Gpsp (dynarec) Beta Testing

[Rivroner]

Ram Timigs only push performance about 3 frames? At least in the others emulators.

Everything little bit helps! RAM timings can increase speed by up to 10%. I have nothing to back that up with.

Yes, that´s right

 

[zodttd]

Well this is what the update will be:
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I plan to removing the overclock screen and remove the clockspeed settings. Instead I'll include cpu_speed.gpe. When running cpu_speed.gpe you can of course change the cpu speed, ram timings, and lcd timings (gamma, etc.). It will also create a cpu_speed.cfg file. All that is needed to run the upcoming updated gpSP v0.9002 will be the addition of the following before the newline at the end of the file:
Run
./gpsp.gpe

That's it.
Sound like a good solution?

 

[cowai]

Indeed! This means that we can use the built-in overclocker in Gmenu, right?

 

[nubie]

nubie: What overclock are you using? Mario Kart is one of the slower games due to it's more intensive graphics, I can run it fullspeed at 266MHz for sure. Sometimes it needs a tweak from auto frameskip to manual 1 or 2.

Will try later, I was only doing a 250mhz overclock because the guy I bought it from on ebay said it would go to 255mhz. I have yet to go for max myself and plan to try on 3AA cells later.

 

[wwwadios]

quick save is working well?

 

[gaterooze]

More...

As before, all testing is at 240mhz with default settings.

The three ratings will be for Gameplay/GFX/Sound. A = Near-Perfect, B = Good, C = Poor

Justice League Heroes Flash - A/A/C - perhaps just a little slow?
Capcom Classics Mini Mix - crashes.
Lego Star Wars 2 - B/B/C - slow, plus graphical glitches (yellow splotches poking through floors).
Madden 07 - C/C/C - extremely slow, severe graphical glitches, crashed during game.
Need For Speed Most Wanted - C/C/C - excrutiatingly slow (I thought it had crashed on the titles at first), severe graphical glitches.
Tetris Advance - A/A/A - seems perfect.
Tomb Raider Legend - A/B/C - plays great, left edge of screen flickers, possible palette issues?
World Poker Tour - A/A/C - sound lags. Great Texas Hold 'em here
Metroid Zero Mission - B/A/C - ever so slightly slow, I think.
Pokemon Leaf Green - B/A/C - a bit slow, but not bad.
Sword of Mana - B/A/B - a bit slow (but completely playable). Goddamn this game takes a long time to get through the opening chatter!
Alien Hominid - B/A/B - a touch slow.
Gunstar Super Heroes - B/A/C - just a little slow
Global Star Sudoku Fever - crashes after a few seconds on the title screen.

One suggestion: would be great to be able to scroll by page in the rom selector.

Also, an FPS display would help tell how close to fullspeed games are. I'm wondering if some of my previous tests which *seemed* fullspeed were actually a couple of FPS below...

Thanks zodttd, it's a brilliant emu so far and I think everyone should be confident that it will be completely fullspeed in time

 

[yodaofborg]

Man, I missed the beta, ah well, but I wanted my first donation to be rixed, for obvious reasons, but hell, once I get employed again I'm sticking some cash down right here, psx emulation never really excited me, this does...

 

[gaterooze]

I'm not certain autoframeskip is working at all. It seems to be the same speed as frameskip 0, and when I put it to FS1 it's much faster.

That's good news though, as it means the emu is actually faster than my testing showed

 

[WhizzBang]

I know it's cheeky to ask but if any of the beta testers are Elite fans, could they test the PD ROM Elite - A New Kind by Quirky?

 

[Dunny]

I know it's cheeky to ask but if any of the beta testers are Elite fans, could they test the PD ROM Elite - A New Kind by Quirky?

I tested it, but found that the menus were missing a lot of graphics - so couldn't launch, and couldn't test the flight engine

Other than that, it works fine.

D.

 

[WhizzBang]

I know it's cheeky to ask but if any of the beta testers are Elite fans, could they test the PD ROM Elite - A New Kind by Quirky?

I tested it, but found that the menus were missing a lot of graphics - so couldn't launch, and couldn't test the flight engine

Other than that, it works fine.

D.

That's a shame, thanks for trying it.

 

[Vimacs]

well, the ltsk of my gp2x just burned, so ignore my instability reports, it was most likely caused by a dying psu :-/

 

[sam fisher]

*reloading every 2 min *
This is the most awsome thing ever. Playing gba on my gp2x. Now, thats something I'm guessing many donations will come in the near future, zodtdd

Zodtdd: Do you have magic tricks on how to make 3d games faster? (Mario Kart especially. It is the second most selling gba game of all times)

Keep up the good work, Zod..

I guess he's amassed a small fortune today, I wish I had the ability to donate I'm so sad that I can't test this. Stupid age

 

[CABBAGES]

am i too late ? i think i donated before for psx4all ? :huh:

 

[DaveC]

Well this is what the update will be:
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I plan to removing the overclock screen and remove the clockspeed settings. Instead I'll include cpu_speed.gpe. When running cpu_speed.gpe you can of course change the cpu speed, ram timings, and lcd timings (gamma, etc.). It will also create a cpu_speed.cfg file. All that is needed to run the upcoming updated gpSP v0.9002 will be the addition of the following before the newline at the end of the file:
Run
./gpsp.gpe

That's it.
Sound like a good solution?

Not really. I don't particularly care to mess with scripts or have to load and mess with one program then go and load another. That is kind of awkward. What would really be nice would be to have it all in one GUI and be able to save parameters per game.

Maybe you can have both options, but I wouldn't get rid of the clock sped settings in the main GUI, that would not be clean to need and have to use anoter piece of software to get it to work right. That is not very intuitive.

 

[PokeParadox]

I personally like to set clock speed externally (gmenu2x) but I think in the case of this emulator it will be more beneficial if the clock settings were in a nice menu and as Dave said savable on a per game basis.

 

[bhess]

Has anybody tested this with WarioWare Inc.?

 

[Tobriand]

Ok, first, this is an amazing emu - better than I ever thought I'd see on the 2x, really.

I tested a Klonoa and Metroid Zero at 200MHz... Klonoa played fine (barring the sound), probably 90-100% speed, though fades killed speed drastically. Metroid zero was a touch slower; really not fun until I'd overclocked to 250MHz - sound stayed choppy as hell though. Tried changing the buffer (since this worked for Psemu plugins at the cost of sound becoming laggy), but no effect whatsoever.

At 250MHz, Metroid Zero is, if not full speed, at least fast enough to be fun.

Mario Cart Super Circuit isn't, really, yet. It's playable, but no more, and not really fun-playable.

Then I threw the game I thought would give it serious problems, since it's one of then biggies from the SNES era - Yoshi's Island. Played faster than I ever thought I'd see the game on a 2x - probably about the speed I remember it from zSnes; maybe a touch slower. However, I'd recommend doing a debug in the first proper level down the first pipe, since the caves kill all the speed completely, and it drops to about 50% or so. The most obvious difference in this area as opposed to outside? Well, two things. First, there's a parallax background, one of which is mostly transparent. Don't think that was on the surface. Second (and more likely the culprit, imo) there's a series of waterfalls in the background, animating using palette changes.

For all games, as I say, fades kill the speed, and sound is horrible (but there and recognisable).

Ok, add Rayman Advance (0046). It's very very slow, when played side by side with VBA-S. On GPSP, Rayman takes just over a second to walk from one end of the first plant to the other. On my PC, the same time results in just under twice the distance walked. However, speed's not exactly an easy thing to debug...

EDIT: Forgot to mention, Rayman advance has screwey colours for the loading screens, though the actual game looks fine...

 

[zodttd]

Ok, I'm about to release a new version with CPU_SPEED embedded in the boot of gpSP2X, instead of the simple cpu overclock. This way you will be able to tweak the cpu/lcd/ram timings. It will also save the settings for next time so all you have to do is press select next time.

Oh, I also redid the MMU loading order so it loads before SDL_Init! Otherwise it's not active from what im aware of.

 

[PokeParadox]

Excuse the Cross-posting, but there's a few threads for gpsp... not sure which one to use... Here's some quick video captures I've done on the gpsp beta.
As I've noted the USA version might well run better since there's probably optimisations for that region.

: Advance Wars (E)
Advance Wars 2 (E)
Another World
Donkey Kong Country (U)
F-Zero Maximum Velocity (U)