MGS 3 weird performance
#1
Video 
So I've been browsing about MGS 3 rendering issues in PCSX2 and stumbled upon topic on Git Hub where it was stated that post-process is finally back in the game with new revisions of PCSX2. I downloaded it, configured and it looks fantastic! Everything is in place in game, the only missing PP part I saw was bloom on the bones in the Cure menu, but it's really a minor issue and nothing serious. Everything else is just like in the original game on PS2 but in much higher resolution obviously(found a glitch in the last revision, by the way - I'm getting random emulator crashes if I use custom resolution instead of scaling). 

 The point is - everything's great, but the performance. Framecounter says it's fullspeed, it plays in slow motion, deeps into 40s in some areas, but when I unlock the framerate I see numbers as high as 110-120FPS and game is running at double the speed(obviously due to frameskipping workaround in the emulator). I don't get why if game can output so much more frames it struggles to deliver full speed when locked to 60 and why I get those horrible slowdowns out of nowhere. Can I somehow fix it or at least understand what's the problem?

PC Specs are:
Core i5 3570 3.4 Ghz
8GB DDR3 1666Mhz
GTX 960 4GB
Win 8.1




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#2
what if you disable ee cycle rate & vu cycle stealing
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
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#3
Don't turn on the speedhacks for EE and VU, leave them at 0. Because your PC is almost like mine, powerful enough to easily emulate MGS3. EE VU cycle hacks somehow slow down the game so much.

I recommend you to use Git builds of 1.5.0 because the OpenGL renderer now presents almost 100% graphical accuracy since they fixed the post processing effects (I guess?) like sun shine, yellow tint etc. Just make blending Partial (not full because it impacts performance and ogl renderer is accurate at partial), enable HW hack for half offset, disable depth. MGS2 and MGS3 are almost perfectly emulated this way (plus HD Wink )
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#4
(08-28-2016, 04:00 PM)xantier Wrote: Don't turn on the speedhacks for EE and VU, leave them at 0. Because your PC is almost like mine, powerful enough to easily emulate MGS3. EE VU cycle hacks somehow slow down the game so much.

I recommend you to use Git builds of 1.5.0 because the OpenGL renderer now presents almost 100% graphical accuracy since they fixed the post processing effects (I guess?) like sun shine, yellow tint etc. Just make blending Partial (not full because it impacts performance and ogl renderer is accurate at partial), enable HW hack for half offset, disable depth. MGS2 and MGS3 are almost perfectly emulated this way (plus HD Wink )

Mmmm...I do use Git build from day before yesterday and video shows exactly the correct renderer with all the effects in OpenGL Hardware mode. It's AWESOME! Finally, after all these years it's working properly! I tried turning down EE and VU hacks, still have weird slowdowns. Game shows fullspeed, but it plays in slowmotion nonetheless+I get those dips into 40s ever so often on my machine. Locations like Chyornyj Prud, military base in the jungle, even that initial sequence in the swamps gives me slowdowns. I really struggle to put my finger on what's wrong, but it distracts a lot and if I can't use any speedhacks, I don't really know what to do about it, my CPU clock multiplier is locked and my mobo is just not for OC, so I can't give more speed to EE...on the side note - resolution makes no difference, maybe a frame or two per second of difference between native and 5x/6x native, so negligable.
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#5
Quote:they fixed the post processing effects
Yes Smile I did a marvelous jobs here. A minor bug still remain in the codec in some versions (PAL or NTSC don't remember).

Quote:disable depth
Why do you disable the depth emulation. It is often a bad idea.

Quote:resolution makes no difference, maybe a frame or two per second of difference between native and 5x/6x native, so negligable.
Game remains heavy to emulate. I suspect on the VU side, did you try MTVU ? And accurate blending is quite costly for the CPU, only use the basic level, it is enough to fix the bad blending effect.
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#6
(08-29-2016, 11:50 AM)gregory Wrote: Yes Smile I did a marvelous jobs here. A minor bug still remain in the codec in some versions (PAL or NTSC don't remember).

Why do you disable the depth emulation. It is often a bad idea.

Game remains heavy to emulate. I suspect on the VU side, did you try MTVU ? And accurate blending is quite costly for the CPU, only use the basic level, it is enough to fix the bad blending effect.

You truly did. I was amazed to see this game looking so beautiful after 7 years of seeing glitched visuals when emulating it. =( Yeah, I have MTVU checked and blending is basic(BTW, avtually Full fixes bloom in Cure screen, although it's a really minor defeciency). Is there any way to fight slow motion? I know it's caused by the way EE works without skipping frames and it's core to emulating PS2, but still - are there any ways to disable slow motion or at least make it less noticeable?

About that cure screen bloom:

Basic blending:

   

Software mode:

   

Full blending:

   
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#7
All those post-processing effects are very heavy on the primitive generations. It means they're quite taxing on EE+VU. GSdx will throw everything in the trash and will emulate the effect with only a single sprite. For the perf, you need to play with the various option (clamping/cycle stuff), did you try without MTVU? Can't help you more Smile

Unfortunately full blending will kill any PC. I kept it only as a debug option.
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#8
(08-29-2016, 06:17 PM)gregory Wrote: All those post-processing effects are very heavy on the primitive generations. It means they're quite taxing on EE+VU. GSdx will throw everything in the trash and will emulate the effect with only a single sprite. For the perf, you need to play with the various option (clamping/cycle stuff), did you try without MTVU? Can't help you more Smile

Unfortunately full blending will kill any PC. I kept it only as a debug option.

Well, thank you anyway. It's nice to see the emulation begins to approach perfect state with most games. I guess I will try to play around with other settings, but even if it won't get better, I'll be building a new PC next year, so I guess if the issue is not gone via tweaking, in the end it will be simply bossed by brute force of more powerful hardware.

P.S. Question about the whole project and it's direction: PCSX2 team will try to optimize plugins and make the emulator less heavy on the hardware or it's considered that as more powerful hardware makes it's way to the market, the need for optimizing starts to dissapear and it's better to concentrate on more accurate emulation rather than better performance on weaker machines?
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#9
There is a limit on optimization. You still need a minimum of raw power. So we're trying to improve accuracy without compromise the perf.
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#10
(08-29-2016, 11:50 AM)gregory Wrote: Why do you disable the depth emulation. It is often a bad idea.

I noticed performance improvements on certain areas in MGS2 and MGS3 for some reason. I was also trying to find out my random crashes :Laugh It leaves no log nor throws any exception. Now I compiled in devel mode with symbol table to find the crash. But for some reason I still didn't get it and I almost finished the game. Wtf lol
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