What's the limiting factor on speed right now?

1867 Views 17 Replies 9 Participants Last post by enb141, Jul 27, 2005

Quickdart

Discussion Starter · Jul 25, 2005

I've just been testing the start of a few games, like Disgaea, and I've been wondering what exactly is limiting the speed of PS2 emulation on your average system? I know that this is different on every system but hear me out. Most of the time when running it I get a fairly low CPU usage(10-40%) , and from screenshots it looks like that's common for a lot of other people. So does this mean the primary limiting factor on most systems is generally the graphics card, or is it something totally different, like memory bandwidth, etc?
I realize the emulation is still in it's early stages and a lot of optimization is left to be done, but I'm jsut curious if there is some major physical difference that we're going to have to wait for PCs to catch up on.
Or is this one of those questiosn that's just really stupid?

1 - 18 of 18 Posts

bositman

· #2 · Jul 25, 2005

The usual mistake....the cpu usage shown is the cpu % that gsdx9 uses not the whole emulator.That said the limiting factor is the CPU

MaZa

· #3 · Jul 25, 2005

Also bandwidth is quite a problem. PS2 runs 128 bit where majority of PC's are 32bit and 64bits are just spreading. Even if computers are faster in raw power, PS2 is more advanced...

TWave

· #4 · Jul 25, 2005

Ps2 in NOT 128bits. That is a mystake. It has 32/64bits parts. But it can process multiple information in each cycle. That is why ps2 has a big power.
PC's can do the same job as the ps2, but the code must be optimized to pc first.

And aswering to the thread. CPU % only shows the % used in the pluging. But in my computer the "whole" emu only uses 60-70% of the cpu cos the emu doesn't support HT.

NOTE: These type of thread are a little boring. There are a lot of them...... :yawn:

MaZa

· #5 · Jul 25, 2005

Oh. My bad.

Cloud Strife 7

· #6 · Jul 25, 2005

To further undestand the 128-bit thing:

refraction said:
actually, there is little truth in the 128bit thing, the only reason its advertised as 128bit is because some of the registers used are 128bits long (altho 99% of the time they are split in to 2 or 4) but in reality i think its a 32bit cpu, but never the less it isnt that simple to get a speed boost, yes 64bit will help, but people are thinking "OMG 64bit is double 32bit so its gonna be double the speed" in the real world it doesnt work like that, so dont expect massive increases when a 64bit build is available

There is also the thing that a ps2 has 7 processors (or was it more?anyway, more than a computer) that work together, but a processor nowadays can only have 2 cores (which pcsx2 does`n support at the moment and will only use 1 core), and thus the problem of having to do 7 processors` work on a single processor. And there is also the thing that the pcsx2 code is not optimised yet, thus doing all sorts of stuff the hard way, rather than cutting some corners and some unnecessary things.

shan

· #7 · Jul 26, 2005

actually, you can find really expensive 4 processor boards (or make your own if your saavy enough and have AMAZING connections). And you can take 4 dualcore A64's and you'd have more proecssors then the PS2 does, but thats pretty frekin expensive. And by that I'm saying $13,000 for top of the line everything. Put in some cheetahs or better (20,000 RPM HD with disc access time that is rediculously low). Sadly, i don't think there are any 4 processor boards that support SLI (which you would also need). Two Geforce 7800's fitted into that. Get 16 GB of 533 DDR ram, overclock the system all the hell, set it in a nitrogen cooling system to reduce latency (and hope to god you don't need to reset Bios!!!) and increase overclocking... and overclock more of course.

hardware CHECK!

THENNnn... Set your operating system so that when your computer boots up, first thing it does is creates a 8ish GB ramdisk, transfers windows to it and boots up on ramdisk, mess with windows setting to tweak that all to heck, remove all boot programs, admin services etc, then defrag the ram, (which is now a harddrive) copy the Rom of the CD into the RAMdisk, CTL+ALT+DEL close explorer and anything else you still missed, go to run, open emulator.

SOFTWARE CHECK...err... UNCHECK!!!

And enjoy your 13 thousand dollar 40fps for most anything the PCSX2 can throw your way...

And... uh... since i told you how... can you like... hook me up with one?

Oh yeah... to answer the question, the answer is EVERYTHING... But yeah, for the most part, CPU(which is pretty much where bandwidth is from

) and GFX card speed and ram speed and timings... and... uh... a full emulator!! heh... though i believe the programmers working on this emulator to be some of the best (much better then me)

so its not their fault they have busy lives and can't be our emu-junky-slaves... well not completely

peace

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MaZa

· #8 · Jul 26, 2005

Hmmm... Actually, AFAIK, GFX card is NOT an issue. All modern GFX cards that exist now are perfectly fine for PS2 emulation. They can do all the tricks fast enough, so no need for SLI or anything for speed.

Four CPU board. Software support 0%. :lol:

shan

· #9 · Jul 26, 2005

Mostly i just want a $13k computer

And the way A64's interface multiboard, not much software side support (if any at all, or only in special cases i should say) is needed in order to notice an increase.

The biggest problem would be the OS, which you would need windows server 2003 or XP 64 bit as regular XP only supports 2 processors. ( though i hear SP2 for XP offers 4 processor support? this is heresay tho)

Or you could go Windows Datacenter server and use 16 processors.

but yeah, A64's (and xp's) use a type of interfacing when on multiboards, that is similar in ways to HT. HypterThreading technically takes up a processor slot. That technology would be completely useless if what your saying there was completely true wouldn't it Maza?

$refraction$

refraction

· #10 · Jul 26, 2005

shan said:
The biggest problem would be the OS, which you would need windows server 2003 or XP 64 bit as regular XP only supports 2 processors. ( though i hear SP2 for XP offers 4 processor support? this is heresay tho)

well unless XP is lying to me, when i had my P4 HT on and i "set affinity" it had a list of cpu 0-31. so going on that you can have up to 32 processors

Cloud Strife 7

· #11 · Jul 26, 2005

AFAIK, pcsx2 isn`t designed to support multi-threaded or multi-processor applications, so right now it will be useless. But yes, if it is implemented, then I guess it will make a difference. But still, I prefer to wait 7 months for a new release than spend a lot of money on one computer.
And about SLI, it`s completly useless. The Cpu is botlenecked, not the Gpu, so the graphic card doesn`t count to the FPS. And I don`t think the HDD speed would do anything (so no need for 20,000 RPM). But that will still be a good pc for normal games...if it has software support.

$refraction$

refraction

· #12 · Jul 26, 2005

Cloud Strife 7 said:
AFAIK, pcsx2 isn`t designed to support multi-threaded or multi-processor applications, so right now it will be useless. But yes, if it is implemented, then I guess it will make a difference. But still, I prefer to wait 7 months for a new release than spend a lot of money on one computer.
And about SLI, it`s completly useless. The Cpu is botlenecked, not the Gpu, so the graphic card doesn`t count to the FPS. And I don`t think the HDD speed would do anything (so no need for 20,000 RPM). But that will still be a good pc for normal games...if it has software support.

correct, emulators are marginally affected by better graphics cards, but greatly affected by cpu power, seen as all graphics, cpu, sound processing etc is done on the cpu, all the graphics card will do is output the data its sent

shan

· #13 · Jul 26, 2005

oh... well i just got that xp/server2003/datacenter etc release infos from Microsoft's big site... but, things change, and i'm not sure how many processors XP supports with SP2 and whatnot, because i heard it was different... but...

Do they make 32 processor boards? if so... wow.. what a rediculous server that would make...

Well... the cheetah would just be so that it didn't take quite as long for the OS to transfer from the HD to the ramdisk

I don't like boot time...

But mostly i was just being silly with that post, my comp cost me $300 bucks a year ago, and i don't complain... CS:S 60fps is all i care to pay for

$refraction$

refraction

· #14 · Jul 26, 2005

i doubt you can buy a 32 processor board, but you can link them together with the system management bus

or at least thats how ive seen it done

Ash_Clarke

· #15 · Jul 26, 2005

refraction said:
all graphics, cpu, sound processing etc is done on the cpu, all the graphics card will do is output the data its sent

Just a small question: Why do GFX instructions etc. go to the CPU instead of to the GFX card? Is it because it would need to be hard-coded in (and then need to coded to support lots of types of GFX cards)?

$refraction$

refraction

· #16 · Jul 26, 2005

Ash_Clarke said:
Just a small question: Why do GFX instructions etc. go to the CPU instead of to the GFX card? Is it because it would need to be hard-coded in (and then need to coded to support lots of types of GFX cards)?

because a PC graphics card isnt the same as a Playstation 2's Graphics Synthesiser, and graphcis cards are no good at interpreting ps2 code to pc code, so the cpu has to do it, then tell the graphics card in pc code what to do

TWave

· #17 · Jul 26, 2005

Yes refraction you are right,
But only outputing the Cpu data in the screen, the GPU "unloads"(quita trabajo) a lot of charge to the cpu. As we can see in the GSdx9 pluging.

enb141

· #18 · Jul 27, 2005

For audio work I think an Audigy or the new Can use it's DSP to unload a little power to the CPU, in the future a PPU (Physics Procesing Unit), then we have the Dual core so I think this new tecnologies can help to make a faster emu

1 - 18 of 18 Posts

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