[Tachion II]

I have been desperately trying to get ePSXe to emulate my games perfectly, but it hasn't happened. For the most part, every game I have tried runs quite well, but there's always a small glitch or something that is really annoyning.

For example,

FF7 - Music, when in towns or areas not on the world map, slows down when you first enter the area, but then returns to normal. Same thing when entering battles

FF8 - Movies have a brief pause/skip every few seconds

Xenogears - Movies have a brief pause/skip every few seconds

MGS - Cutscenes and menus have a brief pause/skip in sound every few seconds

Gauntlet Legends - Sound skips/pauses every couple of seconds

Castlevania:SOTN - Sound skpis/pauses every few seconds


As you can see, almost all the issues are with the sound pausing/skipping/poping. I can deal with them if I absolutely have to, but I'd like to fix the issues if possible.

Any idea what I can do to fix this?


Comp Specs
------------
Intel Pentium 3 3.0 gHz
1024mb RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
SoundMAX Digital Audio (it's integrated on my MB but is actually pretty good)


ePSXe Settings:

Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.75
-------------------------
Fullscreen 1280x1024
16 bit

Quality - R8B8B8A8
Filtering - 0
High-Res Textures - 2

Use FPS Limit - Autodetect

Offscreen Drawing - 3
Framebuffer Textures - 2
Framebuffer Access - 3

Alpha/Mask/Blending - On


Eternal SPU Plugin 1.41
----------------------
Device - DirectSound
Buffer - 25

Audio Out - Thread

Wait for XA Buffer - On



Any help is greatly appreciated. I was using ePSXe 1.6 and and now using 1.5.2, which seems to be working quite a bit better (since now all I have is sound problems when before I had some graphics problems too).

 

[Kane]

Try running from an ISO for starters.
Try using a different CD plugin (even if you are using an ISO); I suggest Xeven's or PEOPs.
Try using Pete's OpenGL2.x

 

[hushypushy]

for your gfx plugins use the "copy to clipboard" option that makes it a lot easier to look at your settings.

 

[Tachion II]

Ok, I'll try an ISO, but I'd prefer to run from CD...


Here's the full settings for my gfx:

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9800 Pro x86/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x1024 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [16 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8B8A8
- Filtering: 0
- Hi-Res textures: 2
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00001001]

 

[fireblaster_lyz]

Eternal Settings:
Set to SPUasync, Smooth, with a buffer of 32.

 

[Tachion II]

Eternal Settings:
Set to SPUasync, Smooth, with a buffer of 32.

Unfortunately, that actually made the pauses longer.

:hdbash:

I've been trying all possible combinations all day... I guess I'll just have to accept that it might be my soundcard (since there haven't been any new drivers released for it since June of 2003)... my laptop didn't seem to have any problem with it.

Thanks for the help anyway.

 

[hushypushy]

turn off your special game fixes. especially odd/even bit hack.

you might wnat to consider getting a real soundcard, like a Soundblaster. the Soundblaster 16 PCIs (old but still quite good) are like, less than 20 dollars. i dont know hwere you live, but over here (california) you can even get Audigy 2's for like 35 bucks.

 

[emusnicker]

I'm playing Final Fantasy 7 right now and my PC is similar to yours (only a Radeon 9700 Pro and a 1.5 Ghz Athlon XP though).

I'm using Pete's OpenGL2 2.6 plugin from here:
http://www.pbernert.com/html/gpu.htm
(as opposed to this OpenGL 1 1.75 plugin)

Settings are as follows:
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.6
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9700 PRO x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE

Resolution/Color:
- 1024x768 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 2
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off
- No render-to-texture: off

- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- TexWin pixel shader: on
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 0
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 1

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: off
- Screen filtering: off
- Shader effects: 0/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: on [00001002]

(The last entry refers to the special game fixes, be sure to enable 'Ignore small frame buffer moves' and putting a check mark next to special game fixes in the configuration window.)

This runs alsmost flawlessly for me by the way. You mentioned no driver updates for your soundcard since June 2003, is that a Santa Cruz by any chance? I don't think it's related to the soundcard.

Making an ISO will solve 70% of problems like this.

 

[Badaro]

Have you tried with an ISO, like Kane suggested? I suspect it's a CDR, not a SPU problem.

[]s Badaro