.hack Infection - choppy/skipping audio

[frankwilliams]

I've started playing the original .hack series, and when I try to load it in the emulator, the speed of the game (and much more noticeably, the sound) seems to speed up and down at certain intervals. It will go in a loop like this every 10 seconds or so... It'll run slightly faster than it should, then suddenly "freeze" or skip for a second or so. This is most noticeable on the audio - the "interval" doesn't seem to effect visuals at all, they just run at the same (painfully slow) rate. It seems to me like the audio is overusing the resources my computer has given it (the speed-up) and then freezing when it reaches its limit, but then again, I have no idea what I'm talking about so that's really just a guess.

Also, the CPU usage of the game is pretty absurd for something made around 2002; the lag is tolerable when I'm in a menu, but when I'm running around the starting town, or God forbid watching a cutscene, the game is completely unplayable. I benchmarked it in a town, and oOn the Windows Task Manager it says it's using ~60 percent of my CPU on average but the memory it's taking up (136,00 K) is less than even the browser I'm currently using to write this.

The reason I'm asking for help is that it seems weird to me that I can run pretty much any modern game (MW3, Crysis 2, etc) just fine with no skipping or lag at all, but a game made in the early 2000's with terrible graphics can bring my computer to it's knees.

I've tried speed hacks, and messing with the audio settings (just trying random combinations, and various suggestions people have posted) and nothing seems to really work too well.

I'm running a Dell XPS 410. Specs are:
Intel Core 2 CPU 6300 @ 1.83GHz 1.83 GHz
2.00 GB of RAM
32-bit OS

[jesalvein]

I can run pretty much any modern game (MW3, Crysis 2, etc) just fine with no skipping or lag at all, but a game made in the early 2000's with terrible graphics can bring my computer to it's knees.

hem. You're not trying to compare emulated games with native pc games, are you ?

read the stickies, especially "why is pcsx2 so slow". Your specs barely meet the minimum requirements, and you will have a hard time running most games under pcsx2

[natt]

Also, the CPU usage of the game is pretty absurd for something made around 2002; the lag is tolerable when I'm in a menu, but when I'm running around the starting town, or God forbid watching a cutscene, the game is completely unplayable. I benchmarked it in a town, and oOn the Windows Task Manager it says it's using ~60 percent of my CPU on average but the memory it's taking up (136,00 K) is less than even the browser I'm currently using to write this.

The reason I'm asking for help is that it seems weird to me that I can run pretty much any modern game (MW3, Crysis 2, etc) just fine with no skipping or lag at all, but a game made in the early 2000's with terrible graphics can bring my computer to it's knees.

It seems weird to you because you don't understand the technical processes involved with emulation. Your computer is not a PS2, and the job that PCSX2 is doing to emulate a PS2 on a PC is very non-trival.

Your results sound quite normal for a c2d 1.8ghz running PCSX2; there may be no speed-up solution, especially if you've tried speedhacks already.

[frankwilliams]

hem. You're not trying to compare emulated games with native pc games, are you ?

read the stickies, especially "why is pcsx2 so slow". Your specs barely meet the minimum requirements, and you will have a hard time running most games under pcsx2

Well yes, I am, because it isn't obvious to a newcomer that that isn't the case. I haven't read the stickies because most of the research I have done on this forum has been from Google.