optimizing Persona 4 to it's very best
#1
Music 
*NOTE: for those ahead in the game, please NO SPOILERS for newbies or those who are behind!
~
Hey so, I wanted to kind of gather most of the P4 players together to see what the 'absolute best' settings are for this game. Before when I played P3, apparently there were certain options or builds that boosted FPS quite a bit, and I wanted to get us all on the same track for this game as well.

This is ESPECIALLY cool, because now the Alternative Builds are supported! so I think we should do this asap.

This is MY optimum experience of the game; feel free to 'top mine' if you feel you have something that makes the game more enjoyable or boost FPS:
~

With cutscenes and dialogue I have constant 60fps. Fps will dip sharply, however, at certain bosses, notably at the beginning (like the 'flying bird' one).

The most pronounced (relatively unacceptable) slowdown I experience are:

#1. In the Shopping District of Town
#2. In random battles

And by random battles, I mean literally RANDOM battles. Some battles will work fine but others will lag un-bear-ably. I do a little 'ritual' everytime I play that seems to get rid of thise lag, but I think its mostly placebo-effect. I RESET (redo) my speed hacks and cpu settings to limit, before entering the game, everytime. I don't have any real evidence of this 'doing anything' really.

Settings: Pcsx2 Build 389 with Speeds hacks #1, 2, and 4 enabled (4 being DAZ-denormal are zero). I also check the last hack (for Persona, or so it says)

CPU-dualcore options all checked, and set to 'limit'

I didn't have to do anything for 'hanging'; maybe my emulator version already fixed that prior.

Alrite guys, lets see if anyone can minimize those slowdowns!
3.0ghz E8400 Dual Core Processor
4 Gigs Corsair DDR2 RAM
(2x)8800GT SLI (dual cards)
Ninja

Sponsored links

#2
hey im wondering the same thing as well. Ive tried like 8 different builds, and like every combination of speedhacks and what not and i still cant get fluent fps in battle. My laptop can play crysis full specs so this should be no problem. i get 60 fps everywhere besides shop district and battles
#3
Emulation of P4 is way harder job than made Crysis. First of all, Full speed in win -- 25FPS vs 60 for P4. Second. the number of floating-point arithmetic op's for emulator is much bigger (simple addition in Playstation 2 become a bunch of code). And code optimization in native architecture is always better.
#4
Zeydlitz has it right.

I've tried many combinations of speedhack changes, rounding changes (some of which break the game) and they have no effect. Changing the graphical settings has 0 effect no matter what resolution I set it to, meaning the CPU is the bottleneck. Probably have to wait for a specifically optimized version of PCSX2 or maybe overclock your E8400 even. That CPU of yours can go quite far, and you will see a big fps boost. I did a modest overclock of ~390mhz on my CPU, and it gave me an extra 4 FPS-- a huge difference where this is concerned.

I also have VU skip set to 0/40/0/4. It improves my game, but things still feel sluggish.
PCSX2 SVN-563 VTLB // C2E QX6850 @ 3.38ghz, Radeon HD 4850 512mb, 8gb DDR2-1000, Velociraptor 10000rpm 300gb, Vista Business x86-64, XB360 Wired Controller
#5
yea I agree with you guys; right now, it may be VERY difficult, if not impossible to streamlike P4 likewise to P3. The CPU bottleneck definitely seems to be a culprit.

That seems to be the consensus for now; we'll see if any breakthroughs are made.

and you're totally right about the overclocking. I think I may need to stay away from it though unfortunately, just b/c I'm not pro-stuff and I dun wanna fry anything ^_^;
3.0ghz E8400 Dual Core Processor
4 Gigs Corsair DDR2 RAM
(2x)8800GT SLI (dual cards)
Ninja
#6
If your looking to speed up persona 4, check the 'flush to zero' and 'denormals are zero' options under VU Rec in the Advanced window to give, what seemed to me, a noticeable speed up.
It says that it may break the game, but for me it has yet to do so.
I'd also suggest keeping VU skip on (i use default 0/0/0/0) cus even though it can make the game look strange, it helps the speed and keeps the music/voices from getting annoyingly slow.

On another note, there was a graphics glitch that is fixible by turning off a couple of speed hacks.

The glitch occurs in some spots where you have the option to leave the area, one place you might notice this is in the southern shopping district.
In the upper part of the southern district, where you would get the option to move to the northern district, is where the glitch would occur.
What happens is that when you walk into that corner, the screen completely changes so you don't know where your going, you can work around it and move back so it goes away, but it's annoying/easy to fix anyway.

To fix this: just turn off the 'flag setting' speed hacks. I also tried keeping the flag settings on and instead, turning off the over/underflow hacks, which also worked for some reason.
So it seems you can have either sets of options off and it'll be fine, but you cant have them all on or else you get the glitch.
Intel C2D [email protected] | 2GB DDR2@800Mhz | NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX 512MB | Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Chipset | XP Pro SP3 | SuperPI 1.5-1m in 15.5s
Intel C2D [email protected] | 2GB DDR2@665MHz | 2xSLI NVIDIA GeForceGo 7950GTX 512MB | XP Pro SP3 | Alienware Laptop | SuperPI 1.5-1m in 23s
#7
Let's see to clear out a few misunderstandings Smile

(12-16-2008, 09:58 PM)antipunt Wrote: This is ESPECIALLY cool, because now the Alternative Builds are supported! so I think we should do this asap.

We support only our own official releases. We allow talking and bug reports about compiled version from our svn repository, but we do not support them.

We do not support nor allow talking about modified, or like you said altered, versions of Pcsx2 Playground and we definitely do not allow linking.

(12-17-2008, 12:58 AM)apparition Wrote: I've tried many combinations of speedhack changes, rounding changes (some of which break the game) and they have no effect.
Changing the rounding mode should have absolutely no impact on speed, ever.

Aside from this, the game seem to be cpu limited at the moment.
#8
It's not exactly correct. Having the same rounding mode for EE and VU give bonus to LDMXCSR operand. It's between 0.1-1% of operations.
#9
(12-17-2008, 02:21 AM)Zeydlitz Wrote: It's not exactly correct. Having the same rounding mode for EE and VU give bonus to LDMXCSR operand. It's between 0.1-1% of operations.

Which, considering 60 fps speed, is what. Like, 0.6 fps gain max? In my dictionary, that means absolutely no speed change, ever.
#10
oh oops *slaps forehead

my bad about the 'alternative build' thingy ( I only recently found out what 'pcsx2 playground' means..)

but still, thx all for the info. @tabasket, I never really encountered that glitch you're talking of. The only graphical glitches I get are the colory floors that also appeared in P3.

Flush to zero is definitely new to me. But regarding VU skip, i've tried it before and it gets my game really jumbly (like you said). I experience it much more stable on 'limit'.

@krakatos: thank you for being very civil about explaining the rules to me Wink . But if I may ask rather kindly, why is it that the pcsx2 team makes it a rule to not talk about unofficial builds? It seems to me it'd be fair to not allow linking (its dangerous). But why forbid conversation? This is especially personal for me b/c in the past on the old forum, it was only because someone mentioned an unofficial build to me that I was able to double my fps in Persona 3. Without their help, I would've never been able to enjoy the game
3.0ghz E8400 Dual Core Processor
4 Gigs Corsair DDR2 RAM
(2x)8800GT SLI (dual cards)
Ninja




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)