Framerate issues...

[Sottaceti]

Hi!

My name is Sottaceti. I am a Let's Player, and I have been meaning to do an LP for the .hack series for a while. I recently acquired .hack//QUARANTINE (woo-hoo!) and I thought now was as good a time as any to go for it. However, I have come up on some game-breaking issues.

My specs are:
AMD FX 4130 Quad-Core Unlocked @ 2.8 GHz
16 GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB GDDR5
Seagate 2TB Serial ATA III @ 7200RPM 64MB SATA 6Gb/s

I have been running into terrible, terrible issues with my games with the use of FRAPS. When I run FRAPS (even though I'm running it on my 3rd and 4th cores, leaving CPU 0 and 1 free for PCSX2) it breaks my game down into not only almost half the framerate it's at, but at a choppy and inconsistent rate that will jump from 16-60 FPS in 0.5 seconds. I thought it was a compatibility issue with FRAPS, so I looked up a few threads and found out that since my FRAPS runs at 25 FPS (since I do record more system-intensive games like Mass Effect and Vindictus), it could have been an issue. I changed my FRAPS to 60 FPS to match up with PCSX2, but to no avail. I am still having the issues. I have tried several things, including changing GFX plugins and a few configurations. Most simply exacerbated the issue, and I just ended up resetting anything.

I would truly love to record this series I spent some $300 hunting down and collecting in excellent conditions.

[jesalvein]

AMD FX 4130

unfortunately, Bulldozer architecture is known to perform badly with intensive gaming software (like pcsx2)

since I do record more system-intensive games like Mass Effect and Vindictus

er... no.
both are really less intensive than pcsx2

[Sottaceti]

Fair enough. However, this issue is not persistent if I am not recording with FRAPS. Without it, the game runs at 60 FPS smoothly. I truly believe it is a compatibility issue.

[xstyla]

i wrote something about bulldozers and capturing a couple days ago but i can't find it anymore. but..

as you already figured out the affinity mask in the taskman try to setup the cpus in a different way. like 1 & 3 for pcsx2 and 2&4 for fraps and lower the priority of fraps. that might help.

maybe.

[Sottaceti]

Argh, it isn't working! Is there some way I can change PCSX2's FPS output to a lower framerate without slowing down gameplay?

[jesalvein]

Argh, it isn't working! Is there some way I can change PCSX2's FPS output to a lower framerate without slowing down gameplay?

unfortunately, no.
you can set a custom fps limit, of course, but the PS2 is made to synchronise its FPS with gameplay's speed

[Sottaceti]

So, basically, I'm completely screwed? I'll have to build a PC with an Intel core?

[jesalvein]

would be best, for sure.
but there are some threads around here that say piledriver is worth to give a shot if you want to stick to AMD.

[Sottaceti]

Yeah. I prefer AMD, since all my GFX cards end up with an AMD chipset anyway. My dad kind of instilled in me when I was a youngster that Intel is overpriced and all I would ever need for gaming is AMD. Thank you all so much for your help. It sucks that I won't be able to do the Let's Plays for now, but I can still totally play them at least. Again, I really appreciate the assistance you have provided and extend my sincerest thanks.

[||dav1de||]

Yeah. I prefer AMD, since all my GFX cards end up with an AMD chipset anyway. My dad kind of instilled in me when I was a youngster that Intel is overpriced and all I would ever need for gaming is AMD. Thank you all so much for your help. It sucks that I won't be able to do the Let's Plays for now, but I can still totally play them at least. Again, I really appreciate the assistance you have provided and extend my sincerest thanks.

Go for an FX-6300: you will have around 20% more performances at the same frequency (you wrote 2.8 but you meant 3.8 right?), more or less the same frequency thanks to the turbo, and other 2 cores to handle the recording.