Performance Issues with Ridge Racer V

[Isamu]

Games look sharper at higher resolution besides of the supersampling like antialiasing effect you get with it, low resolution with high AA don't quite look the same. I don't see much difference between 4x and 6x but the difference between 3x and 4x is quite noticeable despite both being higher than my screen size

Shadow Lady hit the nail on the head. I have a 110" front projection screen from a DLP projector with a VERY sharp lens, so any imperfections are amplified from a lower res game. I for one, can see differences between x3, x4, x5, and x6, despite my display being restricted to 1280x720. PCSX2 downsamples the image, resulting in the game looking very very nice at x6. But you are correct refraction, in that x3 is not too shabby and x4 is a bit nicer though at the cost of some annoying frame dips.

Tuanming...indeed a Sandy Bridge OC'ed to 4.5 or maybe more, coupled with an nVidia 580 would no doubt allow me to run it better. How much better is unknown of course.

[tuanming]

If Sandy Bridge-E wowed me enough, I might get it... However, Ivy Bridge is said to have 20% performance over SB. Right now, the Core i5 2500K is about 17 - 20 percents faster than a Core 2 Quad q9xxx series at the same clock speed in PCSX2 with turbo boost turned off. This figure applies only to my current system specs, for others the percentage is likely to be higher

If I were to upgrade, Ivy Bridge would be a better choice or option for me ;P With 20 percents faster than a Sandy Bridge, that basically translates to full speed in all of those demanding games if one overclock high enough.

[refraction]

There is a flaw in your logic, there will always be a faster chip coming out soon you will wait for ivy.bridge then Intel will announce their next faster processor. Tis a never ending cycle

[Squall Leonhart]

Ivy bridge doesn't have a quad channel controller though.

[Isamu]

Ivy bridge doesn't have a quad channel controller though.

Hmm, what are the benefits of having a quad channel controller?

[Squall Leonhart]

AVX loves memory bandwidth

[Isamu]

Well guys, I picked up a new front projector today, the BenQ W6000. This pj is a significant step up from my previous unit, the BenQ PE8720. The main difference being, this one supports full 1080p resolution while the older model went up to only 720p.

Anyway I decided to pop in RRV since I haven't played it in awhile, to see what the game would like on a full 1080p display. At first I started off like I normally do and run it at max 6x internal res using the most recent PCSX2 SVN build. Of course it was still slow as hell, so i turned it down a down to 4x and pretty much the same result. 3x yielded better performance and still a bit slow but not too bad and very playable.

It's not until I decided to check the "Custom res" box and manually set the res to 1920 x 1080 however, that I really saw the game fly. Rama....you've always recommended I set the internal res to my desktop res. I'm curious though...in order for this to take effect, does my actual desktop resolution need to be at 1920x1080? Or does it not matter?

Anyway upon using this custom res, I saw an immediate increase in speed! I can run the game as rock solid 60fps 98% of the time at 1920x1080 and it doesn't look too bad! In addition, the fact that my display and can now deliver a native picture of 1920x1080 means that Ridge Racer looks a bit better than on a native 1280x720 display.

Still, with that being said, nothing comes close to how beautiful the game looks at 6x internal res. The horrible jaggies are all but gone and the textures are incredibly sharp! This of course comes at a huge cost of speed.

Hopefully one day soon I will be able to pick up that damn nvidia 680 card so that I can see Ridge Racer V spread its wings on higher internal resolutions.

I'm hoping Gabest will one day take a look at what may be causing the cars to look all screwed up in the game. It's the only thing that's distracting me from the RRV experience.

[Isamu]

Made a couple of tweaks and I am able to get very playable speeds at x5 res! Still some lag but not too shabby!

Here's one thing I noticed abut this game and the reason why it looks so "ugly".

I notice there is a very bad amount of aliasing problems in the image, and it's because of Namco's programming that it looks the way it does. One thing I've come to realize is that the aliasing problems did not bother me so much when I played the game on my old TV, because my old TV was limited to supporting resolutions only up to 480i, and only supported up to component video. Now, with PCSX2, I should have expected it to make the flaws of Ridge Racer V more pronounced, and boy does it ever! It really REALLY exacerbates the game's graphical flaws.


But with that having been said, there is another issue that I'm noticing as a contributing factor to the game's less than stellar visuals....it has to do with Gabest's various interlacing options within the GDSX plugin.

The various Interlace options in GDSX plug-in(weave, bob, blend, etc) appears to make the image slightly better or worse depending on which one you select, but none of them are perfect. I don't understand how Gabests' GDSX interlacing options work, but none of them makes the picture in Ridge Racer V "clean". One option delivers too much interlacing lines on the screen, another option makes the image too blurry, while another option makes the picture too "jumpy", particularly when I'm driving the car. When I am at a stand still, a couple of the options gives me a fairly clean and sharp image, but the moment I start moving I get this slight "jumpy" effect in the picture. It's pretty annoying and I haven't found a way to eliminate it.

Any suggestions on what I can do to eliminate these interlacing/Blur/Jumpy effects?

[smartstrike]

AVX loves memory bandwidth

i never know AVX loves bandwidth +1

[Isamu]

Well guys, I could proceed to write a 10 page summary full of excitement and a post laced with dozens of superlatives describing how I feel, but I won't waste your time. I'll just say that now that I have one of these...

(4gb version)

....I can, for the first time in the history of my using PCSX2, run this game at full speed 60fps at 6x internal res almost ALL the time, with an fps dip to about 45fps on only one or two sections of the track for a brief period. I am absolutely ECSTATIC!!! There simply are no words. At x5 res just STICK A FORK IN IT!!!! WE'RE DONE!!! rock solid 60fps everywhere and ALL THE TIME!

This game can finally be enjoyed the way I wanted it to...at super hi-res and at 60fps.

Now when the graphical glitches on the cars get sorted out, then we'll REALLY be cookin'