[Josh7601]

I'm running epsxe with Pete's D3D Driver 1.77. I have OpenGL2, but can't run it as smoothly as D3D. I love the custom shaders for OpenGL2 (I'm playing FF9, and the BumpMap shader is amazing). Anyway, outside of battle, I get perfect framerate (of course), but the whirling effect battle transition slows it down do roughly 45fps. Then, once the battle loads, it's fine as long as it's a one on one type of fight. If the whole party is fighting something, then it slows the fps to about the same as I mentioned before. Common sense tells me it's due to the amount of polygons and all that good jazz that's being emulated onscreen. Anyway, here's my computer specs:

Acer Aspire 5515
Amd Athlon 64 2650e 1.6 GHz
3GB RAM
ATI Radeon X1200 Graphics

Yeah, nothing amazing, but for 350 bucks brand new, this laptop was seriously a steal. On to my question: from what I said about the fps earlier, have I reached the limit for this little laptop? Do you guys think I could squeeze a bit more out of it, or not? If so, I'll post my settings for the opengl2 plugin and work from there. I didn't want to make this post any longer.


[Sorry, after re-reading, I notice something may not be clear. D3d runs perfect, aside from framebuffer crap (whirls and such...and a couple spell graphics effect cast in FFIX...causes the fps to dip into the high 40's for a split second), I'd just like to run OpenGL2 smoothly is what I'm getting at.]

 

[masta.g.86]

Set the OpenGL2 frame buffer effects to 1, 2, 2 and turn on special game fixes and activate the first two fixes.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

Set VRAM manually
Set Render Mode to 2

Set the OpenGL2 frame buffer effects to 1, 2, 2 and turn on special game fixes and activate the first two fixes.

ff9 doesn't need any fixes.

 

[Josh7601]

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb186/buddywackos/Settings.jpg

There, that's what I'm working with, and the Special Fixes thing did help. During battle, I'm keeping 54-60fps, except when I use certain spells of course....which is no big deal.

Only thing that runs horribly is the world map (27-35fps) and battle transitions (stays all through the 40's, which is completely tolerable). The world map is entirely 3d, so I'm assuming that's why it runs slower? If there are any other changes I should make, let me know. Thanks for the advice so far.

Btw, I'm not a graphics junkie. I would play this on the soft plugin if that were the only way to do it. Like I said, it's perfect on D3D, I just want to see how much my lower end laptop can take. I mean, might as well get the best of it.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

If only you had a better gfx chip in that thing... OpenGL's capabilities are really limited on the x1200.

if you are using the internal sound plugin, then you don't need the FPS limiter.

also.

AMD cpu's have issues unless the dual core optimiser (or Vista SP2 and higher) is installed.

 

[Josh7601]

If only you had a better gfx chip in that thing... OpenGL's capabilities are really limited on the x1200.

if you are using the internal sound plugin, then you don't need the FPS limiter.

also.

AMD cpu's have issues unless the dual core optimiser (or Vista SP2 and higher) is installed.

Yeah, it's not the greatest, that's for sure. I prefer smoothness over prettiness, so I'm sticking with d3d during world map, and ogl2 during pre-redered background segments, which is 3/4 of the game really. Can't go wrong with that, I don't mind switching. Thanks to both of you for the advice though, there was a noticeable improvement.

Also, it's a single core processor (sucks, I know), so the dual core optimizer wouldn't affect it......right?

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

ah, no it wouldn't, but setting the windows power config to performance rather then balanced would prevent the cpu from downclocking while gaming.

 

[KrossX]

You can try using Pete's D3D as main plugin, and replace the "secondary" PEOpS Soft with the OGL one. That way you can switch by just using F7 on ePSXe v1.7.0. XD

 

[Josh7601]

You can try using Pete's D3D as main plugin, and replace the "secondary" PEOpS Soft with the OGL one. That way you can switch by just using F7 on ePSXe v1.7.0. XD

You, good sir, win. I feel stupid for not thinking of that, haha.