Is GTA Vice City Stories still impossible to emulate flawlessly?

[MrMateczko]

AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3,0 GHZ
AMD Radeon HD5670
2GB DDR2 RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1

First, let's write things that do infact work flawlessly within the game (at least in my PC configuration)
- Intro (by speedhacks)
- Sound
- Cutscenes (by doing the EE hack)
- Controls
- Graphics (as how they look in general, no graphical glitches or anything like that)
This all works constantly at PAL max 50 FPS.

But what's the with the infamous "slow-down effect"? I know it must be the cause of some faulty texture, or post-processing effect that causes the slowdown, because, it's so weird seeing this game running at 50FPS, constantly, in one area, and at 35FPS in other areas, with the famous "slow-down effect".

I know there's a trick to set the framerate in "ini" file to 30, I tried it, the loading times were horrible, but I actually played the game for a long time, until I get to the second island, and there were even more slow-downs!

At this point, I simply thought, Vice City Stories is still not good for my computer.

Is there at least one guy, who has same crap computer parts as mine, and can play VCS constantly at 50FPS?

I tried everything to make this game run great, I only managed to get somewhat less slow-downs, but still totally unacceptable. I was playing at the time on version 0.9.8, but now that I've tested 1.0.0, I do noticed some improvements, but still slow-downs are present, although in some places when it happened before, now it does not. (The barracks for example).

Does changing my graphic card will change something? Or it's the CPU?

Getting today's best components will get me the 50FPS?

Who am I kidding, I will never get good results with this game, I know how compliated the PS2 architecture is, and I do appreciate your hard work, guess i'll stick to the regular Vice City for PC, at least that plays good.

[refraction]

What are your percentages along the top of the GS window? Also have you tried the MTVU speedhack in the Emulator Settings?

[MrMateczko]

I don't have any percentages. Only FPS. But in percentages that would be around 60-100%

I'm gonna try the MTVU hack.

[refraction]

If you don't have any percentages you are using an archaic version of GSDX (or you have it in fullscreen mode). make sure you are using the one that came with the PCSX2 1.0.0 pack and you are in windowed mode so you can read the percentages for EE, GS and VU (If you have the MTVU hack on)

[MrMateczko]

As it turned out, MTVU hack, actually slows down the game, in some cases even by 5 FPS'es, so that's obviously not the way to solve this problem, at least on my PC.

As for my percentages, you want those with or without the MTVU hack?

[abdo123]

yep better test and track MTVU with dual cores not always giving positive results and this is what Refraction meant by percentage ( click to enlarge ):

[naughtydog2k3]

As it turned out, MTVU hack, actually slows down the game, in some cases even by 5 FPS'es, so that's obviously not the way to solve this problem, at least on my PC.

As for my percentages, you want those with or without the MTVU hack?

The problem is you're running off of a dual core cpu with a weak gpu. I don't think the mtvu hack will do much on a dual core sad to say so I don't think you can do anything about it but upgrade your rig to a quad core with a decent graphic card really.

[MrMateczko]

Well, that's what I thought too. My computer specs are just crap. Well, until I got a new computer, I have another game to test on this emulator. But I don't want to bug you guys anymore with this. Have a nice day, and plz close this topic, as everything has been answered for me. Thank you.

[refraction]

We are here to be bugged! xD

But seriously, glad we could help, hope your new PC works much better

[naughtydog2k3]

Well, that's what I thought too. My computer specs are just crap. Well, until I got a new computer, I have another game to test on this emulator. But I don't want to bug you guys anymore with this. Have a nice day, and plz close this topic, as everything has been answered for me. Thank you.

Just make sure your cpu is an intel since amd sucks for emulation as I planned to switch to an intel soon and also make sure your graphic card id a nvidia as I hear ati cause more issues with emulators than nvidias. Just thought you should know.