Persona 3 Help

[Ninjames]

Hey guys.. if I'm posting this in the wrong place, apologies. I'm new to PS2 emulation, and I'm really having a hard time getting this all set up and running it effectively. I'm on a laptop, which sucks, but I can run plenty of things like CoD4, The Sims 3, FEAR, WoW etc.. just fine. So I'm wondering what exactly is the problem here.

I'm using the latest beta for pcsx2 since that's what it suggests. I also have the latest stable release downloaded. I'm just not sure what kind of settings to use, and when I find threads about it, people use all this terminology my tiny brain can't comprehend.

I'm on Windows 7, with an Intel Pentium Dual Core @2.10 GHz, 3 GB of RAM.. now I know where everyone is going to raise a red flag is at my video, which is obviously integrated.. Intel Mobile 4 Express chipset nonsense.. still, I can play many games and now I really would like to get Persona 3 running on this. Is there hope for me?

[jesalvein]

welcome to ps2 emulation.
keep in mind that emulation requires a lot of power, and games like CoD4 are nothing compared to some games under pcsx2as you have quite a weak CPU and a weak GPU, keep native res in gsdx options, set both clamp modes to none, use some speedhacks (not all in the same time, try them 1 by 1) and try latest pcsx2 beta (0.9.7) instead.

[Ninjames]

Will try those things.. Note that I should have included this - I run other PS2 games with this emulator fine. Like FFX for instance, runs pretty flawlessly.

[jesalvein]

true
but FFX is one of the less demanding games

[StriFe]

Games like the Xenosaga Series, Persona Games and Star Ocean 3 are pretty much CPU-Intensive and I've got a AMD Athlon 64 6000+ and with that hardware it's even quite hard to run all the games @ 60fps

[FinalSquall]

Yup SO3 and Persona I need speedhacks to run with my Q6600 (2.4 GHZ damn packard bell wont let me OC it) and my Nvidia 9600GS and 3GB RAM, I couldnt really run Xenosaga at all. Final Fantasy X is easy though^^

[Butz_san]

Try to use native resolution. That will help you a lot in your gaming with Pcsx2

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

Xenosaga is specially hard on my machine just because it's annoying tendency to desyinc the sound in all cutscenes if the minimal VU cycle stealing is applied.
Fortunately the CPU has enough juice to allow playable experience and full speed most of times, with just a small loss at a few of those. The amount of AWGS harms a bit too but I can survive it.

Shadow hearts works better (and quicker!) in gs software mode last time I verified, time to test that again. It's totally playable with no speed hack at all, a good choice for less powerful machines, mainly where the video card is the great bottleneck.

Valkyrie Profile II is a tough nut too. In the end each machine and game combination allows and requires different settings, Most times a setup (config) that is best for someone is not the better for another, Experimenting until getting the best we like it or the less it annoy us, is the way to go.