Final Fantasy X running extremely slowly on [email protected]?

[Mr. Accident]

Well, I'm having a speed issue that seems a little strange to me.

My brother is trying to run Final Fantasy X using PCSX2 0.9.6 on his machine, but it runs very, very slowly. During the intro scene in Zanarkand the framerate plummets to around 20 or 30fps, and it's only slightly better during gameplay.

Here are his specs:

CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6GHz
RAM: 4GB G.Skill DDR2-1000
GFX: EVGA 7950GX2
OS: Windows XP Professional SP2

Now, what makes this seems strange is the fact that on my machine, which aside from the video card is nearly identical in specs, I'm able to run it at several times that speed. During the FFX intro, I'm able to run it at 80-100fps (with the limiter turned off), and only at a couple of points does it drop below 70fps. I'm able to play the entire game at 100% full speed; if I turn the limiter off it generally runs anywhere from 130% to 350% depending on what it's doing (130% in very large areas with low camera angles; 200% almost everywhere; 350% in the menus )

These are my specs:

CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.6GHz
RAM: 4GB G.Skill DDR2-1000
GFX: EVGA Geforce GTX 280
OS: Windows Vista Business SP1

I know my graphics card is much, much more powerful than his, but I wouldn't have thought that a 7950GX2 would be in any way deficient for PCSX2's graphical demands.

Anyway, to make sure I wasn't comparing apples to oranges, I made sure we were using exactly the same configuration. Here's how we have PCSX2 set up:

Graphics: GSdxz 890 (MSVC 15.00, SSE3) 0.1.14
   Windowed
   Direct3D9 (Hardware)
   Pixel Shader 2.0
   Aspect Ratio 16:9
   D3D internal res 1024 x 1024
   (all other options default)

Sound: P.E.Op.S. SPU2 1.9.0
   Interpolation: Cubic

CD/DVDROM: Linuz ISO CDVD 0.8.0

All other options default: No speedhacks enabled.

So, does anyone have any idea what's causing the massive slowdown he's experiencing? I mean, the only thing I can think of is that it's his video card; but despite being a few generations old, the 7950GX2 is no slouch; it can run new games like HL2:Ep2 quite smoothly at full settings. Why would it cause PCSX2 to take a nosedive in emulation speed? Could it somehow be that PCSX2 just runs faster on Windows Vista for some reason?

Anyway, any help or input would be greatly appreciated!

[redlof]

Enable NLOOP hack and logarithmicZ and NATIVE option in GSdx.
Enable the speed hacks one by one, Keep the advanced options at defaults.
Make sure that MTGS option is enabled in cpu config.

[Cain]

EVGA 7950GX2 - is it onboard? Well, nothing to wonder about here I think. "aside from only gfx card' - that 'only' made me chuckle. Emulation is emulation. In general that means you must have several times more powerful hardware to emulate the original

[Mr. Accident]

The 7950GX2 is an older card, but it's basically the most powerful card available from the NVIDIA 7-series. It's actually a dual-GPU card, basically being a pair of 7950GTs connected together to work in one PCIe slot. It has a total of 1GB of video memory. Definitely not onboard video.

Which is partly why I'm so confused by the massive slowdown: my graphics card is far better, yes, but I would have figured that beyond a certain level, the power of your GPU shouldn't make much difference, since the bottleneck with PS2 emulation is the CPU doing all the work to emulate the various components of the PS2. The 7950GX2, though a few years old, is perfectly capable of handling new games at reasonable settings. It doesn't do so well with Crysis (my GTX 280 is only barely sufficient to run it at maximum settings ), but I can't imagine PCSX2's graphical demands even approach the level of something like Half-Life 2. Could a 7-series card really be the bottleneck?

redloff: thanks for the suggestion; we tried all those options, and while it gave a slight speedup, it was still dragging down to 30fps a lot of the time.

[Cain]

It may be possible that technology GSDX revolves around is simply not completely supported by 7-series cards. Or your brother's pc is infected with a virus which kills it's performance

[Register]

Try zeroGS plugin if that can make different result for better fps. I think pcsx2/gsdx is uncompatible yet with SLI.

[Mr. Accident]

It may be possible that technology GSDX revolves around is simply not completely supported by 7-series cards. Or your brother's pc is infected with a virus which kills it's performance

Well, I don't think the latter can be the case, since he just upgraded it to its current specs yesterday: new motherboard, new CPU, new memory, and a complete HD reformat and reinstall of Windows XP.

That still leaves the video card as the most likely culprit, but it just seems odd to me that that could be the case. I think I'll try swapping out the video cards just to make sure, and if that does the trick, looks like he'll just have to finally upgrade his video card too!

(Or maybe it's partly a Vista vs. XP thing? I read on here somewhere that PCSX2 ran as much as 15% faster on XP SP3 as opposed to SP2, but I'm still having a hard time believing that Windows Vista could represent a 300% speedup...)

Register: we did try ZeroGS, but the results were pretty horrific, in addition to being almost as slow. It's not an SLI issue since the 7950GX2 isn't by itself an SLI configuration; it's two GPUs on one card. An SLI setup with 7950GX2s would be a quad-GPU system.

[Cody900]

He doesn't need speed hacks with that setup redlof. >.>

[Cain]

It may be possible that technology GSDX revolves around is simply not completely supported by 7-series cards. Or your brother's pc is infected with a virus which kills it's performance

Well, I don't think the latter can be the case, since he just upgraded it to its current specs yesterday: new motherboard, new CPU, new memory, and a complete HD reformat and reinstall of Windows XP.

That still leaves the video card as the most likely culprit, but it just seems odd to me that that could be the case. I think I'll try swapping out the video cards just to make sure, and if that does the trick, looks like he'll just have to finally upgrade his video card too!

(Or maybe it's partly a Vista vs. XP thing? I read on here somewhere that PCSX2 ran as much as 15% faster on XP SP3 as opposed to SP2, but I'm still having a hard time believing that Windows Vista could represent a 300% speedup...)

Register: we did try ZeroGS, but the results were pretty horrific, in addition to being almost as slow. It's not an SLI issue since the 7950GX2 isn't by itself an SLI configuration; it's two GPUs on one card. An SLI setup with 7950GX2s would be a quad-GPU system.

Most games run fine on my XP SP3 (considering the fact I can very rarely stand playing in less than full speed), FFX is not an exception

[stpdrgstr]

Check if you have on Vsync in GSDX settings. If so, deactivate it. That bothered me the first time I used PCSX2, vsync ***** your FPS.