Problems with Final Fantasy XII

[abyssaldesignatorify]

First of all, thanks for the help. I just put the FPS on Benchmark mode and it got to 160 FPS with no lag at all (but the game runs very quickly). Since it can run so fast, I strange the fact it can't run on normal speed without FPS drops... This is on Native x3 resolution and Direct3D11...

Oh, and when I put native resolution, even with the graphics ugly as hell, the performance was the same as with the Native x3 res

Set VU cycle steal slider all the way to the left (turn it off).
Some areas can be more demanding and might run at lower fps.
If CPU is the bottleneck, of course decreasing your resolution doesn't make it faster.

As a general rule of thumb always test a game with ee cycle rate and vu cycle stealing disabled. It is "not recommended" for a reason. VU cycle stealing should never even be used except in rare few games where it is recommended to do so or you have a very crappy processor and still insist on using pcsx2 and don't mind poor performance.

FF 12 is easy to emulate. I think your specs is more than enough to run this well just with recommended speed hacks only (default settings).

[Mosquitoblue]

Trying to get games to run at steady FPS are always tough to do. They can easily change just by the size of the area, or how many things on screen. Before you do ajustments on the PS2 Emulator you first want to do a few things on your PC to help with your speeds.
1. First if your virus software has a silent mode like Norton does , turn it on for the hours you will be playing, updating or active virus program slows stuff down stuff alot.
2. Keep your internet closed while playing along with message programs, if your using any guides, going online and copy the information to a text document, close and use the document instead.

3. Last open windows task manager and review all users running processes, other then the ps2 emulator, your open browser, and some of your svchost, nothing should be higher then 50,000k, if something is high its eating up a lot of memory , you should find what it is and close it, unless you really like to keep whatever it is running.

Now for the ps2 emulator.
1. Speeds hacks vary from game to game, will be up to you how to manage that. EE at 3, Vu at 2, and check on enable intc, enable wait loop, mvu flag hack should be ok.
2. As for GS, should keep it on disable.
3. Sound will depend on game, I actually like Async Mix for regular gameplay, it keeps the sound in line , but when people talk like in FFXII, or Suikoden 5, it will cause issues, MGS3 works fine with it, at least for me. The normal sound setting of Timestretch will need tinkering or you may have people talk in slow motion depending on PC.
4. Video set to DX11, with custom resolution of 1024 1024 , and check on smoothing, 8 bit, hacks, works great for me, interlacing on auto is ok, needed on games like Wild Arms F to prevent most menu shaking.
As for game's themselfs, if you still feel FFXII is running to slow for your liking, removing members off screen gives a great speed up, it's not hard to play with just 1 guy. It gets slower for 2 then all 3. And for some games what the player is wearing can change speeds a lot also, for example MGS3Sub, wearing the Tux uses less textures and will make things faster, but wearing the stelth camo causes a slow down and sound skipping. Of course this all depending on your computer in the first place.
Last of all keep your plugins updated, downloading new versions of the emulators every few months is good but will require you do redo settings, what I like to do, is download a updated SVN every week, then I only go to the plugins folders, to copy that and paste into the current plugins folder of the version being used, and change the plugin for video and sound if there are newer versions, then every few months I will actually just use a complete new SVN, but you will have to update all your memory card saves first, since save states cant be carried over. And redo all the other settings, but like I said if that's to much then just do the plugins.

Well sorry to give all that to take in, only giving you what helps me and my pc, in the end your own personal tinkering with the settings on each game will help you determine the settings that give the best FPS on each game.

First of all, thank you for your help. I tried exactly how you said and my game became kinda laggier, but then I put the D3D back on 9 and disabled the VU speedhacks and I noticed about 5 -10 FPS improval!
Again, thanks a lot.