Stuttering issues with Front Mission 5

[flep]

So I put together my second rig the other day and tried playing Front Mission 5 on the latest dev release of PCSX2. To my dismay, I  wound up experiencing very sporadic fps in software mode and I have no idea why. With frame limiter disabled, it would jump from 50 to 150 fps for a few seconds at a time and then hover around 80 for another few seconds, only to go back down and up again. This causes massive amounts of stutter even if I turn frame limiter back on. In the exact same breifing screen I used to benchmark on my older rig, it stays at a constant 115~120 fps with no massive frame jumps or stuttering. 

I tried several other games on my new system but have not experienced the same issue yet. I was using the same dev release of PCSX2 (revision c2cf8e5) on both computers with the same BIOS, plugins, settings, and ISOs. I really have no idea why the new system is suffering from stuttering framrate issues while the other is just fine. Does Windows 10 cause problems with PCSX2? Is there something wrong with the 6700k or the way I overclocked it? I'm really at a loss right now.

I changed many settings to no avail, but I wil post what they were on for both systems when I did the comparison benchmark:

I was in dx11 software render mode with mip mapping/edge aa enabled and rendering threads set to 8. Finally, I had MTVU enabled. Everything else was set to the default of that build.
 
My last rig specs: Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit, i7 3770k @ 4.2 GHz, 8 gigs DDR3 Corsair Dominator, GTX 680, ASUS Z77 Sabertooth, 120 GB SSD
My new rig specs:Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit, i7 6700k @ 4.5 GHz, 16 gigs DDR4 Corsair Dominator, GTX 1080, MSI Z170A KRAIT,  250 GB Samsung Evo M.2 SSD

[refraction]

There is a known issue with VS2015 builds (possibly related to the AVX instruction set) and Skylake CPU's which causes performance loss.

To check if that's the case can you try this build and use the SSE4 version of GSDX? https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/6t...ppVeyor.7z

[flep]

There is a known issue with VS2015 builds (possibly related to the AVX instruction set) and Skylake CPU's which causes performance loss.

To check if that's the case can you try this build and use the SSE4 version of GSDX? https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/6t...ppVeyor.7z

Alright. Will do. What should I be looking for? The same kind of stutter I'm already experiencing or something else?

[refraction]

Yeah the same sort of stuttering or slowdowns, hopefully they should be better in that build

[flep]

Yeah the same sort of stuttering or slowdowns, hopefully they should be better in that build

Sadly, even in that build with the specified GSdx plugin, I am still experiencing stutter and wild frame fluctuations. I did a little troubleshooting with older builds however.

Went back to many earlier 1.5 builds with the same stutter problem, 1.4 has the issue as well. However, once I went back to 1.2.1, the issue went away completely and I get a stable 265~269 fps constantly in the same exact spot that I've been using to benchmark. Everything is left as default on the 1.2.1 build except for software mode set to dx11, edge aa checked, and extra rendering threads set to 8.

Were there any builds between 1.2.1 and 1.4.0 for windows that I could test this on? If so, where could I find them?

[flep]

Ok, definitely GSdx realted. Used the old default GSdx plugin from 1.2.1( gsdx32-avx2-r5875) on the latest build of 1.5 that I have and I got the same improved results. Any chance there's a repository of GSdx builds somewhere I could download and pick through?

[refraction]

Hmm not really, apart from the git builds. Can you show me your settings in your new version of GSDX including the hw hacks section? maybe we can find out if you have a bad setting somewhere Odd that software mode should be faster, it's generally best avoided unless you're having problems.

[flep]

Hmm not really, apart from the git builds.  Can you show me your settings in your new version of GSDX including the hw hacks section? maybe we can find out if you have a bad setting somewhere Odd that software mode should be faster, it's generally best avoided unless you're having problems.

Actually, I've always used software mode for Front Mission 5 due to some graphical problems that have never been fixed for the game in hardware mode and have no workaround. (no shadows, glitchy shadows, missing battle lines, etc) As such, I haven't even messed around with hw hacks at all. 

Seems like it's more than just old 1.2.1 GSdx plugins that solve the issue. Just tried this GSdx plugin and it seems to fix the wild fps and stutter problem as well.

[refraction]

You might find the shadows work in a modern version if you use the OpenGL (Hardware) renderer and set the Blending Accuracy to Basic or Medium. I haven't tested it but a lot of shadow issues have been fixed recently Of course you will need to use a new version of GSDX.