[godfromdfo]

Before you read this guide, here are some things you will need:

-Eyes to see this text
-Brain to be able to respond to your eyes
-Must be able to read English
-Get the lastest BETA version of pcsx2: http://cid-ec92aae47a89073b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Emulation/Pcsx2?view=details
+Get the latest plugins
-GSDX: PCSX2 plugins
-P.E.Op.S. SPU2: Pete's PS2 SPU2 plugins
-Lilypad: LilyPad 0.9.11

Let's Begin!

Hello everybody, I wrote this guide because I got a new pc a while back and it has
integrated graphics and an amd 64 x2, I downloaded pcsx2 and dumped my bios, stuck
a game in and only got 30fps, I did alot of researching and found out how to get 60fps
constant in games such as kingdom hearts 2 all the time with the exact same hardware!
Enjoy the guide.

Is my system too weak for pcsx2?

If you have the hardware below it will most likely be fine:

Proccessors:

+AMD
-Athlon X2
-Athlon FX Dual Core
-Opteron Dual Core
-Opteron Quad core
-Athlon II X2 Dual Core
-Phenom II Triple core
-Phenom II Quad core
-Athlon X2

+Intel
-Pentuim 4 (Possibly)
-Core 2 Duo
-Core 2 Quad
-Xeon
-core I7

For a in depth guide (albeit outdated) go to:
http://forums.ngemu.com/pcsx2-forum/84403-pc-specs-will-my-pc-get-good-fps.html

Graphics Cards:

+Nvidia
-Nvidia Geforce 6600 and above
-Integrated Geforce 6100 and above

+ATI
-Radeon X1300 and above
-Integrated HD 3200 and above

And many more

RAM and OS:

-1GB or above, I recomend over 2GB of RAM
-Windows Vista or XP are recomended

Plugins:

+GSDX

-Resolution: Leave alone
-Renderer: if vista Direct3D10 (Hardware), XP 3D9
-Interlacing: None
-Aspect Ratio: Depends on your moniter, I go with stretch normaly
-D3D Internal Res: Tick Native
-SW rend. threads: Leave alone
-Untick everything except: Logarithmic Z & Alpha Correction

+P.E.Op.S SPU2

-Volume: Loud
-Reverb: No Reverb (Fastest)
-Interpolation: Gaussian Interpolation
-Untick everything

+Lilypad

if using a keyboard then use the following settings:
-Keyboard API: Windows Messaging
-Mouse API: Start without mouse focus
-Game device APIs: tick DirectInput and Moniter when in background, untick Xinput
-Miscellaneous: Tick all other then Enable Logging
-Hacks: Only rick Send escape on windows close & Save state # in title, untick rest

Configuration:

+Config CPU

-Tick everything on the left side
-Select Limit
-Custom FPS: 60
-Skip Frames when slower than: up to you, I put 40
-Consecitive frames before skipping: 0, 2 if needed
-Consecitive frames to skip: 0

+Config Speed hacks

-Emotion Engine Sync Hacks: Use X2 Cycle Rate
-Emotion Engine Misc Hacks: Tick everything
-Vertex Unit: Tick everything
-Put the VU cycle stealing bar as far across as the game allows

+Config Advanced

-Look at picture

Have more to add later, thank you for reading, if you see any mistakes please post them so I can fix them.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

ninja edit noted.

new builds of pcsx2 and plugins are always found here

 

[godfromdfo]

Thank you for that, added

 

[CheatMaster]

Sorry but what's so special about it.
Basically all on and the emu is full of bugs and unexpected crashes.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

not to mention vu cycle stealing now causes buggy fmv's in FFX

 

[Darkplayer]

not to mention vu cycle stealing now causes buggy fmv's in FFX

And not to mention FF XII eventhough that game pisses me off. FF XII is a direct and obvious headshot at FF fanatics, so sad

 

[redlofredlof]

Put some more images
Anyone who can read the guide at pcsx2.net can run pcsx2 fast provided the computer involved is fast.
aka
dual core [email protected]>2.8GHZ
Graphics card>8600GT
1GB or more ram
Beta builds keep coming up at a rate or two to three builds a day so with new builds you may get better speeds or more crashes.

 

[NexXxus]

not to mention vu cycle stealing now causes buggy fmv's in FFX

not only that, it makes the game run slower but shows higher fps.
i don't like this hack, but some certain games (excluding FF&KH) working really nice with it.

 

[rama2]

Cycle stealing is unrefined, but its there.
Btw, the whole team would rather remove all hacks than put up with bogus reports any longer

godfromdfo:
Besides the hacks beeing bad, there's one other big issue with your guide.
Don't recommend PEOPS SPU2 please, SPU2-X or ZeroSPU2 have way less bugs since they support pcsx2's async timing mode.

 

[godfromdfo]

Thank you everyone for your comments, why did I write this? simple, I wrote it because every other guide I have tried with my weak system got me under 50fps or around 40fps, this gets me neyond 60fps through KHII,dothack, etc

Cycle stealing is unrefined, but its there.
Btw, the whole team would rather remove all hacks than put up with bogus reports any longer

godfromdfo:
Besides the hacks beeing bad, there's one other big issue with your guide.
Don't recommend PEOPS SPU2 please, SPU2-X or ZeroSPU2 have way less bugs since they support pcsx2's async timing mode.

The only reason I recomended PEOPS was because I can set it on louder which is handy for my extremely bad speakers which costed me £2, does ZeroSPU2 or SPU2-X offer a louder option?

Note: I have done a test and it seems the speed hacks are all useless apart from the x2 ee one

EDIT: Tested all the spus and the winner is........... PEOPS! With zerospu2 I had 20 LESS fps in battle with axel then what I got with peops,spu2-x wasnt so great either with fps, thank you for the suggestion but it seems peops is definitly best for lower end systems.

Again thank you all for the comments.

Put some more images
Anyone who can read the guide at pcsx2.net can run pcsx2 fast provided the computer involved is fast.
aka
dual core [email protected]>2.8GHZ
Graphics card>8600GT
1GB or more ram
Beta builds keep coming up at a rate or two to three builds a day so with new builds you may get better speeds or more crashes.

Well, with these settings i'm running beyond 60fps on a amd athlon @ 2.7ghz and integrated graphics, see the diffrence?

 

[eriol33]

interesting, I tried the pcsx beta 1329, and got constant 40-50 fps in kh2 (pal), with the latest build, it might boost even better. gonna try this later.

 

[Mad]

Well i use the VU Cycle stealing at max, in Castlevanai LOI, and the only bug i found, was when you are at the Items Menu, the 3d icon for the items appears really fast then disappears, but the FPS gain is HUGE!

EDIT: squal whats that sr9 build?

 

[rama2]

godfromdfo:
No, you dont understand. PEOPS is broken. It works by chance, and not very safe
I'm just trying to avoid more bug reports with games hanging, or audio skipping. Both are issues PEOPS will cause in many games.
Also, no matter the system, you shouldn't get a more than 2% difference in fps with the 3 spu2 plugins.

 

[littleasiandave]

I don't know if it is my processor or anything but I tried playing Battle Stadium DON and my fps was very low in battle. (1 vs 1) I got about 20 fps.

My specs are
Graphic Card:Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 Ghz
2 gb of ram
Windows XP

Does fps drop if I use an ISO of the game or should I just use the disc?

(Maybe I'll try FFX next)

Please help!

 

[Princess Garnet]

Cycle stealing is unrefined, but its there.
Btw, the whole team would rather remove all hacks than put up with bogus reports any longer

Perhaps have a pop-up noting the "you're purposely breaking the normal operation of this and these aren't just freebie speed sliders/check boxes" (most seem to think they are), or if a pop-up each time is too annoying, emphasize this more clearly above, and perhaps in Red text.

Alternatively, don't support speed hacks at all?

 

[godfromdfo]

godfromdfo:
No, you dont understand. PEOPS is broken. It works by chance, and not very safe
I'm just trying to avoid more bug reports with games hanging, or audio skipping. Both are issues PEOPS will cause in many games.
Also, no matter the system, you shouldn't get a more than 2% difference in fps with the 3 spu2 plugins.

Good point, the loss of fps on that test wasnt because of the sound plugin xD
Been using ZeroSPU since, will update the guide later

 

[sam_fisher]

I just wanted to comment about a few things.
About speed hacks and the idea about not supporting them - I believe that speed hacks are a great thing that make some of the games really playable. Yes, they break other games, but it shouldn't be an issue - just go and disable them.
About PEOPS - this one is buggy indeed.
About this and other guides - in my opinion it would be more useful to create a database with recommended settings for each separate game.

 

[Princess Garnet]

You do understand that not officially supporting them means no "real" change, just less work for the team, right? They wouldn't be removed, nor disallowed. The end user would just have to disable them before getting support (in reality, the end user should be attempting this first to see if it is the issue anyway). This "no support" policy would just help ensure that, but since most people ignore such thing and/or don't understand such things, maybe this wouldn't help change that anyway. The forums are more often user to user, so none of the support is official anyway, so I guess it does raise the question of why even bother making it not supported. Users just need to understand that these are hacks/forceful breaks to speed things up, not simple speed sliders/check boxes. Yes, they do work pretty well in alot of instances, and are a great thing, but some people seem to be thinking they're free speed boost options that should work perfectly. By the sounds of things, the team is having to deal with alot of complaints caused by them.

 

[redlofredlof]

I don't know if it is my processor or anything but I tried playing Battle Stadium DON and my fps was very low in battle. (1 vs 1) I got about 20 fps.

My specs are
Graphic Card:Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 Ghz
2 gb of ram
Windows XP

Does fps drop if I use an ISO of the game or should I just use the disc?

(Maybe I'll try FFX next)

Please help!

change your CPU to a dual core cpu P4 is slow for pcsx2

 

[rama2]

Lord Zedeck:
The thing is that while most people know what they're doing, there's always a few guys that don't.
They turn on all the bells and whistles, and as soon as a problem occurs they register on the forums and file "bug reports".
We can try as hard as we want, these kinda guys will not learn that hacks break stuff.
They'll happily click away 10 warning boxes without ever thinking about it..