Best newer revision for running Tales of the Abyss?
#1
Just wanted some info regarding Tales of the Abyss.

The game is running well. Some slowdown in towns and on field map, and stutters when entering combat, but otherwise full speed.

I recently downloaded a newer revision of PCSX2 (r4866) and enabled MTVU, saw a nice improvement.

Currently the game generally runs at full speed, but there is still occasional slowdown in the music/speech, and stuttering when entering combat. Is there a revision, or specific settings for running this game that would completely eliminate those? If not so be it, but just want to be sure I'm not missing something. Specifically, it can at times slow down as low as 38-40fps in towns, and down to 50 in the field and during scene transitions from black (scene load). Revision 4866 helped a lot, I'm seeing a boost and my EE hasn't gone above 77% since updating (was getting as high as 98% previously, though, again, rarely).

I'm running all check box hacks except fast disc loading. EE and VU hacks are disabled. I tried VU at 1 and 2, and saw a huge boost, and audio completely normalized, but it seemed primarily due to frameskipping or something, and led to crashing. Upping the EE helped at first, but in some areas caused bigger slowdowns so I turned it off. I'm just wondering if a newer revision (looking at the changelog info for r4911 specifically) may provide a bit more boost in performance. If not I can live with it.

EDIT - also, I should add I'm playing in DX9 HW mode. I tried DX 11. Seems to run fine and FMVs are smoother actually, but in-game it causes some weird lighting issues, where "bloom" or "glow" effects seem offset from the object casting the effect. DX9 seems to work fine, however.

My specs:
AMD Athlon II X3 @ 3.2Ghz / 4000Mhz FSB
8 GB DDR3 @ 1333Mhz
ATI Radeon HD 6670 1GB
250 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD @ 3.0GB transfer rate
Windows 7


PS - great work on the emulator folks. I've followed this project off and on since around 0.9.4 and the progress since 0.9.6 (after the long period without updates, and then BAM here's 0.9.7) has been amazing.
AMD Phenom II 965BE @ 3.4Ghz
8 GB DDR3 1333 RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6750
Windows 7 64 bit
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#2
If sound is the only thing that bothers you, you can try using "Async" synchronizing mode in SPU2-X sound plugin, not sure if that works correctly but take in count it may cause the FMVs and other scenes to be... well... async....
I don't remember any stutter going in battles but you could try reducing your internal resolution in GSdx.
Core i5 3570k -- Geforce GTX 670  --  Windows 7 x64
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#3
Eh, the issue is pretty rare, I may just learn to live with it. It seems to be an issue where it briefly slows down below 60 fps for maybe 2 seconds, then back to normal, and the sound issues occur with it. I'd rather leave it alone if a-sync might screw up the cutscenes and make other audio go out of whack.

My internal res in GSDX is only 2x scale. I've tried it at native and toggled around with tex filtering and 8-bit textures, but it didn't make any difference in the areas the issue occurred. getting the 4866 revision with MTVU has helped a lot, so I'll probably just keep an eye out for further revisions.

Regarding the stutter going into battle...well, it only happens when things are already slowed down when the transition is made (EDIT - now that I think about it, it only started happening after I got a full party too, with more characters and enemies onscreen). Since MTVU fixed the problem I'd say over 90%, I'm going to assume it's due to the (until recently) lack of more than 2 core support compounded with the fact that with a Athlon II tri-core @ 3.2Ghz, I'm probably just meeting specs to play this at or close to full speed (sticky recommends 3.4 Ghz w/Athlon II for the emulator).


Out of curiosity, I notice that while my EE can go as high as 77%, and previously before MTVU hack, as high as 98%. However, my GS is rarely above single digits. Average between 7 and 13% maybe, IIRC? What does this mean exactly, and could tweaking anything based on this eliminate issues?

Also, would it make any difference to give the emulator higher priority in task manager?

Thanks.
AMD Phenom II 965BE @ 3.4Ghz
8 GB DDR3 1333 RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6750
Windows 7 64 bit
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#4
Those are not issues. The MTVU speedhack splits the VU1 load from the EE thread so instead of a single heavy EE load (like you were getting before which your CPU just couldn't do any faster) now you get lower EE load and an extra VU load that can be run on other thread (making more use of your multi-core CPU), basically now neither of the threads is too heavy and you can reach full speed easier. GS is another thread that just is not needed much with this game (which is good cause then even dual-core CPU's can make use of the MTVU speedhack since there's enough room for the MTVU thread Tongue2).
Core i5 3570k -- Geforce GTX 670  --  Windows 7 x64
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