Slowdown (FF12 in this instance) but low EE percentage.

[Medrea]

In some areas the perceived frame rate is really low and the game slows way down.

Hardware is:
i5-2500k overclocked to 4.0 ghz
7970 overclocked in various ways.
8 gigs RAM

When I take off the frame limiter the FPS in town (Rabanastre) goes up to 140fps which would not be a problem except now everything is in double time.

When I put it back on, my FPS indicator at the time remains locked at 60, however everything in the game is super slow (when I tilt my camera up a bit to see where Im going).

EE % stays at around 35 percent (with frame limit it goes to 100 of course). GS goes to maybe 9 percent.

Modifying settings like resolution have no effect on this phenomenon. Running in native resolution offers the same behavior as 3X and up. Also tried aggressive CRC and skipdraw 1.

[NarooN]

Do you have any speedhacks on? If so, turn them off (except the default ones), as they can sometimes cause things like this to happen. Otherwise it's possible the slowdown is just part of the game (if a game slowed down on the PS2, it would slow down in this emu as well.)

[darkwraith007]

Please get CPU-Z and GPU-Z in the .zip (no-install) versions. Run them and then link the validated links so we can see what your actual hardware looks like.
I know I get slowdown sometimes on my system (but it isn't exactly top of the line).
The game emulates the PS2 so it also emulates the slowdowns.
This also happens with cycle-accurate NES emulators that'll emulate any slowdowns that would happen on a real system.

The emulator is imperfect (as all emulators are) and certain unfixed errors (usually in GSDX plugin) will cause slowdowns. I know someone mentioned that Quickenings sometimes cause the major slowdowns so use the 'Aggressive CRC' hack to help mitigate that.
Outside of that, I've played around on a real system and it does slow down a bit in certain spots because this game really pushed the system to the limit.

Keep the game at 2x-4x scaled resolution, no higher. For many games if you go above 4x you encounter wierd bugs/glitches and such.
Keep all the defaults and make sure you use all the speedhacks except the 'Fast CD/DVD' one.
Rip your ISO from your original discs rather than playing with them in your optical drive. The loading times are greatly reduced if it is reading off of a hard drive instead of from the disc.

We can help ya more once you get the detailed specs in.

[Nobbs66]

Please get CPU-Z and GPU-Z in the .zip (no-install) versions. Run them and then link the validated links so we can see what your actual hardware looks like.
I know I get slowdown sometimes on my system (but it isn't exactly top of the line).
The game emulates the PS2 so it also emulates the slowdowns.
This also happens with cycle-accurate NES emulators that'll emulate any slowdowns that would happen on a real system.

The emulator is imperfect (as all emulators are) and certain unfixed errors (usually in GSDX plugin) will cause slowdowns. I know someone mentioned that Quickenings sometimes cause the major slowdowns so use the 'Aggressive CRC' hack to help mitigate that.
Outside of that, I've played around on a real system and it does slow down a bit in certain spots because this game really pushed the system to the limit.

Keep the game at 2x-4x scaled resolution, no higher. For many games if you go above 4x you encounter wierd bugs/glitches and such.
Keep all the defaults and make sure you use all the speedhacks except the 'Fast CD/DVD' one.
Rip your ISO from your original discs rather than playing with them in your optical drive. The loading times are greatly reduced if it is reading off of a hard drive instead of from the disc.

We can help ya more once you get the detailed specs in.

The op did post their specs.

[willkuer]

You can try to limit the cpu usage to two or three cores in the taskmanager. This helped another guy with good specs to achieve stable high fps - but in his case it was thought to be an i7-hyperthreading problem. You can also check if the turbo-mode is turned on.

Is your system stable at these overclocks? You can try to reduce the overclocking and check if this enhances your experience...

[Medrea]

Do you have any speedhacks on? If so, turn them off (except the default ones), as they can sometimes cause things like this to happen. Otherwise it's possible the slowdown is just part of the game (if a game slowed down on the PS2, it would slow down in this emu as well.)

[Image: WINNER.jpg]

Good idea. It turned out to be slowdown due to cycle stealing. Which on this installation was maxed out for some reason. (Remember it not being that way before).

Hopefully this fixes it, after all I was just looking at a single case, but hopefully I picked the base case scenario.

For someone reading this in the future, the problems were:

Emulator showing 60 FPS
%EE not indicating a max out plus framerates were fine when limiter was off.
Changing scaling has no effect on the slowdown, native same perceived framerate as whatever.

Now if anyone can just figure out a way to run the game at 1.0 emulation speed but double the graphics framerate speed (to 60fps).

[NarooN]

Yeah, the VU cycle stealing can show what we call 'false' fps readings. In reality, the framerate is truly running at that speed, but due to the nature of the PS2's architecture (all the processors running in sync with each other, very tight-knit) the VU units are basically stealing cycles from the EE, thus creating a form of de-sync in some games, which shows inconsistent slower movement in-game (which is why you'll hear the game's music and sound effects playing at a normal speed with the characters still moving in slow motion, for example.) This doesn't happen in every game, but in some cases it'll give you a speed-up, just not the kind that is ideal.

[Blyss Sarania]

Lol NarooN you earned a big "Winner!" image.

Reminds me of this one time I somehow earned a random anime girl drawing in that one thread...

[NarooN]

Reminded me of this:
[Image: 140708522.UMtdVB82.yourewinne_850665.jpg]

I've played it before.

WORST. PC GAME. EVER.

[Blyss Sarania]

Reminded me of this:


I've played it before.

WORST. PC GAME. EVER.

You played Big rigs: OtRR?

I'm hoping it was just to amuse yourself at how bad it was lol.