Persona 4 - MicroVU vs SuperVU

[Jaerin]

I've used PCSX2 ages ago, but I'm back to give it a try again now that I have a kick ass machine.

I'm running a

Intel i5-2500k @ 4.4Ghz
ATI 7970 with 3Gig of Vram

So what I'm finding is that I can run Persona 4 with both VU0/1 set to MicroVU and get 120FPS easily. The problem is that even if its frame limited to 60 the game still seems to be running way too fast. The sound and such all seems fine, but your character and combat messages flash by like you are in turbo mode. I'm not in turbo mode though. I'll call it hyper normal mode.

If I switch the VU to SuperVU then the game seems to run great when its at 60FPS. The compatibility seems much more solid, but the speed is significantly more unstable. Right now with SuperVU I have to enable the first level of EE and VU speedhack to get it to 95% run at 60FPS all the time. I'm okay with this if its not going to break anything, but if I could get the game running at normal speed with microVU that would be ideal.

I've tried playing with the clamping settings as well and that helps, but as some point I find that once the game gets into that hyper normal mode its hard to get it back to the normal speed even with SuperVU. I usually have to copy in my backup copy of my settings to get everything back to where it was.

So do you think there is anything I can do to "fix" the hyper normal mode I'm seeing with the microVU or is it just a compatibility issue?


Settings:
PCSX2 (1.1.0.5530)
GSdx 5464 - SSE4 - Direct3D11 (Hardware)
3x native
Texture Filtering
Allow 8-bit textures

LilyPad 5403
SPU2-X 5478 - Catmull-Rom, XAudio 2 150ms, Synchro - None (prefer sound skips to blur)
Linux Iso 0.9.0 - .Z compressed ISO (tried uncompressed as well)

USA v01.60 BIOS

EE/IOP - Recompiler
Round Mode Chop/Zero
Clamping Mode - Full
VU0/1 - superVU
Round Mode - Chop/Zero
Clamping Mode - Extra + Preserve Sign
Frame Skipping - Disabled

Aspect Ration: 16:9 (Have WS cheat patch enabled)
No Vsync enabled

EE Cyclerate - 2
VU Stealing - 1
MTVU enabled

INTC, Wait Loop, mVU Flag - disabled

VU Clip Flag Hack - Enabled

[Devina]

Download the recent widescreen archive (link in my sig).
You're probably using the old version of the widescreen hack, which has a buggy progressive scan mode, causing a turbo-like effect.
The newest version of the patch has it disabled, and should stop the speedup.

[Jaerin]

Woot that looks like that's it. Funny I downloaded it I think yesterday so thanks for the fix!!!

I'm still testing, but so far its running awesome...with both SuperVU and microVU

Thank you so much!

[Jaerin]

I just wanted to follow up that although this resolved the MicroVU problems I still find that using SuperVU with Persona 4 offers a much more compatible experience.

It's a little slower in some of the really really busy places, but overall the doesn't have near the number of little glitchy things that stood out. I wish I could be more descriptive, but I've been playing it on SuperVU its hard to know exactly what was the reason I switched.

MicroVU was faster, but SuperVU is more compatible.

[Devina]

Really? It's like the opposite for me. MicroVU = compatibility, SuperVU = speed.
I prefer MicroVU because of the compatbility, and because I'm lazy to change the settings for every game I play.
If you use SuperVU in FFX and FFX-2, you'll probably end up with weird glitchy hair.

Whatever works best for you though.

[Jaerin]

Really? It's like the opposite for me. MicroVU = compatibility, SuperVU = speed.
I prefer MicroVU because of the compatbility, and because I'm lazy to change the settings for every game I play.
If you use SuperVU in FFX and FFX-2, you'll probably end up with weird glitchy hair.

Whatever works best for you though.

I'm only speaking for Persona 4's compatibility. I'll have to play with the settings back and forth to remember exactly what I was seeing. When playing P4 under SuperVU it felt exactly how it was on the PS2.

And actually looking at the WS patch it looks like you or someone added something for "moonwalking" characters...Hadn't see that unless you are talking about the characters the devs seem to lazy with despawning once they are off screen

[StriFe]

well the hack for Persona games, asks you to run on SuperVU Recompiler Only, so I am running SuperVU, never actually tried to run the game without the hack and superVU, but SuperVU runs just great for me, good speed and compatibility.