.hack/infection on an a6 llano apu
#1
ok to start things off im using the a6-3420m which is on par in terms of processing with the a8-3500m. it loses in graphics but since im using an 7470m discrete card that isnt very important(gs% never went above 80 so it seems to be adequate)

anyway i have managed to make several tweaks such as ee cycling and vu stealing, dx11 hw and so on(ty to the person who told me that in my last post), but have unfortunately ran into one problem i can not get rid of... a large decrease in framerate any time there is a large area(not fields for some reason, but places like large dungeon rooms, cut scenes, and the town) would bring me down to 30fps, i got it up to 40 by using a revision of pcsx2 1.1.0, but i really dont want to hunt through all the versions until i find the version that suits it best... my question is whether there are any versions that are known to be a bit more friendly to a quadcore apu clocking in at 2.4ghz(im considering a .4ghz overclock, but im unsure whether my laptop can handle the heat with its stock heatsink/fan)

tbh i dont really need it fixed to enjoy the game, as long as i pay attention to where im looking(not down long hallways) i can play constantly at around 60fps along with a vid running on my second monitor... but on the off chance someone knows how to fix these framedrops i decided it was worth asking here... since ngemu was less than helpful with a constant stream of (no matter what you cant get playable framerates with an amd processor... despite the fact that im already playing the fricken game with no huge issues that effect gameplay -_-)

anyway if anyone knows anything at all i'd appreciate it

speedhacks in use is ee cyclerate 2-3(still deciding if the minor increase is worth the occasional audio problem) and vu stealing 2(the 2-2 and3-2 settings are completely stable as far as i can see, tho i do occasionally run into an audio prob so i'd like to find an alternative if possible :|) mtvu is also activated. and gs is set to dx11 hardware mode... using native resolution
Reply

Sponsored links

#2
what do the ee% say when you get slowdowns ?

To me, you won't get full speed all the time with that kind of CPU until you're able to push it up to 4Ghz (which will fry it).
Thus, it's highly possible you're already getting the best results...
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
Reply
#3
you can try the settings in my sig, but no promisses
Reply
#4
ok ee% is at max whenever i get the lags, but the odd thing is that all 4 cores of my processor give a read of about 60% or less at any given time during the emulation... so it doesnt appear to be fully utilizing any of them.

turns out i had chosen a rather unstable overclock level. after fixing it and making a few more tweaks i am now getting a minimum of 50fps at any given time during movies, and full 60fps in town. ill check dungeons but im assuming it'll be the same. problem was me trusting amds autoclock -_-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
update time: i have yet to go into any more movie sequences but im expecting to see a slight issue same as dungeons. i can now handle most dungeon rooms, but the extremely large ones will lag. the lag gets less and goes back up to 60 in most cases by the time im in the center, but otherwise it wont hit 60 until i look directly at a reasonable close wall..... additionally i've found that my ee% no longer goes above 70, but my graphics have been hitting into 80.... and since it appears to slow down when there is a lot of rendering to do, im starting to wonder if it may have something to do with my graphics card and not my cpu... and on further review it seems that upon updating catalyst it looks like it may be using my onboard graphics instead of my discrete card... and on a side note if it is im going to formally apologize to my a6 for ever underestimating it cuz i think this thing was just running a ps2 game all by its lonesome o.0

ok the reasonably close wall thing is actually from prior experience, with this setup ive yet to see a single room that didnt increase to 60 by the time i was in the center... which is conveniently where the monsters spawn XD
Reply
#5
pcsx2 won't use more than 3 cores, except if you're using software mode, and set extra rendering threads to 2 or 3. i wouldn't advise this in your case since your CPU won't be power ful enough to handle software mode @ decent speed.

Latest svn lets you select your GPU in gsdx properties. Or you could just create a profile into Catalyst CC to force pcsx2 to use your dedicated GPU.
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
Reply
#6
(04-15-2013, 10:15 PM)jesalvein Wrote: pcsx2 won't use more than 3 cores, except if you're using software mode, and set extra rendering threads to 2 or 3. i wouldn't advise this in your case since your CPU won't be power ful enough to handle software mode @ decent speed.

Latest svn lets you select your GPU in gsdx properties. Or you could just create a profile into Catalyst CC to force pcsx2 to use your dedicated GPU.

i knew the 3 core thing but i was confused about the fact that none of the individual cores ever went above 60-70. ill try the gsdx thing, but i had already had it set to use high performance in catalyst which should be the dedicated card.... tho since the dedicated card is horrible it may be the thing causing the lags... maybe i should try to tweak it's mem clock settings a bit :/

ok checking that it appears that my discrete card is not recognized atm... so that means, no joke, an a6 apu is capable of running .hack on pcsx2 completely by itself, and without insane overclocks... my overclock right now is at 2.3ghz and it's even been split between graphics and processing.... and ive still had an entirely playable experience going :| and temp stayed sub 70C(that may be high to all the people with decent coolers but to someone who's gaming on an extreme budget gaming laptop(450$s about a year ago) this is an acceptable temp)

anyway im going to try to fool around with the drivers a bit to see if i can get it to recognize my graphics card.

for some reason catalyst installed 6400 series drivers and i think that was causing the error, and on second look my graphics are 7450 not 70.... and i think it only has half a gig of dedicated memory... so idk if its gonna do much anyway... its really only good for dual graphics in dx11 stuff imo >.>
Reply
#7
(04-15-2013, 10:56 PM)SAimNE Wrote: i knew the 3 core thing but i was confused about the fact that none of the individual cores ever went above 60-70. ill try the gsdx thing, but i had already had it set to use high performance in catalyst which should be the dedicated card.... tho since the dedicated card is horrible it may be the thing causing the lags... maybe i should try to tweak it's mem clock settings a bit :/

That's because Windows spreads the load over the processors. This is to keep your CPU from getting too hot and spreading the heat evenly (3 cores at 100% and one core idle produces more heat and uses more energy than all 4 cores running at 60~%). That's why it looks like all 4 cores are under stress when PCSX2 can only use 3.

Basically, a programming thread is designed to be solved linearly (that is, you start at the start and end at the end). You can't simply cut that in half and do it on two threads because then one thread starts at the start, and ends in the middle while the other has to start in the middle and then go to the end. The second thread would be forced to wait for the first one to finish and thus no speed gain.

Essentially though, that's what Windows does. There is no speed gain because each core still has to wait for the other to finish before it can do it's work, but because the thread is split it means each core doesn't get pushed to it's max. All windows programs will behave the same way unless you override the behavior.
[Image: 2748844.png]
Reply
#8
(04-15-2013, 11:08 PM)Koji Wrote: That's because Windows spreads the load over the processors. This is to keep your CPU from getting too hot and spreading the heat evenly (3 cores at 100% and one core idle produces more heat and uses more energy than all 4 cores running at 60~%). That's why it looks like all 4 cores are under stress when PCSX2 can only use 3.

Basically, a programming thread is designed to be solved linearly (that is, you start at the start and end at the end). You can't simply cut that in half and do it on two threads because then one thread starts at the start, and ends in the middle while the other has to start in the middle and then go to the end. The second thread would be forced to wait for the first one to finish and thus no speed gain.

Essentially though, that's what Windows does. There is no speed gain because each core still has to wait for the other to finish before it can do it's work, but because the thread is split it means each core doesn't get pushed to it's max. All windows programs will behave the same way unless you override the behavior.
ah thanks that would explain it then... anyway after updating my gpus drivers anytime i try to access the gs plugin settings it crashes pcsx2 -_-.... but yeah confirmed without a doubt that my precious little apu drove my gaming singlehandedly 3 cheers XD. anyway anyone got any idea why the plugin is suddenly unstable?

ok im pretty sure i got it to use the gpu but tbh the performance was the same if not slightly worse than when i select the integrated graphics... so ill probably just stick with that. It is stable all the way to 3x native resolution with exception to the large dungeon rooms... and since running into one that will lag it is pretty rare and it ends within 5 secs anyway it doesnt really effect the playing that much.... tho the town does feel a bit sluggish, but not really that noticeable. so yeah a previous gen. amd mobile apu with an overclock within the range of its stock turbo, and stock cooling. is completely capable of running this game at 3x resolution Laugh. im very tempted to take a video and go rub it in the faces of those morons over on the ngemu forum.

ok played for hours with no errors other than a slight problem once when i was multitasking while the emulation was going... battery started dying faster than the charger could charge XD, anyway aside from that everything has been working perfectly, ty for being an actually helpful community ^^. i planned to make a vid to show the awesome fruits my apu bore(and immediately rub it in the faces of the people in ngemu) but unfortunately the included video capture absolutely murdered my frame rate, and the razer game booster video capture crashed the program.... so yeah that plan fell through, but anyway ty for the time/help.
Reply
#9
as a random addition to this, why does almost anyone who uses this thing keep telling me that i need an intel processor?? this is a llano mobile mid grade and it can handle the upper side of the low performance games(im under the impression that ffx is somewhere in the bottom, and .hack is a little above but still comparatively easy to emulate) by itself while stuck on ss2.... the a10 is far better on both the processor and graphics side and supports sse4.1... would it not be capable of playing all but the most demanding of the titles, if not all in general?? judging by this the mobile version should even be able to handle a lot of games with ease... so why did ngemu and a few other places do nothing but spam we with telling me amd couldnt cut it and my only sollution was to go buy a new comp?(thankfully this place is actually helpful, but i just got nothing but flames all through the internet... would probably have been quicker asking 4chan than most of those places)
Reply
#10
AMD = bad performances isn't always true.
But when it comes to very intensive games, best intel CPU> best AMD CPU. it's all a matter of architecture.
Dunno how mobile cpu perform in general, though. but if you want to run intensive games under pcsx2, a laptop (intel or AMD) isn't a good choice anyways.
still today, if you want to be sure about your performances under pcsx2, go ahead for an I5 at least clocked @3.5 Ghz. That will run most games near full speed, provided you're using a mid range GPU that won't be a bottleneck.
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)