Emulation speed help?

[Napuc]

I'm trying to play Kingdom Hearts 2 with 1.0.0, and It runs the starting menu at 10-20 fps, the opening cinematic runs at 60 with an occasional drop to 40 (If I disable frame rate limiting it runs at 70-ish) I have my plugins at the default settings, speed hacks at 3. It runs the game at 20-30fps, with the pause menu at 60.

I'm using a computer with an AMD Athlon™ II X4 640 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz, 4gb of RAM, DirectX 11, and an ATI Radeon HD 4200. Win7 64-bit

Am I able to get a full 60fps, or is it a lost cause (If so, why and what would I need to make it run right?)

Thanks

[jesalvein]

It's a lost cause because of your really weak gpu.
Better keep playing on your ps2 until you can afford a new one.

Meanwhile, you can try running the game in software mode (f9) and set extra rendering threads to 3

[Napuc]

It's a lost cause because of your really weak gpu.

How exactly is a card with 1916mb weak? I don't get that

[battler624]

your radeon HD is an entry-level graphics card even if it have a 100GB vram it will still be week upgrade to a moderate or higher-end card and you'll see a huge increase "mine is GTX670 i run @full 60FPS and with 6x native quality"

[StriFe]

actually the 4200 is an IGP (Integrated Graphics card) Memory does help a bit with most games, but don't look at the graphics memory especially on an IGP, which uses your RAM to be used as the Graphical Memory.

[ElPolloLoco]

How exactly is a card with 1916mb weak? I don't get that

Ill explain you with images..

you have something like this;


And you need something like this:



see it now?

it doesn't matter if it's a 2gb card, card is weak.

in a scale of 1 to 10 you card score 3.
you need an 8-9-10 for pcsx2.

[StriFe]

Looks of a Graphic Card doesn't say One bit if it's good or not. the 4200 was when it was released the fastest Integrated Graphic chip released, but even so an integrated graphic card is just way too slow for emulation.

[Paradox1192]

Like the others said before, your Radeon 4200 is too weak to run PCSX2, however, I can try to explain it more in-depth.

Your particular "GPU" is integrated, which means it came built onto the motherboard itself, not like a separate part like the pictures above. Its meant to be a low power solution for a casual user, to surf the web and such. I assume your computer came from a manufacturer, such as HP/Dell/Acer, etc. This means that you may have too weak of power to actually support anything like the second picture above (which I assume to be a Radeon HD 77xx or 78xx card), your best bet would be to either get a new computer entirely, either through DIY or straight from a manufacturer, or attempt to get something like a Radeon HD 5450.

I nearly ran MGS:2 with a Mobility Radeon 5450 with an Intel i5, albeit low native res and the like, but its been a while since I've actually tried.

But other than the GPU being crap, everything else is good to go from what you've stated.

[Rezard]

How exactly is a card with 1916mb weak? I don't get that

• Because it's almost entirely allocated.
  
• Because it comes out of your system's RAM when it happens.
  
• Because vasts amounts of RAM do not just plain equal power.
  

You really need a dedicated GPU in that PC, bud.
Do yourself a favor and skip the HD 5450.
Definitely better than what you're working with,
but not at all a fast or powerful card.

It's biggest downfall in this case would be the low memory bandwidth due to the small 64-bit bus. I very highly recommend a GPU with at least a 128-bit bus. Also, no slower than a DDR3 data rate. You can expect that from cards around the "6" in it's series. Like the 5600 or 6600 territory.

This will ensure you see little or no bottleneck from your GPU at native resolutions. This level of card can also handle some upscaling in many cases while maintaining full, or favorable, speeds. Not really fast and powerful, but it's what I say is "required" in general for good emulation of most games.

A really fast card these days runs at a DDR5 data rate, but that's basically just useful for rendering higher internal resolutions with PCSX2. You only need to go that far if you want to ensure a good level of upscaling.