[KH2FM] Strange 60FPS Issues.

[Backwardskey]

Hi, guys.

I've been trying to emulate KH2FM using standard 60FPS codes, and I'm running into what I assume to be an uncommon issue. I'd heard that if you wanted to test to see if your rig could handle the strain of emulating at 60FPS you could set the base framerate adjust to 200% and walk around graphically-intense areas to see if your FPS dips - I performed this test myself and experienced no issues whatsoever until working with resolutions above 7x.

With the code active, however, there are several areas that cause a drop of 30% or greater when I turn my camera towards them. At first I thought the game rendering multiple entities in one place was the issue - or perhaps other graphical loads like effects, but after staring at these high-density areas for a while I noticed at seemingly random intervals my speed will jump back up to 100% for a few seconds before chugging back down to the original slowed percentage.

The interesting thing is (with the code turned on) these slowdowns occur at the same places with equal potency with all of the Video Plugin settings at minimum/turned off. Using speedhacks lessened the strain to a minimal degree and adjusting the sliders to certain values would alleviate the slowdown entirely, but would return the game to 30FPS in exchange.

I know my rig is strong enough to handle the strain, as I've seen people manage 60FPS with weaker hardware. Some arbitrary setting or checkbox somewhere is causing the awful performance and I've done endless digging to find the root of the issue, to no avail. Since the problem occurs even at the lowest possible graphical settings, those are the settings I will be posting.

Some suggestions or feedback would be appreciated.

Specs:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
AMD FX™-8350 Eight Core Processor
G.Skill RipjawsX Series 16GB
MSI Extreme Gaming AMD 970 AM3 + DDR3 USB 3.1 ATX Motherboard
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250G SATA Disk Device
ST2000DM 006-2DM164 SATA Disk Device

Settings (PCSX2 1.5.0 Development Build 3022) Updated on 4/2/2019
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Video (OpenGL Hardware) -- All settings at minimum. Native resolution, no interlacing or aniso. Mipmapping and CRC off. Accurate date and blending disabled. No HW or OSD settings enabled. Core GS settings are default.

Emulation -- All default settings, aspect ration set to 'Fit to Screen'. Speedhacks turned off.

Audio -- All default settings.


If anyone could figure out what the problem might be, I'd appreciate your help. Thanks!

[pandubz]

When you talk about speedhacks, what exact combinations were you trying? Lowering the EE cyclerate for example reduces the load for your CPU, but gives the emulated PS2 less computation time, so the framerate may dip as you saw. Turning it up on the other hand will increase CPU load but give the emulated PS2 more computation time, so that may be something to try. EE Cycle Skipping on the other hand is likely going to cause problems at any level, so I would keep it at 0 unless someone else knows for a fact it is helpful.

[Backwardskey]

Lowering the EE Cyclerate gave a small improvement to the FPS dip. But, as previously mentioned, this problem still occurs at the lowest possible settings with no speedhacks enabled at all.

[StriFe]

What was the minimum STP Required for PCSX2 again? According to the list on passmark his CPU has a STP of atleast 1510.

[Backwardskey]

I'm not sure where my processor stands performance-wise, but I do know that my CPU usage barely hops over 20% even when rendering the aforementioned laggy areas where I experience the frame drops.

Maybe there's something I need to do to increase my CPU involvement? Is that possible?

[pandubz]

Not on an AMD FX with eight cores. PCSX2 uses at most 3 (ignoring the UI thread), so the percent utilization from PCSX2 will only ever reach 37.5%, at maximum. This is assuming all threads are working at their absolute maximum and there is no bottleneck, which is almost never the case.

The minimum recommended STR is around 1500-1600. KH2 is moderately demanding, it'll probably be okay on this CPU though, but the 60 FPS patch is going to add some stress to that, since you are doubling the number of frames to send out. I can't speak from experience for this game, but I'm thinking if increasing the EE cyclerate doesn't help the situation, then there's probably not much else you can do. Just my two cents, I'd also consider someone's opinion who has played the game.

[Devina]

Try Hardware 3D9 or 3D11. OpenGL renderer can be much heavier.

[StriFe]

Isn't OGL being done by the GPU and not the CPU? He has a 1060 in his system, so he should be fine with OGL.

[Devina]

I've noticed 3D9/11 are quite a bit faster than OGL on my system.

I have a dual core 3Ghz and a Geforce 650, so it's a bit outdated, but even i can hit a steady 60 FPS on KH2 with 3D9/11 on either 2x or 3x.

My friend has a way powerful system with more CPU cores and a better GPU, but it seems laggier on his end than my system.

So with 60 FPS patches, it seems very architecture-dependent, instead of just "the more power, the better".

[StriFe]

Hmm you could be right, but the 1060 is miles above your 650, but indeed still he/she could try them both. Also he/she could try MTVU if that's not on yet