Release PCSX ReARMed, with a new GPU

[Super Roach]

Ran into a problem with my favorite game that is making it unplayable sadly.

This is for Front Mission 3 (playing using an eboot if that means anything)

http://imgur.com/a/0DcNO  - link to gallery with more screenshots.

Turns into:

When they occur, if i have a save state before it, it is very reproducible. In this save state, as soon as I go to shoot, graphics corruption occurs like above. Occasionaly it will cause a crash.

 

[dibad0011]

I Have an issue in which I can't browse to the 2nd sd card which is where I located some games. Also is there a way to fix Resident evil 2 (leon campaign) freezing after entering the shop at the begining of the game?.

 

[Klumpen]

Ran into a problem with my favorite game that is making it unplayable sadly.

This is for Front Mission 3 (playing using an eboot if that means anything)

http://imgur.com/a/0DcNO  - link to gallery with more screenshots.

When they occur, if i have a save state before it, it is very reproducible. In this save state, as soon as I go to shoot, graphics corruption occurs like above. Occasionaly it will cause a crash.

Ok, i tried it.

res. hack with speed hack = same result

res. hack without speed hack = same result

without res. hack and without speed hack = works splendid

Just turn them off and leave it that way for this game.

The crashes may be overclocking related, pcsx-rearmed crashes some times when i overclock to more than 770Mhz.

Some of the very old SoCs do not seem to be stable at 800.

 

[Super Roach]

Thanks! On further investigation, I also found that toggling the render is a way to avoid it, but it won't fix it if it has already occured. By toggling through the options with 8, There is a "Double res" which I think is the res hack (notaz may want to confirm this is the same as the one in the default gpu options in the emulator options screen.).

By using any of the other ones I have avoided the glitch occuring. If I save often, I can also toggle it back on, and when it occasionaly occurs,  restore save, toggle to standard (or eagle2x) mode, play  for about 5 minutes to skip that part, and toggle the double res back on.

Depending on the game this is not practical, but it is also good to know exactly what the cause of the  problem was.

 

[notaz]

When they occur, if i have a save state before it, it is very reproducible. In this save state, as soon as I go to shoot, graphics corruption occurs like above. Occasionaly it will cause a crash.

It would be useful to get a savestate or some instructions how to reproduce this fast, otherwise I can't do much.

I Have an issue in which I can't browse to the 2nd sd card which is where I located some games.

You should be able to go all the way up with ".." and then to /media and find your cards there.

Also is there a way to fix Resident evil 2 (leon campaign) freezing after entering the shop at the begining of the game?.

This is caused by some CD image format incompatibility, it works fine with .cue/.bin

 

[notaz]

Depending on the game this is not practical, but it is also good to know exactly what the cause of the  problem was.

The problem looks like to be a bug somewhere in double resolution code that corrupts memory, clearing textures or texture related registers of emulated GPU.

 

[ekianjo]

Sorry if this question has already been adressed but I do not have the courage to go through 40 pages of threads, but I get issues during the cinematics of Metal Gear Solid: sometimes when a particular filter is applied in the original PS1 game during the cinematics, the screen becomes a soup of pixels suddenly and only recovers when the picture changes. It only affects the cinematic parts of the game, not the game itself. Can something be done about that, or is that a known limitation of the emulator? 

 

[porg]

I do not have the courage to go through 40 pages of threads

For this purpose there exists the board function: "Search > This topic"

 

[porg]

Therefore I ask again:

• What is the performance difference for PCSX ReARMed r16 between Original / Rebirth / Gigahertz Pandora?
• Particularly between Original and Rebirth Pandora?
• (Is it worth upgrading...? Or the difference only minor, easily compensated by just "overclocking that difference"?)

That's exactly, what i would like to know.
The PSX-Library is great and i would consider an upgrade just for this.

There should be no difference between CC (original) and rebirth, and I already wrote about how Ghz unit differs (answer to b question in porg's quote above).

Well maybe except some reports that rebirth can withstand NEON overclock better, so you might be able to overclock more, but that depends purely on luck with the chip you get. Also there is a chance that RAM will overclock better, since the RAM on rebirth is rated for 200MHz, while the chip can only run it at 166MHz, but that's again luck and nothing is guaranteed.

I did a comparison of specific scenes of specific games for r16 on Original (CC) r16 on Rebirth (GC) & r17 on Rebirth only.

The result: There are no mentionable performance differences!

For those who want the hard facts, the comparisons are attached, maybe you recognize a certain relevant difference or pattern.

I noticed only very slight differences (both to the better and worse), but those may arose from the fact, that I once tested with battery and once with AC, and that the CPU was certainly set to 700 Mhz in all 3 tests, but the OPP settings on the CC may have been different to that from the GC.

PCSX-renderer-performance+compatibility-r16-op2cc.pdf

PCSX-renderer-performance+compatibility-r16-op3gc.pdf

PCSX-renderer-performance+compatibility-r17-op3gc.pdf

 

[porg]

Bug report for: PCSX ReARMed

Game: Dino Crisis

Bug occurred in:  r17

Was fine in: r16

Game does not progress beyond start screen reading "This game contains scenes of explicit violent and gore".

Tried pressing all keys, but it remains there forever.

Seems stuck but not frozen, as the CPU-counter (which I enabled), still changes the numbers.

Game state of that situation attached:

SLUS_00922-SLUS00922.002.zip

 

[Super Roach]

Here is a save game that was made after the problem happened. What I noticed is that once the glitch occurs, saving the state and reloading it did not fix the problem, which makes it easier for you hopefully Notaz.

In this save state, the text is replaced by blocks of colour here.

Attached is save state. The game is Front Mission 3, With a file name if im correct of:

Front Mission 3 (E) [sLES-02423]

SLUS01011-SLUS01011.zip

 

[Klumpen]

I have got another simple problem with Hi-Res in Tomb Raider 1,2,3.

If Hi-Res is activated and the (natively Hi-Res) Menu shows up the game crashes,

so i have to reactivate it in 3D-Mode and deactivate it before the game goes to the menu again.

It works and looks very fine all the rest of the time though.

You can test it simply between the training (Laras home) and the menu - no savestate needed.

Would it be possible to make some kind of script, that deactivates the Res-Hack in the menu of Tomb Raider 1-X?

 

[notaz]

I get issues during the cinematics of Metal Gear Solid: sometimes when a particular filter is applied in the original PS1 game during the cinematics, the screen becomes a soup of pixels suddenly and only recovers when the picture changes. It only affects the cinematic parts of the game, not the game itself. Can something be done about that, or is that a known limitation of the emulator? 

AFAIK that can be caused by double resolution mode with speedhack on or frameskip, you'll have to turn them off.

Bug report for: PCSX ReARMed

Game: Dino Crisis

Known problem (already reported by Caanoo users), will be fixed in next release.

Here is a save game that was made after the problem happened.

That's not useful, I need savestates a bit before bad things happen, otherwise I can't see what erased/turned off the textures (I guess I forgot to mention it last time).

I have got another simple problem with Hi-Res in Tomb Raider 1,2,3.

If Hi-Res is activated and the (natively Hi-Res) Menu shows up the game crashes,

so i have to reactivate it in 3D-Mode and deactivate it before the game goes to the menu again.

It works and looks very fine all the rest of the time though.

You can test it simply between the training (Laras home) and the menu - no savestate needed.

Doesn't reproduce - started the game, went to Lara's home, turn on double resolution, press select - works as expected. Tried both TR1 and TR2 NTSC. Could it be overclocking related?

Would it be possible to make some kind of script, that deactivates the Res-Hack in the menu of Tomb Raider 1-X?

Not really, you can bind a key to turn on/off hires mode (8 by default) and press that each time before entering menu.

 

[Klumpen]

I have got another simple problem with Hi-Res in Tomb Raider 1,2,3.


If Hi-Res is activated and the (natively Hi-Res) Menu shows up the game crashes,


so i have to reactivate it in 3D-Mode and deactivate it before the game goes to the menu again.


It works and looks very fine all the rest of the time though.


You can test it simply between the training (Laras home) and the menu - no savestate needed.

Doesn't reproduce - started the game, went to Lara's home, turn on double resolution, press select - works as expected. Tried both TR1 and TR2 NTSC. Could it be overclocking related?

>>>>Would it be possible to make some kind of script, that deactivates the Res-Hack in the menu of Tomb Raider 1-X?

Not really, you can bind a key to turn on/off hires mode (8 by default) and press that each time before entering menu.

Well, i just tried it again and it works well.

You were right, it was overclocking related although i do not know if it was back in r16.

As said before, i have got one of the Pandoras that do not go up to 800 stable, so i have to adjust a bit more.

BTW: Tomb Raider runs well in HiRes even with less than 780MHz and I am very happy about it, thank you very much.

I'll make a second donation some time when i have got a bit more money at hand.

 

[ekianjo]

Just to answer the point below, I did not run MGS1 in double resolution nor any speed hack (unless the ones used by the default config) - I will see if frameskip changes anything...

I get issues during the cinematics of Metal Gear Solid: sometimes when a particular filter is applied in the original PS1 game during the cinematics, the screen becomes a soup of pixels suddenly and only recovers when the picture changes. It only affects the cinematic parts of the game, not the game itself. Can something be done about that, or is that a known limitation of the emulator? 

AFAIK that can be caused by double resolution mode with speedhack on or frameskip, you'll have to turn them off.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Sorry if this question has already been adressed but I do not have the courage to go through 40 pages of threads, but I get issues during the cinematics of Metal Gear Solid: sometimes when a particular filter is applied in the original PS1 game during the cinematics, the screen becomes a soup of pixels suddenly and only recovers when the picture changes. It only affects the cinematic parts of the game, not the game itself. Can something be done about that, or is that a known limitation of the emulator? 

Go to 'Options'->'Display' and make sure 'Hardware Filter' is set to none_up.  This works for me.  As long as you set 'Hardware Filter' to 'none_up' this should fix it.

Edit:  Full Settings that work for me:

Display:

Scaler: fullscreen

Hardware Filter: none_up

Software Filter: None

Gamma adjustment: 100

built-in GPU plugin:

Enable interlace mode: Auto

Enhanced reslution (slow): ON

Enhanced res. speed hack: ON

 

[porg]

Feature suggestion: CPU clock rate setting per each renderer: NormalRes & DoubleRes

 

I like to play some games with DoubleRes and some in NormalRes.

In NormalRes 700 Mhz is sufficing, runs most games at full frame rate.

For DoubleRes 800 Mhz produce full frame rates mostly.

 

Now if we had one global NormalRes clock rate, and one global DoubleRes clock rate, switching the renderer, would automatically adapt the clockrate, and you would not need to manually pause the game by opening the menu, browse the menu, adjust cpu clock, confirm and return to game.

 

A workaround possibly with the current functionality may be to save renderer-type + clock-rate as a config per game.

 

How do you like my proposal?

Is that workaround possible?

 

[notaz]

I suggest you just set higher clock rate for everything and keep it, if the CPU finishes rendering frame early and has nothing to do it simply goes to sleep in lower power state, so you should not be losing battery life.

Doing it your way would complicate already messy code and may confuse some users.

 

[porg]

Ah! Very good to know!

I had thought that the CPU runs continuously in PCSX while emulation.

My proposal or workaround would still have a minor advantage:

Higher freq is wearing out the CPU more, even if only a fraction of the frame rendering.

Whereas the normal freq better preserves the CPU.

It takes a longer frame drawing time, but as long as finished before the next upcoming frame, everything is fine, full FPS achieved while preserving CPU.

Or is PCSX (in cooperation with the kernel) so intelligent to not only sleep the CPU when not needed, but also reduce freq if sufficing?

 

[notaz]

I wouldn't be so sure it wears down more quickly, as faster clock lets it do the job faster and then sleep longer, but that's difficult to test/prove of course. There is no special logic for all this in PCSX, kernel does this transparently for all programs.