[Princess Garnet]

i don't exactly see how i'm delusional considering i have no effing clue how this stuff works. i would assume that with that kind of power, gameplay would be pretty good.

Those two statements contradict one another. If you have no idea how it works, or even much about CPUs (your follow up to Squall-Leonhart is proof), how can you come to that conclusion? There's alot more to CPU speed than MHz/GHz. That's only half of it (the other half is IPC), and even then there's more to it with this multi-threaded/multi-core world we're headed into.

As I told you in the other thread, the AMD Athlon 64/X2, while good CPUs still, are very old CPUs now, and while the faster ones cut it in PC games when paired with a good GPU, PCSX2 is different.

If you can't push your wallet that bad, you can still grab even an E5x00 and a decent cheap motherboard, and overclock it to ~3.5GHz.

Here. This was easy. It's not too much more expensive (it's actually cheaper without the CPU cooler).

CPU:
Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Motherboard: (don't gawk at the low price and think it's cheap, as I used to have an earlier revision version of this board, and easily took a E2160 from 1.8GHz to 3.0GHz on stock cooling, though it ran warm. Just make sure to pair it with 667MHz RAM due to no control over ratios, so lower speed default RAM is better with this board)
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

CPU Cooler (I'm glad to see this back under $30 after shipping, as it's overpriced any higher):
Newegg.com - ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

For a hair less than $150 Before shipping (but the CPU and cooler are free shipping), that's quite impressive. 3.5GHz isn't a given, but a good chance.

And for good measure, this RAM appears to be a good candidate to make that possible. It's got a lower default speed, but can overclock decently.

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA - Desktop Memory

 

[Princess Garnet]

PCSX2 has god awful compatibility with AMD. Its not that AMD is a bad processor (mine runs spore, sims 3, WoW, AoC, etc just fine), but PCSX2 was apparently not programmed well enough to support more than 1 processor. I get 40-50 fps (which is only approximately 80% of what u should get), which makes the emulator awful to play on. So if you reeeaaalllly want/need this emulator to work, you're better off getting a intel. A 2.4 ghz intel (dual core) should do well enough according to my friend (PCSX2 does not want to run my 2.6 ghz amd dual core to full potential).

Often I'll be getting low FPS and my amd processor won't even be using more than 50% of its power. Also any questions related to PCSX2 getting stronger support for AMD are apparently falling on deaf ears (most likely because the programmers don't know how to solve the problem).

So, bottom line, AMD processors are great, and it SHOULD be able to run this emulator fine, but PCSX2 is a unique situation since somewhere along the years its been developed it started to only run well on intel computers (no clue how, and the developers don't seem to have a real reason either). And don't get an AMD with the hope they'll lend support to it anytime soon.

You're talking crap, for lack of better terms.

1. PCSX2 supports dual core CPUs just fine. It may not be perfect 100% utlization, but that's unattainable.

2. When the emulator was first being developed, it was the Pentium 4 and AMD Althlon XP/64 that were around. Most of the users then had AMDs. DOn't talk crap about how it was intentionally made for AMD CPUs. After the Athlon X2 came around, dual core support was added, and then the Pentium D came about. AMD CPUs were faster. Since the Core 2 came out, things have reversed.

3. The devlopers know full why it works better on Intel, and the as a hint, the reason has nothing to do with the prgram. Search the code (it's open source) if you don't believe it. Go ahead and find those tricks that make it faster on Intels and/or slower on AMDs. The developers know why it's slower, as does anyone with any decent knowledge of such things. Thr reason is...

4. The Intel CPUs are just that much faster for such a thing. The AMD Athlon CPUs (minus the new K10 based ones that are really Phenom IIs with half the cores) are old and getting slow. They are not as fast as a Core 2, especially one that's heavily overclocked. You get away with it in PC games and think that because the framerate isn't much different that it means an Athlon X2 is close to a Core 2. Not so. This is a totally different animal.

 

[Princess Garnet]

Name one other piece of software that has as much trouble running on a 3.0 ghz AMD as pcsx2 (a program still trying to harness 6 year old technology), but runs 100% (or higher) on a 2.4 ghz intel.

And don't say "PS2 emulation is the only thing in the world that is rough on a processor".

Ughm, a 2.4GHz Core 2 more often than not will not run PCSX2 full speed unless either A) the game is an easy one, in which case the Athlon X2 @3.0GHz will either get close or similar results, or B) speed hacks are being applied, meaning the CPU itself is still too slow, and the speed hacks are compensating to make it run faster.

Without speed hacks, it's an ~3GHz Core 2 that's recommended for Final Fantasy X, and that's one of the easier games to get going. You'd need a 3.6GHz Athlon X2, probably more like a 3.8GHz-4.0GHz one, to equal that. Yes, the Core 2 CPU itself is that much faster than the Athlon X2 CPU itself.

Just because your Athlon X2 plays PC games fine (which are 90% of the time more dependent on the GPU!) does mean you should whine and moan foul about something that is false because "PCSX2 can't emulate six year old technology".

Back when the Athlon X2 64 was better than the Pentium 4, the Pentium 4 still played the games of it's time just fine too. The difference between the CPUs was that the AMD had a better IPC, depsite a lower GHz rating, than the Intel. Now, Intel has a better IPC, and often enough, a matching or better (if overclocked) GHz rating, so it's honestly easy to see why the Core 2 has that much more brute force.

Oh, and it isn't perfectly multi-threaded, but that is literally impossible to do. Please, do disable dual core/MTGS mode, and then see how slow/much slower it gets. Then you'll see how much it's adding.

You do need two cores for PCSX2, yes, but you equally need alot of brute force for PCSX2 (actually, I'm starting to wonder if speed is more important still, as I can run some games faster when I disable one core than some people can with both of their cores, so what does that say? Most people only need two cores to compensate for the lack of speed on one.). The Core 2 (among the top for current CPUs as far as IPC goes) when overclocked (which also puts it among the top as far as frequency goes) is about the best brute force solution (as IPC plus frequency equals speed, and since the Core 2 is among the bets at both combined, do you now see where the results come from?).

Oh, and since this thread has been derailed, to the original poster, I'm willing to help personally (via PM) with overclocking if you go the route I suggested, but I can't guarantee anything (results may fall flat on their face, it does happen sometimes), it does come with risks, and I won't push you to do it.

The motherboard does have an IDE (PATA) port, but only one, so you can only connect two devices.

The "utilities" for overclocking are the motherboards' BIOS (there exists software, but don't use it).

Thermal paste is for heat dissipation, not being an adhesive (there is special paste types that act as one, but their main role is still to act as heat dissipation).