Dynamic Speed Hacks

[EmucraZ]

In PCSX2 speedhacks are designed to improve the virtual speed of the game you play if speed isn't 100%. Speedhacks could be toggled on and off dynamically if speed is below 100% to compensate by excluding frames.

i.e if game falls to 70% set EE to 209 MHz or to 50% which is 150 MHz.

I would defiantly like to know your opinion on this and whether it would be an efficient implementation.

[Blyss Sarania]

There are many things that I can see conflicting with this. For one, the EE hack doesn't help all games, so that would mean it was on for no reason. For two, it can cause problems and false FPS with some games, so that wouldn't help either.

At best it could be made an option that can be toggled on and off, but that's really not more effective than just manually adjusting the EE slider itself. In games that it works with, there is no reason not to just leave it on if you are having trouble maintaining speed.

[EmucraZ]

There are many things that I can see conflicting with this. For one, the EE hack doesn't help all games, so that would mean it was on for no reason. For two, it can cause problems and false FPS with some games, so that wouldn't help either.

At best it could be made an option that can be toggled on and off, but that's really not more effective than just manually adjusting the EE slider itself. In games that it works with, there is no reason not to just leave it on if you are having trouble maintaining speed.

I might just be going towards something slightly different like dynamic frameskipping.

Also yes there would be false fps readings but the point of speed hacks are to increase the VPS even when the framerate is below 60.

[Blyss Sarania]

Do you mean causing frameskipping by lowering the EE clock?

Because I am sure you know that the "frame skipping" proper in PCSX2 causes all kinds of havoc.

But anyway, if it's the first case, it's possibly useful. But still I don't see it being any more useful than what we already have.

[rama]

Oh we'd rather not do this. Blyss' concern is spot on: It's impossible to predict what would help any given game in any scene in it, on all computer hardware combinations.
So it'd be incredibly hacky and it wouldn't work well.
Instead try to set SPU2-X to async mixing, enable the MTVU speedhack and see if that helps already.

[EmucraZ]

Oh we'd rather not do this. Blyss' concern is spot on: It's impossible to predict what would help any given game in any scene in it, on all computer hardware combinations.
So it'd be incredibly hacky and it wouldn't work well.
Instead try to set SPU2-X to async mixing, enable the MTVU speedhack and see if that helps already.

Ok yep I now realise how it would conflict because framerate is the basis for the VPS so thats a shame.

But async mode does seem to keep sound 100% majoity of the time but the only game that has an interesting effect is jak 2 and jak 3. They run at full speed regardless of fps which was petty much the spark for this thread.

[EmucraZ]

Also what would the possibility of increasing the amount of cycles per second for games with an internal framerate of 30 such as sonic heroes?

[Blyss Sarania]

You are talking about overclocking the EE? I've done some preliminary testing with that myself and it only helps if:

The game is uncapped FPS(hardly any)
The game has a cap, but runs at a speed much less than the cap(Again not many).

It also increases the hardware requirements PHENOMENALLY.