Overclocking the EE (discussion) (testers wanted)

[Nobbs66]

For much greater we would.

But I'm testing that. I fully excpect things to explode when I start sending partial cycle delays though!

Yeah, this could be a bigger project than you and I first imagined.

[Blyss Sarania]

Yeah, this could be a bigger project than you and I first imagined.

Well making the Scalars floats didn't implode the world.

I've got a build with:

Underclock: 33, 50
Overclock: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50

Testing it myself now.

[Blyss Sarania]

FWIW the 33% and 50% in my first build were actually MUCH more than that. I'm currently tweaking numbers so the percentages actually line up.

[Blyss Sarania]

Okay, I've got the numbers dialed in much better. Not perfect, but much closer. Consider these measurements of external FPS (which drops with OC):

Old way:
Stock: 180 FPS
33%: 110 FPS
50%: 98 FPS

New way:
Stock: 180FPS
10%: 162 FPS
20%: 135 FPS
30%: 120 FPS
40%: 108 FPS
50%: 98FPS

Much better(and realistic scaling)!

I will be sending out new test builds in a bit. I want to test many games to see how this partial cycle delay affects.

[Blyss Sarania]

Alright I made a decision -

Because it's such a PITA for me to send 99 PMs out every new build, I'm just gonna post them in this thread. The same stuff as before applies though - they are not to be redistributed!

I'm preparing the new build now, I will post it with infos shortly.

[Blyss Sarania]

Alright, here we go updated release.

First, some changes you need to be aware of:

The slider goes reverse of how it used to now. This is in order to keep compatibility with current INI and presets!

1 is default. Left ways is overclock. Right ways is underclock. Counterintuitive, I know, but since the old underclock was on the positive numbers, this is the way it had to be done.

The slider now has more positions:
-4 - 50% OC
-3 - 40% OC
-2 - 30% OC
-1 - 20% OC
0 - 10% OC
1 - default
2 - 33% UC
3 - 50% UC

I definitely need much testing for this version - I changed the scalars to floats which means the cycle delays aren't integers now. I expected havoc but I haven't seen any issues - my guess is the maths on the scalars are truncating them to integers at some point anyway. Either way, it works, and adds much finer control to what I can do.

Please test as much as possible (even stuff you already tested!).

It is now drop in compatible with old versions INI, although if you switch BACK, it can get confused. E.G. if you have an overclock set in the OC build, you will need to deal with the slider in the normal build being where you don't want it when you switch back

Thanks!

Download: PCSX2 OC Test Version 2

[JMC47]

Question: Why not flip around how it works? I think it'd be better to change it to a system that makes more sense (if possible) rather than cater to the old system. Is there anything blocking you from flipping it around, or is it just fear of confusing users in the future?

[Akio]

I think he wants to make it backward compatible without adding more code. Actually, I think it's not complicated. We just need an adapter to convert the values. For example, we can convert 0 and -1 to 2 and 3 and convert 2 and 3 to 0 and -1. If the user can set any value from 150 MHz to 450 MHz, we can just convert 300 MHz to 1, 200 MHz to 2, and 150 MHz to 3. It's easy for me to say because I'm not the one who implements it.

[Blyss Sarania]

Question: Why not flip around how it works? I think it'd be better to change it to a system that makes more sense (if possible) rather than cater to the old system. Is there anything blocking you from flipping it around, or is it just fear of confusing users in the future?

There is a good bit of code(that I'm personally not familiar with) which depends on those values being as they are. The main thing being the speedhack presets. As well as I would like to keep compatibility where it can just be a drop in and the settings don't get screwy. (E.g. so the user doesn't have to delete their INIs and reconfigure from scratch). For a tester version that's not an issue, but for an actual release version it is I think.

I think he wants to make it backward compatible without adding more code. Actually, I think it's not complicated. We just need an adapter to convert the values. For example, we can convert 0 and -1 to 2 and 3 and convert 2 and 3 to 0 and -1. If the user can set any value from 150 MHz to 450 MHz, we can just convert 300 MHz to 1, 200 MHz to 2, and 150 MHz to 3. It's easy for me to say because I'm not the one who implements it.

Yes, it shouldn't be hard. Anyway this is just tester stuff, I will most likely not be the one who writes the final implementation.

[Akio]

This is off-topic but it would be nice if we had a published to-do list on the website. So people will see the tasks and they might be interested to help. There should be many tasks that don't require in-depth knowledge about PS2 emulation.