God of War2, Smackdown Vs RAW 2010

[ambar_hitman]

Hi All,

This is my first post on these forums. I have a few doubts/questions.

My Specs are AMD Turion X2 Dual core 2.2 Ghz, ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 1 GB GDDR3, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, Vista 32 bit. I use 0.9.7 PCSX2 with August 2010 plugins. The 0.9.6 was very slow for me, but 0.9.7 is awesome.

1. I played SVR 2010 at 60 fps with all hacks checked at DX 10 and 1366x768 resolution. Still the game seemed like it was running in slowmo. Then I realized by enabling the speed hacks, I am actually getting slowdowns though the fps was 50-60. Then I disabled the speedhacks and the game now runs at around 30 fps and it seems very much playable. Now can anyone tell me what plugin should I use for getting good sound? The SPU 2 plugin is not that fast or I am not setting it properly. Anyone who plays SVR 2010 please help?
The main problem is that as the game runs on 30 fps, the sound adjusts itself and it slows down. Can it be made like PC games where sound plays nicely?

2. God of War 2 works like a charm, get a good 40 fps and okay sound with hacks, but have that Kratos flickering bug. Disabled speedhacks and it runs at 30-35 fps and looks great. Can anyone let me know a balanced configuration?

The main doubts are regarding the Emulation options about speedhacks. The guide posted here refers to the old 0.9.6 version, and hence I am confused about the options in 0.9.7 version.
Thanks in advance.

[Bositman]

The options that exist on the 0.9.6 guide describe the same options on 0.9.7 accurately so you can still use that.
1) VU cycle stealing will do that. It can fake your FPS display so if you want to use it either use a low level of it or not at all. For sound, you can configure SPU2-X and set it to Async mode.

2)Find which hack is responsible for the flickering and disable it. Then try the other hacks one by one to see which help and which don't.

[ambar_hitman]

For sound, you can configure SPU2-X and set it to Async mode.

Thanks, will try that. I hope I can get proper entrance music. I have already disabled the commentary, so in-ring there wont be much of a problem.

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

As a curiosity note about the VU cycle stealing, lag and FPS.

Although technically incorrect telling the hack fakes the FPS, the reason for the lag is it indeed steals cycles and so although the FPS increases (and it's shown correctly) the number of changes (less raw output, things actually happening) drops in between the frames; hence the appearance of lagging, slow motion and such.

The point being that lag does not happens all the time and even when it does it might be better than raw (real) low FPS, and less prone to affect others parameters or outputs, like the sound, in the same situation.

As always with speed hacks, it's a compromise. Better saying VU cycle stealing increases FPS but may introduce lag in some points/instances.

[ambar_hitman]

Ok thanks for explaining. Can we use frame skipping to reduce the lag caused by stealing cycles? I am not able to find the correct use for frame skip. I have enabled it for Always, and kept its value as 2. And also set Skip Draw to 1 in .ini for GsDX plugin, even thought I don't know what that does.

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

The frame skipping should be avoided and used only as the 'last resource'; if it's the case press shift+F4 to toggle it (at least it's how I think it works from what I see from reports).

[diegochiha]

the flickering involving kratos is beacuse of the vu cycle stealing hack,just disable it or set it to only one,but i think that even setting it to 1 will cause flickery anyways

[ambar_hitman]

Thanks all. I disabled VU cycle hack and set Async in SPU2. Now God of War 2 runs awesome with proper sound. Great!
SVR 2010 still doesn't work properly with sound. I will stick to Here Comes the Pain, it works nice. Any other game from the SVR series that runs better than SVR 2010?
And what exactly does frame skipping do? There are two values to be entered, Frame Draw and Frame skip. I didn't get what they do.

[diegochiha]

dont mess with the frameskipping, at least not if you readched full speed already , and is somewhat bugged.As for SVR 2010 i can run it just fine with sound and everything so i dont know whats your problem with it ?

[Saiki]

the flickering involving kratos is beacuse of the vu cycle stealing hack,just disable it or set it to only one,but i think that even setting it to 1 will cause flickery anyways

setting 1 causes no flickering that I ever noticed


for 2010: I got the game running at like 25fps with multiple speedhacks, but no VUskip