Psx4gp2x V0.1.2 Test 1 - Playstation 1 Emulator For Gp2x

[slaanesh]

I'm trying Diablo. It's a bit slow but it is playable. I'm running at 240Mhz, 3/5 frameskip and with sound off.

Does switching off sound give a big saving?

 

[PokeParadox]

Zonks! If these statements are true, then you are my hero! O_O.

 

[zodttd]

To lower and increase PSX CYCLE: Press L Trigger + VOLUME DOWN/UP
To lower and increase PSX CLOCK: Press R Trigger + VOLUME DOWN/UP

PSX CYCLE weighs the amount of cycles each instruction takes. It can have the good side effect of improved performance by modifying it. It can sometimes improve compatibility by lowering to 1.0 to 2.5 or so.

PSX CLOCK weighs the emulated clock speed of the PS1. PSX CYCLE depends on the PSX CLOCK. By underclocking (LOWERING) the PSX CYCLE, interrupts will trigger faster, and usually give better performance.

So in the case of FF7, a PSX CYCLE of 1.0 and a PSX CLOCK of 20 was good for really amazing performance. Finding a good combination for games is sometimes critical for getting the maximum performance/compatibility, while I smooth out some of the default settings.

Someone please confirm my findings with FF7. This is very exciting.

slaanesh: Best performance boost comes from interlace 1 (ON). But turning off sound can give a performance increase as well! Also try a higher frameskip.

The numbers in the frameskip settings are number of frames to skip for every number of frames. Skipping 17 out of 18 frames would be unplayable under normal conditions, but many games dont allow all frames to be skipped. So many frames get rendered even though they were queued to be skipped. Many games will benefit over 4/5 for frameskip with 17/18 (or technically even much higher) since it doesnt need that last frame rendered. I will clean up the presentation of frameskip and see if I can handle that last frame better for games that do this.

 

[jbrodack]

thanks zod. really appreciate another release. I'm still have to try this new version but trying to keep up with everything and give some thanks to the emus.

also slight plug: remember i have some ps1 homebrew on my site which ran well with even older versions of the emu. everyone should give those games a try as they should be very playable and a good test for the emu.

 

[zodttd]

Cool.

I really hope some more games get tested though.

 

[morrissey2k7]

Cool.

I really hope some more games get tested though.

I tried Final Fantasy Tactics with the following settings:
OC: 266
Ram Tweaks: On
Sound: Off
Frameskip: 17/18
PSX Cycle: 1.0
PSX Clock: 20%
Bios: Bios41a.bin (renamed to scph1001.bin, of course )

The "virtual" fps were usually always at or above 60, but the game was still a little laggy. Still, it's MUCH faster than when I tried it with your last build back in August. Definitely playable!

EDIT: Tried again, overclocking to 280 -- big improvement. Thank goodness I sold my MKII to get this F-200... I could barely OC to 250 on my old unit!

 

[zodttd]

I doubt that cycle 1.0 and clock 20 is best for all games, but it works well for FF7 at least.

Wow, how fast is it at 280MHz? Smooth/playable?

I also noticed save states aren't working in test1 + test2. I will get them working in the next build.

 

[morrissey2k7]

I doubt that cycle 1.0 and clock 20 is best for all games, but it works well for FF7 at least.

Wow, how fast is it at 280MHz? Smooth/playable?

I also noticed save states aren't working in test1 + test2. I will get them working in the next build.

Well, it's smooth and playable regardless. And as I said... "virtual" fps is always over 60, so that's good. Animation is a little slow (like characters moving on the field after you choose where you want them to move, or when they're attacking), but it's definitely a HUGE improvement over trying to play on your last release in August. I only tried the same cycle/clock settings you did as a base to work around, since I've never tried adjusting those settings before.

 

[L33F3R]

Ahh man zodttd ur the best.


morrissey imma try FFT also. See what settings boasts best performance.

<EDIT>

Changing lots of settings but not much difference in the actual lagg. smoothness is better than last version tho i most say.

 

[morrissey2k7]

OK, I tried Castlevania: SOTN (with the same settings that I mentioned above for Final Fantasy Tactics), OC'ing to 280, but this time I turned Interlace Count to 1.

It's definitely not fullspeed, but it's not as painfully slow as it was when playing it with previous versions of PSX4GP2X. In other words, a noticeable improvement. Interestingly enough, if you set Interlace to 3, there's virtually no lag, but you can't really see what's going on, either :rolleyes:.

Perhaps I'm just not comprehending the nature of Cycle and Clock, but from the way they're explained, wouldn't every game benefit from lowering them both?

 

[zodttd]

Is it going smooth but slow, or is it going fast in bursts then slow in bursts? If it's going in bursts, then it's probably just the game doesnt handle the type of frameskipping Im doing that well. It would explain why theres a 60 FPS reading but not going fast in some areas. Imagine a second of frames at 1/2 frameskip. Then imagine 30 frames must be blitted, and the next 30 don't. You would get a second of animation that would be 30 frames of no frameskipping, and 30 frames of which is faster because every other frame gets skipped.
You can see how things get complicated. But this could be why youre getting a good framerate but it seems slow or choppy in some areas. In this odd case it would only be going effictively 45 FPS.




To answer the question above...The best scenario would be the highest PSX cycle and lowest PSX CLOCK that gets you the highest "real" fps count.

 

[morrissey2k7]

Is it going smooth but slow, or is it going fast in bursts then slow in bursts? If it's going in bursts, then it's probably just the game doesnt handle the type of frameskipping Im doing that well. It would explain why theres a 60 FPS reading but not going fast in some areas. Imagine a second of frames at 1/2 frameskip. Then imagine 30 frames must be blitted, and the next 30 don't. You would get a second of animation that would be 30 frames of no frameskipping, and 30 frames of which is faster because every other frame gets skipped.
You can see how things get complicated. But this could be why youre getting a good framerate but it seems slow or choppy in some areas. In this odd case it would only be going effictively 45 FPS.

To answer the question above...The best scenario would be the highest PSX cycle and lowest PSX CLOCK that gets you the highest "real" fps count.

In both FF Tactics and C:SOTN, it's a case where the "virtual" fps is ALWAYS at or above 60fps, but always lagging video-wise. There's no bursts of speed. Perhaps it's because I'm using 17/18 frameskip, because if my Cycle is increased while my Clock is low (meaning, a Clock of let's say 20% and a Cycle of 2.5 or higher), I'll get a ridiculously high (100+) "virtual" fps, but there's still video lag.

 

[L33F3R]

heres a good question, how does interlacing affect fps. im afraird iv never looked into this. I see a bunch of lines with it on but i get above 70 fps all the time. 266mhz sound off, high frameskip (FFT)

says real fps is 10 but its lookin pretty good.

still slow, but very playable.

 

[cowai]

Cool.

I really hope some more games get tested though.

I tried Final Fantasy Tactics with the following settings:
OC: 266
Ram Tweaks: On
Sound: Off
Frameskip: 17/18
PSX Cycle: 1.0
PSX Clock: 20%
Bios: Bios41a.bin (renamed to scph1001.bin, of course )

The "virtual" fps were usually always at or above 60, but the game was still a little laggy. Still, it's MUCH faster than when I tried it with your last build back in August. Definitely playable!

EDIT: Tried again, overclocking to 280 -- big improvement. Thank goodness I sold my MKII to get this F-200... I could barely OC to 250 on my old unit!



Is that bios any better?

 

[Exophase]

OK, I tried Castlevania: SOTN (with the same settings that I mentioned above for Final Fantasy Tactics), OC'ing to 280, but this time I turned Interlace Count to 1.

It's definitely not fullspeed, but it's not as painfully slow as it was when playing it with previous versions of PSX4GP2X. In other words, a noticeable improvement. Interestingly enough, if you set Interlace to 3, there's virtually no lag, but you can't really see what's going on, either :rolleyes:.

Perhaps I'm just not comprehending the nature of Cycle and Clock, but from the way they're explained, wouldn't every game benefit from lowering them both?

If you underclock a CPU too far (which is what you're doing, only clock underclocks the other components as well) then you'll either break the game or make it suffer from internal lag where it doesn't have enough time to compute everything during a frame.

 

[zodttd]

Hmm, I found out a bug in something (either frameskip or more likely the dynarec) is crashing a bunch of games from the iphone's v0.1.0 release to v0.1.1. Going to fix it, as it affects all psx4all versions.

I'm also going to add in the missing register for dynarec register caching in the GP2X version. It may help performance some. ;P

 

[morrissey2k7]

Is that bios any better?

I don't have a point of reference, really, because the update to the emulator is so much better, so it's hard to tell how much of the performance boost is a result of the bios. I'd never heard of these bios before today, but when I went out into the internet wilderness to find them, lots of people were singing their praises on various forums and whatnot. So, yeah, this is the first time I've used these bios... I'll have to plug the traditional scph1001 in to the new version of PSX4GP2X to see if there is a noticeable difference.

 

[zodttd]

New release time:

psx4gp2x v0.1.2 Test 3:

Fixed a compatibility bug that made many games crash seemingly randomly.

More performance by adding a missing register in the reg caching of the dynarec.

Added load and save state support. No longer requires the "sstates" directory. Instead, saving a state will create a timestamped (too bad the GP2X resets its clock!) loadedfilename_timestamp.svs file in the same directory as the loaded game's filename. To load the save state, just goto File Options / Load State and choose a .svs file.

When rearranging save states, be sure to keep the timestamp character length the same (14 characters plus .svs for 18 total characters), and keep the file in the same directory as the rom.

So here's the download:
http://www.zodttd.com/psx4gp2x/psx4gp2x_0_1_2_t3.zip

 

[slaanesh]

Trying this now.

By the way, the Gamma seems way dark on my MKII despite setting it from Gmenu2x. It looks like it's being overidden?

 

[yodaofborg]

Final Fantasy 9 runs quite well, with sound off, PSX CPU @ 30% and Cycle set to 2.0 @ 280mhz, it seems to be running @ 42fps on the walk round parts, and 12 FPS in battles.

A lot faster than the last release! Not full speed, but a lot faster!

Silent Hill runs, but is unplayable due to graphical errors. (tried lots of differing settings)