Which CPU for PCSX2 emulator?

450M vs 520M. What do each turbo boost to in dual-core mode?

 

same exact thing. 2.66Ghz

 

If you want non-frameskip constant 60 FPS you might need desktop CPU, even on my i7 820QM will still dip to 40FPS sometimes for games like FFX, FFXII, Tales of abyss etc.

 

Pcsx2 works best only with overclocked cpus, and 60fps can be achieved only starting from 3ghz.
On my t9400 its playable (9600m gt ddr3 oc'ed) but it struggles a bit.

On my desktop instead its steady 60fps in everything i trow at it.
But thats due to my configuration, e8500 wolfdale step e0 clocked at 4,25ghz, 4gb ddr2 clocked at 897mhz,gtx260 sp216 oc'ed (700/1450/2500).

I even beat some i7 gaming PCs in benchmark.

 

Its not that they can't handle it, it is that you will be getting less than full speed in a few titles. Those CPU's will give reasonable performance in most titles and full speed in a few but in some it will struggle. The God Of War series is a good example and the only time I see that playing at full speed without the aid of speed hacks or cycle stealing are with overclocked Desktop CPU's.

 

FFXII struggled with my Q6600, but now with my 955be it runs like a dream but i think as much importance needs to be placed on the Plugins as well, some will improve performance while others will weaken it

 

At least with the vast majority of other emulation, I am getting full speed. For example, I was just playing the DS on DeSmuME and without frame skip I usually get 60 fps. Using its widescreen mode that allows you to have a screen on each side at full resolution it is even more enjoyable than playing on my actual DS. So although we aren't quite there yet, we are extremely fortunate and blessed to have all of the other full speed emulators.

Of course, the NDS isn't as powerful as many of the other systems but it is still a great accomplishment.

I think in time PS2 emulation will progress really well but the developers are more concerned with accuracy as opposed to speed hacks as they should be.

 

Guess I'll get the 450M then. Magus did you get your E14 yet?

 

shipping is delayed til the 12th for now

 

The beta version of the new pcsx2 is a lot faster, though still not using it primarily as it still lacks quite a lot of features.

 

What features did you find to be missing?

 

Dang, someone with 430m/450m/520m/540m/620m test PCSX2 already, and report back!

 

@Magus

Did your E14 come yet?

 

Going to try to get this game played. It seems to run fine on my 720QM and its a lot slower than my desktops Q6600 so maybe the newer versions of PCSX2 are faster/better?

BTW my controller review/guide is basically done and I just got the PS3 Dualshock 3 the other day and connected it tonight it works great on the PCSX2 Emulator all buttons/functions work except vibrate so far, and there is probably a way to do that also but I have not figured it out yet.

 

pnach patching. No cheat codes lol. Also, the mem card system is completely different, so can't continue my game from previous save.

 

envy is stuck in the frozen north

 

I have used my previous Memcard save in God Of War from 0.96 in 0.97 but the save states would not load.

Regarding cheats and pnach, it says:

I have never used any cheats so don't know what that all means but it was from the 0.97 feature list.

 

Yes, but the cheat system is not yet implemented in the 0.97 beta yet.

 

Ya, could you PM me when you receive your E14? I wanna be the first to congratulate you, and also the first to leech photos+info+your thoughts on the new toy.

Thanks!

 

Been messing around with PCSX2 a lot today, from my testing video card is just as important if not more so than the CPU if your using hardware rendering.

FFXII is 60fps constantly no matter how high I set settings and the cpu is only a 1.6ghz 720QM and its not getting hit too hard.

Now if your having to use software rendering for some reason that is going to make a huge impact and then the CPU is going to be the most important part.

 

@ ViciousXUSMC

Yep, that is why they use software rendering for the PCSX2 benchmark to identify CPU performance potential. You should try God Of War 1 / 2, those titles seem to be more of a challenge to run well without speed hacks. I have only seen systems that are near to 4.0 Ghz run those titles at 60 fps without speed hacks.

 

Anyone with an i5-430M or higher (up to i5-520M) test PCSX2 yet? Please chime in with results, etc. Thanks and happy Friday!

 

I'll try to give it a shot tonight and let you know.

With overclock and turbo boost I can probably get close to 4ghz on the 720qm if I need too on 2 cores.

 

in other news.

My Envy was on a boat. Then a plane.

Then another plane.


Then another other plane I guess.

But now. It's on a truck.

 

Aw comeon, hurry up HP.

Please PM me when it arrives mang.

 

it's been here.

SC2 runs well in phase 1 of the beta.


we aren't talking full ultra well (that gets 30 fps)

but high gets 45-60 fps (more if you mess with shadows and stuff).

medium gets 70-85 fps.

now uh.

phase 2.


yeah.

phase 2 sucks. phase 2 kills your fps by 50%. (but phase 2 has issues they need to fix AND has extra debugging code running along with the game that is exacerbating the performance issues)

 

and I guess it's more phase 2 drops high to 30, medium to 40-50 at native.

ultra...really didn't change that much (still unplayable)

 

Tried God of War 1, only 30-40fps in the first scene where your fighting in the rain vs the guys.

Playable but the sound is messed up since it wont hold 60fps.

I overclocked from 1.6 to 1.8ghz and did not noticed any speed increase, this has me wondering if using hardware rendering instead of software will it not use the cpu resources if the gpu is maxed out.... so that means I need to overclock the gpu maybe or try software render.

 

What computer do you have, and what are its specs if you don't mind sharing

 

He has an ASUS G73 with a Core i7-720QM, I believe. 1.8GHz on four cores wouldn't really help, though, because it would probably be using two and Turbo Boosting anyway. What you really want is something more like 3.2GHz+ on two cores, rather than the relatively low maximum 2.4GHz dual-core boost of the 720QM.

 

Well I am overclocking via the BLK so that 2.4ghz boost becomes something closer to 3ghz pretty quickly. But I am not sure if its kicking on turbo boost or not. I'll try to set an affinity for PCSX2 for 2 cores manually, though I heard that makes it run choppy for some reason.

I have not tried PCSX2 on my desktop (no need I have a PS2) but I have a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz on there and a ATI 5870 card.

 

Well, if 1.6 becomes 1.8 then 2.4 would become 2.7, but with a higher BCLK the Turbo Boost might not function fully, and might even be disabled. If you want to see how fast your CPU is running, try using RealTemp.

 

I'm guessing a stock clock i7-840QM shouldn't meet much trouble with pcsx2 as it can reach pretty high speeds on 2 cores (2,93ghz if I'm right). A stock i7-740QM can only run at 2,53ghz in the meantime having lower frequencies as well as a lower boost.

Might as well wait for a 2,5ghz quad sandy bridge in the near future just dreaming here.

 

Like I said while emulation is generally a super CPU intensive task and the CPU is the be all end all PCSX2 with hardware rendering makes the GPU just as important, so to say X cpu will work well is a closed statement messing the important information X cpu with Y gpu.

That overclock I did was at minimum 200mhz on a 1.6ghz cpu and not a single fps was gained. It goes to show the GPU was doing all the work.

Likewise I changed from Hardware to Software rendering and even overclocked I was only 15fps at the menu! I was 60fps in the menu with hardware rending and 30-40fps in game.

So in software mode I probably would have been single digets for sure by relying on my cpu.

I can safely say that even if my CPU was 4x faster it would not have done the job, for a demanding game like God of War the GPU did all the work.

So if PCSX2 is important to you, you may want to start thinking about the gpu with equal or more importance than the CPU like the common trend has been so far (and even what this thread was intentionally based on)

 

Even 3.06 ghz on both Cores makes zero difference in PCSX2 performance of God Of War. Many performance videos suggest that only when you reach up to 4 ghz do you notice any difference or get anywhere near a constant 60 fps in the more troublesome games without major speed hacks.

@ ViciousXUSMC

Earlier on in this thread I was trying to point out that the GPU is also important in PS2 emulation, especially if you want to play at higher native resolutions but many still only think about the CPU's importance.

Regarding God Of War, you can get near full speed if you increase VU cycle stealing. Since VU cycle stealing is all related to the GPU processing, it does make me wonder if it is doing something to give the GPU less work causing such a big speed increase. I don't know enough about VU cycle stealing to know which bottleneck it helps.

 

@Lackof and others as well:

Originally, I posted this thread to find out which of these would be suitable to handle PCSX2: 430m, 450m, 520m, 620m. Could you translate the above figures to relate to those CPUs (i.e., would either of the listed CPUs be able to achieve such numbers and would that mean PCSX2 is playable)? As a reminder, I'll only be playing either racing, shooting, or fighting games on the lappy. I have a ps3 w/ usbloader to do everything else.

Thanks!

 

*begins the long and arduous task of figuring out how to make this stuff work*


...first. A control. As fun as it would be to use the ps3 controller right now. Eh. that's a pain to setup in win7 64-bit (I'll get to it later)

360 controller.



then I need to get a couple games on the hdd by ripping discs I own...this'll take a lil while

 

Check your pm box.

 

to straighten things up the "lil while" involves making pscx2 run well, etc. not just finding a game or two and ripping 'em into isos

 

Gotcha.

Patiently waitin.

Thanks!

 

Ace combat 5 runs at half speed on

svn r2870. *shrugs*

missiles miss horribly for some reason.

this is in arcade mode

campaign crashes part way in

edit: speed hacks don't change things at all.

 

Izzat a good thing or bad thing? Is it the game, the emulator version, or the CPU thats the culprit?

Please advise. Thanks!

 

I'm unsure.


I wanna at the moment say my computer just isn't strong enough with a side order of not knowing what I'm doing (and just grabbing some person's compiled version of the game before beta 0.97 went public)

I'll try setting up the latest version of 0.97 (and mess with 0.96) and go from there.

 

ace combat 5, unplayable.

speed hacks don't really change things

not sure how to setup frame skip or anything like that so *shrugs*

 

Lets call LaptopNut in here for some help!

 

well. we can but first I'm gonna try out dolphin

 

windwaker doesn't run fullspeed either.

*shrugs*

could try one of the svn builds in the forum still.

 

Most of the games I have tested in Dolphin run around 30 - 35 fps on my mobile i7 820qm. Even on the mobile i7 620m at a constant 3.06 Ghz Dual Core and with the emulators settings forced to use 2 threads, performance was no better. Maybe this is another emulator that will only have a big performance impact when you take huge leaps in CPU clock rates i.e you may not see any performance difference between a 2.5 Ghz vs a 2.8 Ghz or even a 3.06 Ghz but you may see a boost if you had a 4 Ghz clock rate.


Zelda Windwaker runs around 30-35 fps but it is perfectly playable.

A good speed hack to try in PCSX2 is VU Cycle stealing. That occasionally gives you huge speed boosts but has very low compatibility. Frame skipping is not easy to do with PS2 emulation so is very inaccurate.

@ MagusDraco

If you haven't done so already, you can enable a small fps counter from the Dolphin graphics config under advanced. What fps do you get with Zelda windwaker?

You should try setting it to use full screen native resolution with 9x AA etc etc.

 

I get 22-25 fps in wind waker in game at full screen native resolution, etc using the 2.0 download offa the dolphin's website (not somebody's svn build)

 

isnt 30 fps the full gamecube speed?
(for windwaker i mean)