Gran Turismo 4 Lag / Performance Issues despite decent PC

[Jhelno]

Hello there,

I've just recently stumbled across this great emulator and as GT4 has always been my favourite childhood game, I wanted to play it again. I've seen many people on YouTube running this game with no issues and great graphics, but unfortunately it's not the same for me.

I've already tried out many different settings, including different renderers (Direct 3D 11 Hardware and OpenGL Hardware), but I could not find a single setup without any significant lags or slowdowns. 

Direct 3D 11 + Progressive 480p ingame settings worked the best, but only when I'm driving without any AI opponents. As soon as there's even only one AI (for example the Skyline Pace Car in the license tests), the game slows down to 70-90 % speed and is hardly enjoyable. Furthermore the game gets really, really dark when the 480p setting is enabled and it doesn't look too good. Some circuits or parts of circuits also cause slowdowns even without other cars on the track.

With OpenGL Hardware on the other hand (which looks far better visually), the game is basically unplayable, it constantly runs at 70-80% speed during a race - when I'm in the menu, it runs relatively stable at 100%, but not during car selection - it gets pretty laggy there again. 

I know that my PC specs aren't the best (and yes, it's unfortunately only a notebook), but I think they aren't the worst either. At least I've seen people with worse PCs running this game on constant 60 FPS. 

I don't have any thermal throttling, my CPU is at about 70-75 °C, GPU at about 60 °C (which isn't great but as I said, no throttling happening). CPU usage during races is at about 30-50% according to the display of my Logitech keyboard at least. RAM usage at about 50-60%. 

I also didn't push the GS settings to the max (see below), I only used 3x native resolution, not even Anti Aliasing, fast Mipmapping etc. I also tried native resultion and disabling 8-Bit textures, but even that didn't make it run at constant 60 fps, still had the same slowdowns.

I'm using the NTSC (US) Version of GT4 and USA v02.00 (14/06/2004) Console BIOS. 

My used PCSX2 Version: pcsx2-v1.5.0-dev-3190-g996147821-windows-x86

My system:

Lenovo Y50 Notebook
Intel i7 4720 HQ @ 2.60 GHz
NVidia GeForce GTX 960M (4 GB)
RAM: 8 GB
Windows 10 64bit

My PCSX2 Settings:

   

As I've said, I've just found out about PCSX2 a few days ago, so I'm not really an expert when it comes to setting it up correctly. It would be great if someone could help me out with my issue. If you need further information, I'm happy to provide them. 

Thank you!

[lightningterror]

For a first step set mipmapping to automatic or disabled, then what you can do is ingame set the brightness and contrast to 0 which is lighter emulation wise.

[Jhelno]

Thanks for the quick response.

Brightness and contrast are already set to 0. Setting mipmapping to automatic or disabled unfortunately didn't make any difference.

[gtgamer468]

The STR, or single thread rating for your CPU isn't above the 2000 mark, the recommended rating for an intense game like GT4. That GPU is okay, but can be better. You should reduce the resolution to Native or 2x Native at the most. Try also enabling mVU flag hack as well.

[Jhelno]

Thanks for the feedback.

I didn't know about the STR recommendation. I tried out your suggestions (enabling mVU flag hack & reducing the resolution to 2x native). It helped a tiny bit, but especially with OpenGL it was still very sluggish - especially when fullscreen is enabled, it is almost unplayable (50% speed). 

I guess my CPU is the limiting factor then because I also noticed that it got a little bit better when the CPU boost kicked in (working on 3,6 GHz instead of regular 2,6 GHz). But even with the boost it was pretty laggy.  

It's a shame, I thought my system was decent enough to run this game, didn't expect it to lag even on minimal graphic emulation / GS settings. Welp.

[gtgamer468]

For now, either continue playing this game on your PS2, or get a better PC. I have played GT games a lot on this emulator so I can suggest more things if you need it.

[Jhelno]

Sure, I gladly take more suggestions to improve the performance, but I assume there aren't that many options left. As you said, my CPU is probably just not quite good enough. 

I've now used ThrottleStop to make it run permanently on 3,5 GHz (so basically permanent turbo boost), with the obvious consequence of increased CPU temperatures (~ 80 - 85 °C during races). It helped a bit, but it's still only playable when there are no AI cars and with the Direct 3D 11 renderer selected - which doesn't look as good as OpenGL, but there's no chance to run it with OpenGL, even on minimal settings I get huge slowdowns during races, even on the car selection.   

I guess I'll have to stick to the original PS2 as it's unfortunately not financially possible for me to upgrade to a better PC atm. It would have been just so cool to play this game again with the better resolutions/visuals on the emulator.

[pandubz]

I know from personal experience that an i7-4710HQ can handle parts but not all of GT4. By extension, a i7-4720HQ is probably close but still not quite enough.

You will notice physically large maps, night maps, and races where multiple AI cars are visible, you may have performance issues.

Also avoid turning Blending Unit Accuracy past Basic.

[Jhelno]

Yes, that's true, I also noticed it on night maps (e.g. Hong Kong). Also with the visible AI cars, for example as soon as the Skyline Pace Car is visible in front of me during a license test, the game gets very slow, but when I look back (so that the AI isn't on screen anymore), it speeds up again. 

I haven't even tried the game with more than 1 AI car yet   I guess it'll be even worse. 

Blending Unit Accuracy is only set to basic, as I said, all settings are on their minimum or very low, I still get the same performance - more or less. It's also a shame that the OpenGL Hardware renderer seems to be that much more demanding for the CPU, because it really does look quite a lot better than Direct 3D 11. When I use Direct 3D 11 and enable the Progressive 480p video output setting ingame to get rid of the weird blurriness, the game gets very, very dark (but only during races) so that I have to manually crank up the shader brightness in the GS settings - with the consequence that the menu then is far too bright. 

Whatever, I guess I'll finally have to save some money for a decent desktop PC. Thanks for your help.

[gtgamer468]

I found out something while trying to race on tracks like Hong Kong, Special Stage Route 5, Clubman Stage 5 and Twin Ring Motegi. If you go to the roof camera or the bumper camera, you can increase your frames by 5 per second. Sometimes, you can go to full 60 fps if you're lucky. However, George V Paris will still be the hardest to emulate and even the Nürburgring won't be easy to emulate.