". Let's make ourselves clear, there's really no such thing. Unless there's someone out there that knows way more than the developers of pcsx2, and forgive me if I am frank but I highly doubt so. A modified build is just the work of someone who activated IN the build some hacks.
Like, a "modified" build will just have a few hacks activated by default. For example it might have the Denormals are Zero and x3 ee/iop sync hacks always active. Of course, unexperienced people will think it's a "faster, l33t3r" build. But in truth you can obtain the very same speed by activating those 2 hacks in your normal pcsx2 playground build.
Or worse yet, there are some unofficial builds out there who activate even worse hacks, which I assure have already been thought by the team, but have been discarded because of.. errrr... extreme consequences.

So you have a build with some hacks active by default, but they are always active so you think it's faster. Now apart from the fact that as said it's not really true, this is really dangerous. First, you can't turn off those hacks, with the obvious consequences on compatibility. And second you download a file compiled by who knows where, and who know how. It could contain malware for all we know. Should we allow talking about that? Obviously not, how long before someone actually reports a bug using such a build? And that would result in us chasing an unexistant bug....

Well I hope I was clear...
End of the story, you want to use such builds? Feel free, but there will be no talking about that here.

[antipunt]

"But in truth you can obtain the very same speed by activating those 2 hacks in your normal pcsx2 playground build."

Krakatos, I agree with you on many points, especially in CONTEXT TO the present day. So in a way I should just let things be I guess. I totally see why irresponble people talking about the weirder builds could get the forum in a lot of gunk...

You were right about Denormal are Zero too. That was the 'key' to unlocking the true potential of P3.

I think the thing that needs to be made clear is that BEFORE pcsx2 playground was even released, there was a HUGE period of time in the old forums where discussion was STILL forbidden. And at this time, none of the official-ish builds had DAZ in them, so getting this speed boost was impossible, unless you discussed the alternative builds. It was then that a member (i think ramas), helped me find the 389 build, and after that I was able to enjoy a HUGE speed increase. Note at this time, the pcsx2 playground wasn't out. In fact, it wouldn't be for a LONG time. But people still forbade discussion about alternative builds. In this case, it would've condemned me to not being able to play P3 until pcsx2 playground came out, which was a LONG time after

However, now that pcsx2 playground is out, I guess you're right, there's no point in talking about these modified builds ANYMORE.

again, thanks for being discreet about this matter. In agreement with you, I suppose there is no longer any need to talk about this further (with the release of the very useful, Pcsx2 playground). However, I just wanted to let you know where I was coming from. In the PAST, alternative builds were the ONLY way to get Persona 3 FES to 60fps in battles, and I'm just really thankful that Rama 'shared the wealth of information', allowing me to enjoy the emulator. to follow in his/her example, I wanted to do the same for all of us!

--however, now, it is a thing of the past. I totally see now why talking about alternative builds is more harmful than good.....I can imagine a lot of silly people posting bug reports about harmful versions and making things worse for the whole of us....I guess there's two sides to everything. But NOW, only one side, since Pcsx2 playground has every speed hack in it

[s2d4]

Here's my settings to get about 60fps all the time:

Cpu Config:
- Enable all EERec, VU0rec, VU1rec, MTGS
- Use VU Skip, with detailed settings as follows:
* Custom FPS: 60
* Skip Frames when slower than: 55
* Consecutive Frames before skipping: 0, and this *must* be 0, or your game will stutter like hell.
* Consecutive Frames to skip: All right, this and the previous value are the most important settings. Currently I use 8, but if 4 is enough for you, then it'll suffice. I notice that if I use another number that is not divisible by four, the screen will blink like hell.

Custom FPS value can be any number beyond 60 as long as it is bigger number than the "skip frames when slower than" value.

There's no need to use Gamefixes and Patches.
Stable settings is enough for Speed Hacks.
Remember to use Chop/Zero in EE Recs Roundmode settings, otherwise the game will loop endlessly in battles.

With those sets, in big slowdown places like some boss battles or junes foodcourt, there will be ghost effects but the fps should be all right. Have fun, and if you guys have improvements, I'd like to know too

[antipunt]

thx for the input; will eventually try it out! personally I haven't had the best of luck with VU skip, however..

[Thrive]

The best solution I've come up with so far:

When I'm in town, I use the GSdx 1.4 plugin. Why 1.4? Well, GSdx is much faster than ZeroGS for me (I get a constant 60 fps in town without frameskip, except in that one spot in the shopping district where it hovers around 50.), as well as less-glitchy than ZeroGS..plus the 1.4 version of GSdx specifically doesn't give me the annoying texture glitching the newer versions of GSdx do. I just have frame limit enabled when I'm in town, because the frameskip options do not play well with GSdx (unless I'm missing something?)

Now, when I enter the TV (battle areas), I get framerate problems in combat, so I actually switch over to the ZeroGS plugin and enable VU Skip. This makes the overall experience much better as the game runs at normal speed, instead of slowmo, though there are minor graphical glitches, and the rendering is somewhat jerky.

Yeah, it's a minor hassle to switch between plugins every few in-game days, but it only takes a few seconds..

A couple weird things I've noticed with GSdx in combat scenes: Even with the same enemies (i.e. same scene complexity) battles are sometimes near full-speed (~55 fps) with all versions of GSdx, but the very next battle, with the very same enemies, the framerate can seemingly-randomly drop in to the 30-40 range and stay there. I also noticed that when the camera switches to behind the player character (to select actions,) and that full-screen filtering effect is enabled, the framerate sometimes drops significantly (also seems somewhat random.)

(Running on a [email protected], GSdx running in DirectX10, speedhacks="speed", Chop/Zero for both roundmodes)

[antipunt]

for the most part I have noticed similar to what you said.

However, I don't really mind the lag in battles anymore, because for some reason, after the first dungeon, the lag has been much less pronounced! I can't really verify this for everyone, but for some reason the first dungeon was by far the laggiest out of all of them. With slowdowns mainly due to one small part of the south-market and less frequently in battles, the game is far more tolerable! however...I don't know if it will stay this way.. it might get worse with another dungeon further down the road again..

*note: I also prefer limit over VU skip, because I'd rather have it get a little choppy than get all video-jumbly. This might be biased to the fact that I don't experience that much lag anymore

[idaten]

Posting in this thread rather than make a new one.

Apart from slowdowns in the common areas of the town district and the bird boss fight, the game runs well.

I recently got a new 8400 to see what speed would be required to run those slow scenes at constant 60 fps, so that people can get a rough idea of the cpu limitations.

I currently run my 8400 at 4.05ghz, and the slow scenes are running at 60fps smoothly.

I did try at 3.6ghz but there was minor slowdown (50-55fps) in those particular scenes. I havent played long enough to give an accurate judgement, but it seems like 4ghz will be plenty for those that can overclock that high.

I have an attached picture of the shopping district / road thingy. Apart from the weird graphical issues with gdsx, it runs perfect.

edit : sorry i forgot to add, i use the stable settings on speed hacks and DaZ, etc. Id imagine it would run even faster with some speed hacks turned on.

[antipunt]

yea dood ;P, that kinda uber-overclocking is probably doing a lot for you. (especially since I don't overclock my 8400 cause I'm too noob)

also yes, the DAZ. its a make it or break it kinda situation, cause its so necessary.

I've also found (like you) that surprisingly, after the bird-fight and its dungeon, the game's fps starts to increase readily (in that other areas sometimes its so smooth that its over 60fps). This is a huge relief for many of us I'm sure. After getting to these points, the game started to run amazingly well. The lag stopped bothering me cause it was so minor (limited safely to that one part of town and also some random enemies limited to dungeons of course)

still, the lag is sporadically throughout the dungeons (though not severe). I guess overclocking an 8400 would solve those problems, its nice to know.

[Sheik]

Any idea how to fix the flickering?