Need help optimizing Dark Alliance

[HammerHand]

First of all, it's been a while since I've checked the forums and I'm soooo happy that you guys have finally fixed the problem with snowblind games! I played Fallout for most of the day and it ran pretty smoothly, very consistently stuck around 60fps with a couple small dips but I did get the occasional pause for a split second. I fired up Dark Alliance 1 and was regularly getting a fps loss of 15-30. The compatibility on the pcsx2 site hasn't been updated for the recent GSDx version that fixes the snowblind games and I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for in the forums right now, I had several tabs open the other day when I was trying to sort this out but I was kind of lost on what was recent or accurate. Any help would be greatly appreciated, or if someone could just direct me to an already existing thread that addresses how to config the plugins for Dark Alliance/Norrath games.

PC Specs:
i7 2600k @ 3.4
8GB RAM
GTX 770 4GB
Also running the emulator + ISO's (I own these games, prefer playing on PC) on SSD's if that makes any difference.

[hellbringer616]

enable "Allow 8-bit textures" and it will give you a boost, run the game no higher than 2x scaling (the game uses scaling so 2x is actually 4x) enable async audio. You'll get slow downs, but they will be less apparent and less annoying.

But this game destroys GPU's at the main menu i sit at 84% GPU usage

[refraction]

The snowblind games are very heavy and stopping the drops is quite difficult. So this is common place at the moment, even on high end computers.

[HammerHand]

I guess for now I can put up with some of the slowdown as the game has still been quite playable, that or I can just suck it up and play it on the ps2 since I've hardly used this component cable since I bought it lol. Where can I find 'async audio'? I'm not sure I've ever seen that setting before and it doesn't appear to be in the config guide. Also I forgot to mention before that in certain areas, in both Fallout and Dark Alliance (so presumably every snowblind game), the automap appears twisted or stretched and everything is out of place. For Fallout the 2 rooms that I remember being warped were the bar and the bottom floor of the warehouse where the first big scorpion boss is, for Dark Alliance it was the tavern and Baldur's Gate.

I double checked my audio settings and for some reason my module was on a different setting, must have been messing around and didn't realize I changed it but that appears to have fixed a lot of the slowdown so far. Definitely a lot more tolerable now so I'll probably be on DA1 and 2 for most of the week! Thanks again for all the hard work you guys put into this.

[killerkonnat]

But this game destroys GPU's at the main menu i sit at 84% GPU usage

Wait, are you playing on hardware mode? How do you avoid the half-screen bug? I've barely been able to get the game running at 60fps software mode but it has massive fps drops in some areas. I haven't seen anyone saying that hardware mode works now, despite my best googling efforts.

[Nobbs66]

The snowblind engine fix by gregory fixes the half screen in hardware. Should just be automatic on the new builds.

[killerkonnat]

It must be a really new addition. I just tested the newest nightly build and I'm amazed it's actually fixed now! Which revision of 1.3.1 (with the fix included) do you recommend for stability?

[Nobbs66]

Any of the new builds are fine to use. I haven't noticed too many issue with them.