Best settings for XenoSaga?

[Mkilbride]

So in about late 2008, I started playing XenoSaga on PCSX2, I made it a few hours in, but I fought a really tough boss...and at like 20FPS. I pretty much couldn't play past that. It was going to be a long fight, and at 20FPS...it'd be like 3x as long....so I just gave up, in hopes for the future PCSX2.

However, there has been thousands of revisions since then, and major breakthroughs. Recently, the new 3rd core one excited me, and I tried it in a few games, and whooo, it had upped my FPS noticably. For a common example, Final Fantasy X, I had the occasional slow down, like 50FPS or so suddenly. With this, I can rock 80+ fps in the parts where I got 50FPS before and like 130FPS in the parts were I had like 100FPs before, so I saw a nice increase.

So naturally, I was very excited, I mean, XenoSaga was CPU limited, not GPU. This would help my CPU bottleneck immensely...however, it seems the new option actually...slows the game from about 70-75FPS down to 39-43FPS. Which is odd, because in either setting, it doesn't hit 99% GPU usage or CPU, just 60% or so, but I did read about in games that are GPU limited, it would slow the game down or so, which I find odd, as in no way was XenoSaga GPU limited for me, before hand, it was CPU.

So I was wondering, with these awesome latest revisions, what should I check? I was going to just basically use all speed hacks, minus the 3rd core, + DX11 GDsx, and whatnot, but are there any specifics I need? Some games seem to respond better in DX9, rarely though, and some like different clamping modes and the like.

My rig is pretty much the same as my sig, except my GTX280 was replaced by a GTX470.

[miseru99]

If I remember what Squall wrote - mtvu is a speedup for this game only on sandy bridge and gives slow downs on anything slower/older. Through if you have 70+ fps without, that's not a problem?
Unless you have slowdowns still, but if you do and EE/GS doesn't reach 100% then try native res or switching to software mode(F9). Generally Xenosaga(at least 1 for sure) can be a *censored* when it comes to hardware mode. This game is one of the least graphically demanding 3D games and easily run in software mode at full speed without any powerfull hardware, but some bigger objects like gears and few scenes can make it crawl in hardware. From what I read about it ages ago it's caused how GSdx tries to use DX, soo probably not much difference for this game how nice your GPU is.

[Mkilbride]

Software mod is ugly as *****, but yeah.

Well, that's fine, I can wait awhile, I suppose. I plan to rebuild my rig in a month or so pretty much. My Q6600 is lovable, but old, compared to newer architecture. 70+FPS in the intro scene, which is pretty much what I remember, later on though, FPS can plummet, so yeah.

Mtvu helped me in so many other games, I guess I kinda forgot reality and thought it was the answer to all my PS2 emulation problems...I know it isn't, but I somehow wanted it to be.

Thanks though.

[Shadow Lady]

Xenosaga's slowdown comes mostly from the GS plugin and in cases like that MTVU is known to cause problems, only real way to get speedups is from enabling frameskip or using software mode but you don't want that

[Squall Leonhart]

you want to be pushing 4.2Ghz+ to run this playable on a Core 2
3.5 is ok on a i7.

[tuanming]

Maybe for his Q6600, it's a totally different on my system. Easily 60+ fps and beyond on Epsiode II and III. Though, I only tested it only in the early scenes. However, there was a slight hiccup during the transitioning from battle to in-game; the flashing of mech bogs down the fps below 60 fps for a second or two in Episode II.

[Squall Leonhart]

Easily 60+ fps and beyond on Epsiode II and III.

2 and 3 aren't CPU limited.

[Mkilbride]

Ah man, why couldn't 1 be like that also? Alas, I'll have to wait a couple months until I build my new rig.