Invisible bottleneck?

[DanoruX]

I'm having problems getting some games to run at full speed (e.g. Gitarooman, Tales of the Abyss). They run at around 45fps instead of 60fps in some scenes.

Here's my (relevant) specs:

Q6600 @ 3.0Ghz
GTX260 192 cores
6gb DDR2 800 (running @ 666 because I haven't fixed the divider yet since I clocked down)

But this is the big mystery - the CPU usage is well below 100% at around 50% to 60% and my framerate doesn't change regardless of resolution being used or filter settings. So where's the bottleneck? Memory?

EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm using GsDX 1076 0.1.15 in DX10 mode

[Zeydlitz]

EE thread performance is the bottleneck. You see only percentille for GS thread CPU load, and there is also second one, that emulate central processor of PS1 -- Emotion Engine, and it's load does not shown (it's usually 90-95% at such cases). And at you case, you could not increase this thread performance by touching graphics, but only by EE Speedhacks or overclocking.

[hellbringer616]

I'm having problems getting some games to run at full speed (e.g. Gitarooman, Tales of the Abyss). They run at around 45fps instead of 60fps in some scenes.

Here's my (relevant) specs:

Q6600 @ 3.0Ghz
GTX260 192 cores
6gb DDR2 800 (running @ 666 because I haven't fixed the divider yet since I clocked down)

But this is the big mystery - the CPU usage is well below 100% at around 50% to 60% and my framerate doesn't change regardless of resolution being used or filter settings. So where's the bottleneck? Memory?

EDIT: Forgot to mention I'm using GsDX 1076 0.1.15 in DX10 mode

q6600 is a quad core CPU, PCSX2 only supports 2 cores. So two of your cores aren't being used, And thus only %50 total core usage.

[DanoruX]

I see so it's the EE thread that's lagging... hmm.... I guess I'll have to get my processor stable at 3.6ghz somehow (which it almost is, but keeps shutting down due to heat or whatever)...

q6600 is a quad core CPU, PCSX2 only supports 2 cores. So two of your cores aren't being used, And thus only %50 total core usage.

Negative, the usage shown is the cpu usage on the core(s) it's running on - Odin Sphere shows a usage of 99%, for example.

[LuisR14]

I see so it's the EE thread that's lagging... hmm.... I guess I'll have to get my processor stable at 3.6ghz somehow (which it almost is, but keeps shutting down due to heat or whatever)...

maybe you need to buy a 3rd-party fan

Negative, the usage shown is the cpu usage on the core(s) it's running on - Odin Sphere shows a usage of 99%, for example.

well if that's what is shown on gsdx's window then it's not the real pcsx2 usage (and the way it's showing 99% that would mean that it's your cpu that is the bottleneck , i may be wrong)

[Sythedragon]

A 3GHZ Q6600 a bottleneck?

Try pumping it to 3.4GHZ, should be easy, what after market fan you got?

Try a TRUE.

[DanoruX]

It's still a little disturbing to not see directly why it's laggin' up though...



Odin Sphere for comparison so clearly GsDX is capable of capping out on CPU usage:

[Zeydlitz]

Yes, it's GS threads percentille. If game is slow and this percentage is low, that is mean that EE thread are near 100% limit. You could observe it on some good cpu load monitor. And EE recompilation hardly scalable, you could not simply reduce targets size to get speed improvement -- almost every op should be executed. Speedhacks helps a lot, but could not made a miracle.

And one thing, first picture could be not EE hard, but VU hard one (VU is vector unit, there is 2 co-processors for PS2 that doing such job, emulated in EE thread), slide VU hack to maximum value, it could be a lot of help.

[refraction]

to dumb down what Zeydlitz said, GSDX is using most of the time there, especially in Odin Sphere. You need to lower your GSDX settings.

Also make sure MTGS is enabled under Config->CPU

[Gabest]

It's not pcsx2 or the gpu, odin sphere does too many texture uploads to the video card, that last number on the title bar, aqtime says more than 50% time spent inside GSTexture*::Update.