Running high end games

[Damned536]

Well, I already posted in the "Is my computer fast enough?" thread, but I now that I have a clearer picture of the games I want to play, I was wandering if any of these games were particularly more power consuming on PCSX2 and would result in slowdowns. My CPU is an i7 2700K at stock 3.5 Ghz speed (I have turbo boost turned on in the BIOS, so it goes up to 3.9 GHZ, but I don't exactly know how turbo boost works or if PCSX2 can take advantage of it). along with a MSI Twin Forzr III Nvidia Geforce 570 GTX. I'm only interested in software mode, because I care about accuracy, not super duper hyper awesome turbo graphics mode with glitches. Anyways the games....

Castlevania Curse of Darkness/ Lament of Innocence
Crash Bandicoot Wrath of Cortex/ Twinsanity/ Mind Over Mutant/ Crash of the Titans
Final Fantasy X International / regular US version
Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City/ San Andreas/ Liberty City Stories/ Vice City Stories
Jak 1/2/3/4
Kingdom Hearts 1/2/Final Mix+
Legend of Spyro New Beginning/Dawn of the Dragon/Eternal Night
Mafia
Megaman X7/X8
Metal Slug Anthology
MGS2 Substance/MGS3 Subsistence
Musashi Samurai Legend
Ratchet and Clank 1/2/3/4/5
Scarface
Sly 1/2/3
Spyro Enter the Dragonfly/ a Hero's tale
Star Wars BattleFront 1/2

Soooo yeah, 40 games in total I want to emulate. I'm aware that a few of them apparently don't work, such as

2 of the Ratchet and Clank games
Scarface
Mafia
2 of the Legend of Spyro games
Musashi Samurai Legend
Spyro Enter the Dragonfly

I'm also aware of the rather....nasty graphical bug with Jak and Daxter, where Jak has only 1 eye and Daxter has none.

What I'm looking for is silky smooth video and audio performance. I fear that the Metal Gear solid games are not going to run fullspeed since they pushed the PS2 to its limits.

I'm also a little curious about the above games that don't work apparently. For Mafia, I saw a video of a guy playing it on PCSX2, despite the "intro" label it has for PCSX2 0.9.9 (which, ummm, doesn't exist yet). But what I'm truly wondering is if the PCSX2 team knows what is causing the above games to not be playable and if fixing the problem would not involve requiring a hex core 7.0 Ghz processor for fullspeed in Software mode. I'm probably just going to wait for version 0.9.9, which hopefully will sort out whatever descrepancies these games have with running. If not, then, well, 1.0 I guess ?

My other suggestion would be to create a wikia similar to what Dolphin has, and to get Testers of the emulator versions to regularly update it, as well as comments people can post as to how well the games run, so people like myself who contstantly are met with frustration when 100% perfect is reported for games by users who need to look up the word in the dictionary and so users in general will be able to know what settings to use for max compatibility and in general how they can expect the game to run. I am aware of a wiki already existing for PCSX2, but it is hardly complete in any faucet of the word.

Sooo yeah, if you are still with me after reading all this, I would appreciate feedback.

[abdo123]

although i haven't i played all those games but your PC is awesome !

you can play 95% of playable games at least @ x3 native




now about those games

FFX and KH 1+2+FINAL MIX working flawlessly full speed

Crash bandicot twin sanity and wrath of vortex working flawlessly full speed

MEga man x8 same as well maybe x7 too

Ratchet and clank series are demanding use speed hacks

Metal Slug ( it is awesome freaking games ) x6 native without any problems noticed

the rest i don't know i haven't played them all what i have is rumors from my friends and people on this SITE


now general tips :

use the latest SVN at the home page and USE MTVU speed hack along with others ( use those 2 extra cores ;P )

if you ever felt that you are pushed by your CPU try to OC it a bit till 4GHz which require nothing but increasing the clock ratio

good luck


0.9.9 does exist it is considered any SVN after R4600

and there is a wiki page actually it is on the same server

[Squall Leonhart]

i believe the max turbo boost for 3 cores is about 3.65ghz

[Rezard]

It's 3.7Ghz on 3 cores.

You don't really get a half Ghz with Sandy Bridge.
100Mhz BCLK, and no half multipliers for the processor.

Either way about it,
I seriously hope that is never going to be the active clockrate of an unlocked Sandy.

[Squall Leonhart]

hmm true, i failed to take into account the base clock is 100

[Damned536]

although i haven't i played all those games but your PC is awesome !

you can play 95% of playable games at least @ x3 native




now about those games

FFX and KH 1+2+FINAL MIX working flawlessly full speed

Crash bandicot twin sanity and wrath of vortex working flawlessly full speed

MEga man x8 same as well maybe x7 too

Ratchet and clank series are demanding use speed hacks

Metal Slug ( it is awesome freaking games ) x6 native without any problems noticed

the rest i don't know i haven't played them all what i have is rumors from my friends and people on this SITE


now general tips :

use the latest SVN at the home page and USE MTVU speed hack along with others ( use those 2 extra cores ;P )

if you ever felt that you are pushed by your CPU try to OC it a bit till 4GHz which require nothing but increasing the clock ratio

good luck


0.9.9 does exist it is considered any SVN after R4600

and there is a wiki page actually it is on the same server

Thanks for the tips. I will not be increasing my resolution, simply because I'm not interested in making the games look nicer, I'm interested in them looking and sounding like they should (hence why I've chosen to use software mode instead of hardware mode). I'm also going to wait until the official 0.9.9 comes out. I have some odd tastes in video games as you can see, but I do have confidence in the PCSX2 team that they will fix whatever is wrong with the games.

[rama]

It's best you search the forum for the game you want to play one at a time, see if there are any issue reports.
Most graphical issues are fixed by using software rendering anyway.
You can experiment a little with the MTVU speedhack (in 3D heavy games) versus more rendering threads set in GSdx.
(Use the SVN build for that: http://pcsx2.net/svn.php )

[Damned536]

Well I read up about ratchet and clank and all I am getting is "this game is heavy", "this game needs a powerful CPU", "this game is hard to emulate". Not very helpful. I read the 0.9.8 version guide and it says this...

•Rendering threads: This box is only usable when having selected a software rendering method. Here you can specify how many threads GSdx will use while software rendering, to take advantage of all cores your processor might have, e.g. set it to 3 for quad core processors. Boosts speed significantly in multi-core systems for software rendering with more than 2 cores.

Ummm, if I'm on a quad core, why not put 4 in that box?

Like I said, I'm going to wait until the 0.9.9 official version comes out. What I plan to do is turn on all recomended speedhacks and to use software mode. Hopefully I'll get a good combination of speed and compatibility that way. This MVU hack sounds interesting. Hardware mode is of no interest to me. Like I said accuracy > high quality graphics. If I want pretty pictures, I'll go to an art museum.

[Chik'Tikka]

you need to reserve a core for EE emulation, PCSX2 doesn't just play games, it emulates hardware like a virtual machine does and requires resources to do so+^_^+ so if you set it to 4, it might conflict EE emulation with GS emulation and cause slowdown+^_^+

considering you have a quad core, you might get more stable emulation with one of the SVNs, http://pcsx2.net/svn.php, they don't need to be installed and you can copy memcard saves into its folder, that way you'll still have 9.8 and can play around with some of the new features that will be in the next release+^_^+

[abdo123]

but it on 2 cores why :

1 for EE 2 for GS 1 for VU every one got a peice of it bye bye turbo ! ( both )