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Full Version: Persona 3 And 4 - Certain enemies groups slow down game
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In both Persona 3 and 4, I have noticed that fighting certain groups of enemies causes the FPS to drop 10-15 points

All the enemies in question are usually whitish or crystalline in appearance (like the Emperor Beetles in the final block of Tartarus in P3 FES and their counterparts in the final dungeon in Persona 4), and the FPS only starts crapping out when you fighting three of these types of colored enemies.

In fact, ANY enemy of this color arrangement in groups of three starts causing FPS lag.

It seems to be a rendering issue graphics wise, from what I can tell, since I have no speedhacks on, and below are my current settings

PCSX2 Version: 0.9.8 (r4600)

Hardware:

Windows 7 64 bit
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 3.06 GHz
Ati Radeon HD 5450 1 GB
3 GB DDR3 800 Mhz RAM

Plugins:

GSDX 4600 SSSE3 (Direct X 11 Hardware)
SPU-X (Async On, which seems to negate music slowdown whenever this FPS problem occurs with no negative consequences when FPS is normal)


Games in Question:

Persona 3 FES / Persona 4 (NTSC-U)


Note: I tested it in both Direct X 11 Software and Hardware, and as long as you don't move, the FPS is okay in Software, but drops whenever anyone attacks.

In Hardware it stays around 50 FPS, and it plays mostly okay aside from the slowdown until you kill one of the enemies, then it goes back to 60 FPS.

I have no idea if this a bug, a flaw in the emulation, or if my hardware sucks, but since I've been able to play both Persona 3 FES and 4 near flawlessly save for a few areas that drop into the 50 FPS area (certain Full Moon bosses like the Strength/Fortune Boss in P3 FES, and the Naoto boss fight and dungeon entrance in Persona 4), I'm disinclined to believe my hardware sucks, but if anyone can prove me wrong or inform me just what the deal is, I'm willing to listen.

P.S. - I've noticed this affect groups of three. Fighting four of these types of enemies does not seem to cause a problem.










Is it a bug? Nah, it's just probably some effect that is demanding in the CPU side of the plugins.
Does your hardware suck? Nah, you can keep playable FPS as you mentioned but it's just not enough for full speed all the time.

Your hardware is just not enough when rendering whatever special effect those enemies may be doing, if you want you can try the frameskip feature (shift+F4) which should lower the GS slowdown a lot, won't be smooth tho.

I have never played any Persona game, but your issue is normal. It happens in all games. In small room with a few objects, the emulation speed is fast, and in large area with many things such as trees, rocks, shadow... the framerate drop drawmatically. Your system nearly meets the minimum requirement for PCSX2, but some games may require very high end hardware. I do not play Persona, so I cannot tell if your hardware is sufficient.
Set gsdx plugin at native res because your gpu is weak. That is the most problem for playing those game.
Odd. I once had an ATI Radeon 4670, and I had the exact same problem on the same setup, and I was told that was a vastly better graphics card.

Also, I tried setting things to native resolution.

Strangely enough, my FPS problem got worse. I actually had to tweak it to slightly higher than native resolution to get it to hang somewhere in the 50-54 FPS region at worst.

P.S. - The problem is not universal. It's only when the camera is set directly in front of three enemies behind the protagonists back does the problem get bad. Also, in earlier builds of PCSX2 (official 0.9.6 and 0.9.7), the problem was worse, dropping as low as a nightmarish 25 FPS a second in 0.9.6, and improved somewhere to the 30-low 40's in 0.9.7.

Hence why I'm still more inclined to believe its imperfect emulation (that is slowly getting better as new PCSX2 builds come out)
I don't think there's anything like perfect emulation yet Tongue
Update: I found out it DOES affect some groups of four whitish crystalline looking enemies (like the Vehement Idols in the Monad block of Tartarus in P3 FES), but again, the problem is the same as before:

As long as the camera is looking at scene from a certain angle, the FPS drops.
Otherwise, if one of the enemies dies or the scene is viewed from any other camera angle (like when you use an area attack or spell), the scene looks fine.

For some reason, it seems like PCSX2 seems to render these particular scenes badly every single time without fail, which is what has me convinced the emulation is stumbling badly trying to process these parts correctly.

P.S. - As it stands, even at absolute worst the parts in question are still playable (especially thanks to the Asynchronous SPU tweak that keeps the music nice and steady), just noticably slower at certain gameplay angles, but I guess what I'm wondering is if this an emulation issue and thus unfixable at present by twiddling with settings.

Besides, I did have a far nicer graphics card in my computer at one point and I've played this game at roughly the same speed on an AMD Athlon Dual Core that was somewhat slower than my current processor, so I seriously doubt that getting better hardware is going to solve things, since I heard people with nicer computers than mine have had many of the same problems in certain areas (like the Northern Shopping District in Persona 4 during certain parts of the game) regardless of how nice their computers are.



Can you put a screenshot of what you consider "badly" rendered? It could just be the techniques the developers use that happen to be very demanding on the hardware, which in turn our emulator will struggle with, it isnt necessarily bad emulation unless it looks screwed.
(09-01-2011, 12:35 PM)Rpgingmaster Wrote: [ -> ]Update: I found out it DOES affect some groups of four whitish crystalline looking enemies (like the Vehement Idols in the Monad block of Tartarus in P3 FES), but again, the problem is the same as before:

As long as the camera is looking at scene from a certain angle, the FPS drops.
Otherwise, if one of the enemies dies or the scene is viewed from any other camera angle (like when you use an area attack or spell), the scene looks fine.

For some reason, it seems like PCSX2 seems to render these particular scenes badly every single time without fail, which is what has me convinced the emulation is stumbling badly trying to process these parts correctly.

P.S. - As it stands, even at absolute worst the parts in question are still playable (especially thanks to the Asynchronous SPU tweak that keeps the music nice and steady), just noticably slower at certain gameplay angles, but I guess what I'm wondering is if this an emulation issue and thus unfixable at present by twiddling with settings.

Besides, I did have a far nicer graphics card in my computer at one point and I've played this game at roughly the same speed on an AMD Athlon Dual Core that was somewhat slower than my current processor, so I seriously doubt that getting better hardware is going to solve things, since I heard people with nicer computers than mine have had many of the same problems in certain areas (like the Northern Shopping District in Persona 4 during certain parts of the game) regardless of how nice their computers are.

I think is your video setting's problem.

Try set your VU0 and VU1 at the VUs section to superVU Recompiler [legacy]

Round Mode to Chop/Zero and Clamping Mode to Normal at both VUs and EE/IOP

I also encounter this section in my comp before... the old ones. My old ones is Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz with some old motherboard. But once i've change to a new ones, (which i'm using is AMD) everything runs smooth but not the shinny enemy or the enemy that you've mention.

If still couldn't run well, try to download the new r4870 or above, that should do the trick. If not , then go for speed hack
I'm pretty sure it's the usual slowness where the GS% in game window reaches ~90%, in that case there's not much to be done other than frameskip (and "VU cycle stealing" maybe but in this case it will just give fake FPS).

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