Primal NTSC SCUS 971.42

[Umbra the Wolf]

So now that PCSX2 is at version 1.40 I thought Primal might work better however it still will not work even slightly. A while back on version 0.96 I had some help but no one could get Primal to work but back then I had a dual core laptop, now I have a high end gaming desktop. 

I sought out the Wiki pages for settings and technical help but aside from the game being fairly obscure, it looks like not many can get this to work but none of them had my system specs either. Since it's my favorite game I want to play it on my new PC and so far it's absolutely atrocious with infinite loading loops, 5-20 FPS at best, and total freezes once I enter the time chamber within the first 5 minutes of the game (or whatever that big glowing room is called after the first cutscene with her on the hospital bed). Every time I freeze in place as soon as I enter the chamber. My system should slaughter this game. A guy with an i5 2500 (4 core at 3.2GHz) and AMD 6950 averaged 20 FPS and my PC would swallow his whole for power, so I'm strongly leaning toward "me" being the issue to making this work. Any help is insanely appreciated!!!!

Settings
   
(((As an FYI, the AMD Crimson Suite 16.1 Hotfix and all other drivers including the latest non-Crimson suite (AMD CCC 15.7) have had no bearing on FPS or otherwise, so I've ruled out a GPU driver issue.)))

I've tried a lot but I don't know if I've hit any good combinations and I don't know what any of this really means at all. I've tried OpenGL, DX9-11 Hardware and Software with max or lowest graphical settings but I still only get around 5-20FPS and still freeze at the time chamber or whatever it is. Either way, game freezes in the same exact spot for the last 3 years give or take. Any ideas guys? I'd really appreciate getting this running around 30 FPS steady on that at least.

My rig:
i7 5820K @4GHz 6 cores 12 threads
ASRock x99 Extreme4
CoolerMaster Seidon 240M
16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4@3GHz CL14
8GB Sapphire Nitro Tri-X Radeon R9 390
250GB Samsung 850 EVO
2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA III 6Gb/s 7200RPM 64MB Buffer
EVGA SuperNOVA G2 1000W
Phantek's Enthoo PRO
Optoma HD141X 1080p3D Projector
ASUS 16D1HT Blu Ray Burner
Windows 10 PRO 64 bit (fully updated)

[vsub]

Use software mode in GSdx(I use 4 threads but while trying I forgot that I left it to 0 and 4 didn't make any change)and in SpeedHacks,only those(do not change them to anything else)

EE slider on the +2 side(overclock),VU on 1 and disable MTVU

The game is running at 60fps and it feels that way but it also feels like you are using frame skipping set to 1
It's not cpu\gpu power that is making the game run slow

[Umbra the Wolf]

Use software mode in GSdx(I use 4 threads but while trying I forgot that I left it to 0 and 4 didn't make any change)and in SpeedHacks,only those(do not change them to anything else)

EE slider on the +2 side(overclock),VU on 1 and disable MTVU

The game is running at 60fps and it feels that way but it also feels like you are using frame skipping set to 1
It's not cpu\gpu power that is making the game run slow

That certainly helped a lot, but the game is still very choppy and still black screens when loading occasionally. I did make it past that infamous part in the Nexus chamber but then just black screened elsewhere. It appears to be random when I come out of a free play area into a cutscene it's like there's a 50% chance it's just going to black screen or load properly. One minute there's no issue another minute I get a black screen with sound going in a loop.

The frame rate is quite unplayable even though it says a perfect 60FPS. Definitely not really that. Without any speedhacks I get about 15FPS with total lockups during certain effects.
Any suggestions? I heard this game was hard to emulate but had no idea.

[ronnykiax]

me too ;(

[dogen]

That certainly helped a lot, but the game is still very choppy and still black screens when loading occasionally. I did make it past that infamous part in the Nexus chamber but then just black screened elsewhere. It appears to be random when I come out of a free play area into a cutscene it's like there's a 50% chance it's just going to black screen or load properly. One minute there's no issue another minute I get a black screen with sound going in a loop.

The frame rate is quite unplayable even though it says a perfect 60FPS. Definitely not really that. Without any speedhacks I get about 15FPS with total lockups during certain effects.
Any suggestions? I heard this game was hard to emulate but had no idea.

Speed hacks can reduce the real fps which will increase the emulators frame rate, which is what you see at the top of pcsx2's window.

Anyway, last time I tried this game it ran like at like half speed on my >4GHz g3258.

[hildegain]

"i7 5820K @4GHz 6 cores 12 threads"

Long shot, but tried switching off hyperthreading? It could well be that an i5 2500 is slaughtering your CPU because he's not using HT at all. I'm on an i7 too and never found the need to leave Hyperthreading on as the gains were tiny and the performance drops were always huge.

[Akiyama]

is that a screenshot R9 390 graphics?
#GetRekt

[Umbra the Wolf]

hey there, oh man yeah that's an R9 390 screenshot. xD rocks like hell! I'll def try to disable HT to get real 30 FPS+ hopefully! This game is so sentimental to me, I'll get back soon and thanks everyone for the replies. I always have this site emailing me of new responses so if anyone finds anything new to make this game work even years down the road I'll be very grateful!!!

[Umbra the Wolf]

So I disabled Hyper Threading and now the game runs at half speed with no speedhacks, which is a massive improvement. Sadly the game is too choppy with speedhacks faking FPS to play so despite the improvements I still say this game is unplayable. I'd sooner buy a PS2 to play my game or download it on my PS4 later on if I truly wanted a good experience.