Gaming on the Playstation and Xbox Platforms
User avatar
Frag Mortuus
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1110
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:39 pm
Location: Princeton, WV

Official PCSX2 Thread!

by Frag Mortuus Sun Oct 06, 2013 8:39 am

Ok, I did a search before starting this thread but all of the results seemed to be from when this emulator first came out and was really unreliable. I don't know if anyone is interested in this, but I thought I would start this thread anyway.

What I would like to start here is a thread where we can talk about the emulator, share results with settings and post screen shots or videos of gameplay. Because I'm sure you all know that this emulator is pretty amazing and upconverting and cleaning up the graphics of the PS2. Honestly, it is quite amazing what this thing is capable of.

I've been spending weeks now downloading all of the ROMs I'm intersted in playing as well as unpacking their respective .rar files.

Once I get that done, I will start posting some screen shots to show of the beefed up visuals.
noiseredux wrote:Frag Mortuus rules.


Image

Sell/Trade/Want List
tintinmayo
24-bit
 
Posts: 121
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 8:28 pm

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by tintinmayo Sun Oct 06, 2013 11:25 pm

I got a few screenshot comparisons (the pics are not ridiculously large so as to stretch the screen, but I put it in spoilers anyway to minimize unnecessary scrolling):

Dragonball Z: Infinite World (left side is native resolution, right side is x2)

Image

WWE Smackdown! vs. Raw 2006 (hulk hogan side is x2 resolution, Andre the Giant side is native res):

Image

Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3:

Image

I get fullspeed (no dips below 60 or 50fps) on all three games on an e8400 3.0Ghz and GT 240 DDR5, using PCSX2 1.0 on Windows 7. (I start getting framedips in x3 resolution, Budokai Tenkaichi 3 in particular gets too slow to be playable.)
User avatar
noiseredux
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 38149
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:09 pm

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by noiseredux Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:15 am

the last time I attempted PS2 emulation, it did not go well. Of course I was using a single-core processor at the time. Frag, maybe when you have a chance you could make a nice little guide to getting it set up? I feel like PCSX2 had a lot of options to configure right?
Image
User avatar
Frag Mortuus
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1110
Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:39 pm
Location: Princeton, WV

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by Frag Mortuus Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:02 am

noiseredux wrote:the last time I attempted PS2 emulation, it did not go well. Of course I was using a single-core processor at the time. Frag, maybe when you have a chance you could make a nice little guide to getting it set up? I feel like PCSX2 had a lot of options to configure right?


Sure. I will start working on that this week and hopefully get it done by next weekend. I think people would really enjoy using this emulator, if nothing else, just to see the their favorite games with super clean anti-aliasing and higher resolution.
noiseredux wrote:Frag Mortuus rules.


Image

Sell/Trade/Want List
User avatar
noiseredux
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 38149
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:09 pm

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by noiseredux Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:13 am

I wouldn't mind the ability to play some of my imports or fan-translations without bothering with disc-swap. Plus, my PC monitor has the ability to TATE, which the CRT my PS2 is hooked up does not (without far too much effort on my part). So yeah, if I could get the emulator working well, it could be super useful.

EDIT: Those screen shots are amazing. Wow.
Image
User avatar
prfsnl_gmr
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 12208
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:26 pm
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by prfsnl_gmr Mon Oct 07, 2013 10:21 am

noiseredux wrote:EDIT: Those screen shots are amazing. Wow.


+1

They really do look amazing.

I have a very large PS2 collection, and I would be interested in knowing how to get the most out of it. Accordingly, I would very much appreciate a guide on how to configure and run this emulator.
User avatar
jay_red
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 1734
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2010 2:05 am

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by jay_red Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:42 pm

prfsnl_gmr wrote:
noiseredux wrote:EDIT: Those screen shots are amazing. Wow.


+1

They really do look amazing.

I have a very large PS2 collection, and I would be interested in knowing how to get the most out of it. Accordingly, I would very much appreciate a guide on how to configure and run this emulator.


Also would love a guide, I am sure my pc can handle the emulation.
My trade thread, updated 7/14
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=30531&p=421248#p421248
User avatar
emwearz
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 4768
Joined: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:24 pm
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by emwearz Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:52 pm

http://pcsx2.net/getting-started.html

The community also have a few guides.
User avatar
noiseredux
Next-Gen
 
Posts: 38149
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:09 pm

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by noiseredux Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:00 pm

I got it working easily thanks to that guide.

I'll have to mess w/ settings when I have time. I'm getting some random pauses on Homura.

I'm playing from disc, not sure if ripping it would make it run better or if it's settings I need to tweak for my system.
Image
tintinmayo
24-bit
 
Posts: 121
Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 8:28 pm

Re: Official PCSX2 Thread!

by tintinmayo Tue Oct 08, 2013 8:41 am

This is a PM I sent to Violent by Design, who was trying to eke decent speed out of an i7 using onboard graphics. The bottleneck in his case was the IGP, but some of the settings might apply for people that just want to find out what some of the settings do:

1. Config > Emulation Settings > EE/IOP: Emotion Engine and iOP should be set to Recompiler, EE Cache should be disabled/Unchecked. set EE/FPU Advanced Recompiler to Chop/Zero, Clamping mode to None (or Normal, it's only a minor speed hit).

2. Config > Emulation Settings > VUs: VU0 and VU1 should be set to microVU recompiler (superVU used to be faster and less accurate, but recent changes added a few optimization tricks to microVU, according to the devs, making the superVU useless nowadays). Advanced Recompiler options are again Chop/Zero, and Clamping mode to Normal (setting it to none is faster, but there are some games that need it e.g. FFX will have characters facing the wrong way in some instances if it is set to none)

3. Config > Emulation Settings > GS: Ignore everything. The defaults should be fine (in my case, everything is disabled as most of the options in there will slow down emulation and meant only for debugging/testing)

4. Config > Emulation Settings > GS Window: Same as above. The options here have no bearing on speed, except for the vsync option (will slow down the emu a bit, as expected of vsync)

5. Config > Emulation Settings > Speedhacks: Enable speedhacks, but set the EE Cyclerate to 1 (Default cyclerate. It's meant to downclock the emulated CPU, which is bad if the game you're playing uses the Emotion Engine heavily. It will choke and you'll end up with either slow motion gameplay or frameskips, depending on the game. FMVs in particular will skip and stutter on the 3rd setting).

VU Cycle Stealing should be 0 (disabled, it "steals" gpu cycles in order to lighten the load. It works on some games, but majority of games are also dependent on the PS2's vu, so starving them results in 60 fps but slow motion gameplay).

Enable INTC Spin Detection should be Checked, as well as Enable Wait Loop Detection. MVu Flag Hack is safe as well. MTVU will give you the biggest speedboost here, but some games crash with it enabled (e.g. Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3), so try it at first. If it works, leave it on for that game.

-------------

Sound part (use SPU2-X):

1. Config > Audio > Plugin Settings: put a check on Disable Effects Processing, and set interpolation to 0 (Nearest). The rest can be left alone on their default settings

-------------

Graphics part - Use GSDx. Use either the 4.1 version or the AVx one if your CPU supports those extensions, both of them take advantage of said instruction sets to speed up some drawing functions.

1. Config > Video > Plugin Settings: for Renderer, choose Direct3D9 (Hardware). Your video supports DX11 (I think) but like most onboards, it's not very good at it. DX9 is faster in your case. Then make sure "Original PS2 resolution: Native" is checked.

Texture Filtering should be left at the default setting (blue box instead of check or blank), Logarithmic Z and Alpha Correction come with a speed hit, but you need them enabled in order to get proper sprite priorities and transparencies. Allow 8-bit textures should be unchecked (it's only useful for videocards that have little RAM but a decent amount of ROPs). Enable HW Hacks should be disabled.

Alternatively, you can choose Direct3D11 (Software) or Direct3D9 (Software) and then set the Extra Rendering Threads to 2 or 3 (i7s are all quad cores, right? I haven't touched one of them so I'm not sure.) In some cases this will be faster than if you were using Hardware, given your beefy CPU.

Some games will work faster in D3D11 than D3D9, and some will go the other way around (in my experience, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 works faster in D3D9 but DBZ: Infinite World works faster in D3D11. I dunno why.)

-------------

....aaand that's it. Beyond that, it's usually up to the game you are playing. Different PS2 games treat the PS2 hardware differently. Kingdom Hearts, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Final Fantasy X are some of the easiest as they're not hard on the PS2, but there are some really heavy games like Shadow of the Collossus and MGS2 that even people with high end PCs have trouble emulating. The rest fall in between. And there are edge cases like WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2006, which is easy to emulate when you're only playing the normal modes and Royal Rumble, but once you run an elimination chamber match, it starts lagging.
Return to Sony and Microsoft

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 18 guests