Frustrating loss of performance with Win7 x64

[victordriver]

Sorry for the double post, is that I clicked the wrong link, and I can not erase.

[Squall Leonhart]

check the power options and set it to full power, might help, as our friend said oh, turn off Aero because it draws much of its graphics card, if not resolved, go to the properties of my computer and click Settings Advanced system performance click Settings, and advanced will have two boxes, one with the name with other programs and background services, select the services you have in the background and do the test, I guarantee you'll have a better performance significantly. I used it when I installed Call of Duty Black Ops, because he was fighting a lot and it helped, because it was fast running everything on maximum.

Bollocks.

i wish people who DON'T HAVE A FLIPPING CLUE would stop posting.

Facts
Aero does use a small amount of video memory, which is usually surrendered to fullscreen video games. There is a condition where this does not occur, that is when you have a image opened and zoomed in using the photo viewer. (With the coming of acelerated web browsers using video memory, these also fail to surrender the video memory to the active app..... i might file a bug on that later)
Aero does use some GPU, ONLY and I mean ONLY when a visual effect is occuring in the active view, the flashing task bar for instance increases the gpu usage a tad, however, just like a game, this is only the case when Explorer is the active window, when a fullscreen game or emulator is the active process all GPU processing is directed towards the game

Fully disabling Aero has the side affect of disabling the Desktop compositor, which has several negative affects.
1. Tearing will occur in video's, when dragging around windows, and there may be jerky mouse behavior.
2. Applications that use gpu acceleration for affects will be slightly slower, particularly mixed gdi-directx.

The Programs and Background services radio buttons configure the default idle priority of background tasks. The desktop/workstation defaults are for Active processes or those in the most forground (Active Window) recieve higher idle priority compared to background services and tasks.

Changing this value to background services is only for Services and machines that use Service tasks to perform heavy processing such as distributed computing, and is the default setting for Windows Server.

Given that PCSX2 is a foreground task, optimising for background services ain't gunna do jack.

OP, check the pcsx2 log and make sure its finding the game database.

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

Despite the harsh tone, Squall is right and prioritizing the background services actually impacts negatively the desktop overall performance.

What could actually help (mainly on machines with 2GB or less RAM or less than 4 cores) is deactivating some background services altogether.

Some utilities like GameBooster can do a nice job for those less powerful machines which are experimenting general low performance. It acts on a number of known services (which can be safely stopped) deactivating them and keeping a list so they are reactivated once it's "gaming session" is terminated. He who are not experimenting heavy performance issue or having only a few slowdown on game's heavy passages may not have enough improvement to justify the bothering. It's a personal call verify if such somewhat drastic measures are giving enough for the price.

The usage of such utility is really simple, just start it's "gaming session" so it deactivates the services, play and return it to normal mode after over with the game.

For Aero, if it is not actively bothering all the time with those maleficar bubble notifications, not using flashing gadgets and the video card has enough VRAM, it's not much of a performance rogue where PCSX2 is the concern where the internal resolution is not abused. Once I read PCSX2 full screen is now a special windowed mode without frame and which overlaps the taskbar. I'm not sure if it is still so and would be glad if this point is cleared, since this could left PCSX2 specially vulnerable to those bubble annoyances and such.

[themanuel]

Thanks everyone for the interest in this thread, so far. This is still gnawing at me as everything seems equal or better with Win4 x64, except PCSX2, which lags my XP install by 20% Game Speed. I disabled Aero and tried the ForceWare 195.81, to no avail. I have played with numerous settings and the old PCSX2 and there is no improvement.

Based on previous experience, background process, unless active, play no role in emulator performance. I've gone through clean installs of nLited XP to find the same performance as a bloated unmodified one, so I'm highly skeptical of that.

I think the program finds the database OK but I'm not sure. Below is my log after running SCIII. Further suggestions are welcome.

Regards.

Log:


PCSX2 0.9.8.r4600 - compiled on Apr 27 2011
Savestate version: 0x9a010000

Host Machine Init:
Operating System = Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Physical RAM = 2046 MB
CPU name = Intel® Core™2 CPU 4300 @ 1.80GHz
Vendor/Model = GenuineIntel (stepping 02)
CPU speed = 2.999 ghz (2 logical threads)
x86PType = Standard OEM
x86Flags = bfebfbff 0000e39d
x86EFlags = 20000000

x86 Features Detected:
MMX.. SSE.. SSE2.. SSE3.. SSSE3

Reserving memory for recompilers...

Loading plugins...
Binding GS : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\gsdx-sse2-r4600.dll
Windows 6.1.7601 (Service Pack 1 1.0)
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT (8.17.11.9581)
Binding PAD : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\lilypad-r4600.dll
Binding SPU2 : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\spu2-x-r4600.dll
Binding CDVD : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\cdvdGigaherz.dll
Binding USB : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\USBnull.dll
Binding FW : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\FWnull.dll
Binding DEV9 : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\DEV9null.dll
Plugins loaded successfully.

(GameDB) 9082 games on record (loaded in 270ms)
HLE Notice: ELF does not have a path.


Initializing plugins...
Init GS
Windows 6.1.7601 (Service Pack 1 1.0)
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT (8.17.11.9581)
Init PAD
Init SPU2
Init CDVD
Init USB
Init FW
Init DEV9
Plugins initialized successfully.

Opening plugins...
Opening GS
Opening PAD
Opening SPU2
Opening CDVD
isoFile open ok: D:\ROMs\PS2 ISO\Soul Calibur III PS2 NTSC USA.ISO
Image type = DVD
Fileparts = 1
* CDVD Disk Open: DVD, Single layer or unknown:
* * Track 1: Data (Mode 1) (2140784 sectors)
Opening USB
Opening FW
Opening DEV9
McdSlot 0: D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\memcards\Mcd001.ps2
McdSlot 1: D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\memcards\Mcd002.ps2
Plugins opened successfully.
EE/iR5900-32 Recompiler Reset
Bios Found: USA v01.60(07/02/2002) Console
BIOS rom1 module not found, skipping...
BIOS rom2 module not found, skipping...
BIOS erom module not found, skipping...
(UpdateVSyncRate) Mode Changed to NTSC.
(UpdateVSyncRate) FPS Limit Changed : 59.94 fps
(SYSTEM.CNF) Detected PS2 Disc = cdrom0:\SLUS_212.16;1
(SYSTEM.CNF) Software version = 1.01
(SYSTEM.CNF) Disc region type = NTSC
ELF (cdrom0:\SLUS_212.16;1) Game CRC = 0x027C604C, EntryPoint = 0x00100008
(SYSTEM.CNF) Detected PS2 Disc = cdrom0:\SLUS_212.16;1
(SYSTEM.CNF) Software version = 1.01
(SYSTEM.CNF) Disc region type = NTSC
Closing plugins...
Closing DEV9
Closing FW
Closing USB
Closing CDVD
Closing SPU2
Closing PAD
Closing GS
Plugins closed successfully.

[Squall Leonhart]

Binding GS : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\gsdx-sse2-r4600.dll < use GSDX SSSE3
and try nvidia 275.27, it improves performance on dual cores.

[themanuel]

Binding GS : D:\Console\PS2\pcsx2-0.9.8-r4600-binaries\plugins\gsdx-sse2-r4600.dll < use GSDX SSSE3
and try nvidia 275.27, it improves performance on dual cores.

Thanks. It was worth a try but it did not make any difference either.
The saga continues...

[TheNewGuy]

could you post some settings? emulation settings(all the things there) and the settings for GS and SPU2 plugin might be interesting...
maybe you could give the speedhacks a try...i did it a few months ago when i used pcsx2 with my normal computer (amd athlon x64 4800 @ 2,9ghz, 9400gt 1gb version, 3gb ddr2 ram) with win xp pro x86...and ffx for example was running a bit faster (but really only a bit)...
also it would be interesting how much your cpu and ram is used in idle mode ^^ (for example number of tasks / etc)
maybe there´s too much in the background...

[themanuel]

could you post some settings? emulation settings(all the things there) and the settings for GS and SPU2 plugin might be interesting...
maybe you could give the speedhacks a try...i did it a few months ago when i used pcsx2 with my normal computer (amd athlon x64 4800 @ 2,9ghz, 9400gt 1gb version, 3gb ddr2 ram) with win xp pro x86...and ffx for example was running a bit faster (but really only a bit)...
also it would be interesting how much your cpu and ram is used in idle mode ^^ (for example number of tasks / etc)
maybe there´s too much in the background...

I'll post my settings tonight. I got the game (SCIII) to playable speeds in Windows XP, by enabling some speed hacks. The problem is that I have lost about 20% performance by switching to Windows 7 x64 and it's just enough to make the game play like crap.

As for the background programs, I'm runnining minimum amounts and nothing active while PCSX2 is playing except a few cycles that go to Aero. However, disabling Aero does not help a bit. PCSX2 uses my processor to 100% when running but I have free memory to spare. Obviously, I'm CPU limited but it worked better with XP and I'm trying to figure out why.

Running the game with the VU's in interpreter mode is much slower than recompiler, as you would expect but even this is faster in XP than in it is in Win 7 x64.

Quite puzzling...

[Squall Leonhart]

the only othing suggestion i have is that it could be core parking or turbo related.

[beardsleybob]

I'm having a problem with fps on most games. Instead of starting a new thread I thought I'd just post in this one. I've tried to play a handful of games and so far only FFVII plays at normal speeds. Other games like GoW2 and MGS2 run at around 35fps. Any idea why this is happening? I'm running Windows 7 64-bit laptop with Intel i3, Intel HD graphic card with (I think) 1.68GB RAM on it.