I've been wanting to play some old games using PCSX2 (PS2 Emulator) but every time I load the games up, I get massive frame drops. I get around 13 frames in game, but cut scenes I get full frames (30-60).
The games I'm testing are Area 51 and Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
I've researched and tested a few things but nothing has worked so far. Does anyone know what could cause this?
My specs for my computer are:
- AMD Athlon 7850 Dual-Core Processor (2.8 GHz)
- ATI Radeon HD 4650
- 4 GB DDR2 RAM
3 Answers
While your video card is older, I know I was able to run PCSX2 on a similar generation Nvidia card 5 years ago. It's not time to give up hope yet.
1) IIRC, PCSX2 comes with 2 binaries that look roughly identical. Try both to see if one works better than the other. I had significant problems with one, but the other worked smoothly on my old setup.
2) Emulation is notoriously finicky, and one configuration tweak might save you. Go through the configuration guide and see if you can adjust your settings to match your slightly outdated hardware.
1Make sure you're running in Hardware Direct X mode. This is in the graphics plugin settings somewhere. I was getting 10~ FPS in Dark Cloud 2 in software mode at naitive res, now I get solid 60 in 1080p. There are various graphics settings to mess with and it all depends on your hardware, the game and how it interacts with those settings, but Software DX seemed to be on by default and it's a surefire way to ruin performance in 3D games.
You might use an overclocking tool like MSI Afterburner, it's really easy to use and very effective.
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