Emulation speed dropped?

[Devan]

I have a slight problem with my Pcx2 emu: The emulation speed dropped for all my games, suddenly and for no discernable reason. Turbo will no longer speed up to 100-120 fps (Which I use for grinding and long trips across a world map) and normal fps went from 60 (When limited) to a 45-ish, which makes the games sluggish. I've managed to barely scrape back up to 55-60fps via speedhacks, but my inability to use turbo persists. Any idea what could be the reason? perhaps I accidentally pressed a combination of buttons that changed the settings and slowed it down drastically, I'm not sure. If anyone has an idea how to fix this problem, it would be much appreciated!


Thanks in advance,


Devan

[Koji]

The only thing you could have pressed that would have caused a significant slow down would be turning software mode on (F9)

The only other options that could have that dramatic of an impact would have been turning on synchronized MT, or disabling multicore use all together. I'd look to something else hogging your system resources.

[Devan]

Neither software mode synchronized MT or disabled multicore seemed to be the culpurit- but a idle task which used up a CPU of 90-99%...! damn. I didn't notice that yesterday. I'm pretty certain that's a bad sign :/ I don't think anyone knows how to fix that? I just ran my antivirus yesterday, something like this is unexpected :/

Edit: I've heared of a problem that could be the case for me: The PC reverting to PIO mode from DMA due to faulty cables etc. If anyone knows how to change this on windows 7, that'd be awesome

[refraction]

That should only affect windows speed and loading the game, ingame speed should be unaffected. If I were you id set all my pcsx2 settings back to default (delete the ini folder)

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

The problem of reverting to PIO mode was "common" to me once when still using XP and motherboard with Nvidia chipset (actually one among many of the problems I had with HDs at the time).

From Win7 and up it did not happen but I use AHCI instead Sata IDE native so I'm not sure if Win7 is vulnerable to the issue as well.

Anyway, you can try some workaround but only after making sure it is a case of reversion to PIO, that is easy to verify because All and Every access to the affected driver will put the CPU at high load and effectively slow the whole system to a crawl due to constant interrupts.

If it's the case, the "device manager" will show it at the Ata channel for the device (PIO instead DMA).

So, and only so you should attempt reinstalling the ATA channel drivers, physically reinserting the cable both at the disc and mobo connectors and possibly attempting to change it to another SATA connector at the mobo.

Be aware that could be something else causing the CPU spike, and running antivirus and malware hunters periodically is always good idea even if not having immediate issues.

[Devan]

I looked at the Device manager, and found a DMA-controller but no mention of any ATA channel? I assume this means the problem doesn't lie with PIO?
(And I literally didn't understand half of the above post, I'm sorry :/ I like to think I'm a bit more tech savvy than some, i.e. my family, but I do understand that's really not much of a feat at all, considering how long it took to teach one of them the concept of a double click... ;P)

And I havn't tried deleting the ini, where do I find it? I saw an ini folder under mydocs/pcx2 with several different configuration files, should I just get rid of all those?

On a side note, I've now run mbam and found 1 infected file (still running) that my standard antivirus missed, maybe this'll flush out the problem, let'see.


Edit: Alright, found a few adwares and removed them, nothing too dangerous, I suppose. Still, getting rid of it hasn't helped my game go up a notch, not even half

on a side note, I noticed a message promt when restarting my laptop: Something about me using the wrong power ac cable (Which is nonsense, since I use the one that was originally included with my system. Though, admittedly, the end of the cable is a bit screwed up, with a part of the internal cable laying blank.)
In any case, the system then told me that the system performance will be reduced to match the power input. Any way to manually change this? I know I got the message before without any noticeable differences to emulation speed (most of the time I don't get this message at all) But I'm definately feeling the difference now. Any ideas how to bypass this, besides getting a new cable?