10-11-2017, 10:09 AM -
I recently discovered RPCS3 and just had to try it, though my current "gaming PC" is an old re-purposed workstation with relatively slow per-core performance (dual Xeon E5520 2.26 GHz, with total of 8 cores/16 threads). GPU is an older GTX 660 Ti, with current NVidia drivers for Vulkan and OpenGL. Running Windows 10 x64, insider build 16299.15.
I know this machine is on the slow side, but it's technically in spec and I figured I'd give it a whirl and see what breaks.
Fully understood that the answer may be "get a faster PC". 
Managed to get Katamari Forever (US edition, BLUS30336) imported and it works! Runs some scenes at full 30fps, while complex scenes slow down to 22-26 or as low as 13-16. Rendering looks great at 720p despite the intermittent slowdowns; performance doesn't seem much different at 480p or 1080p.
The main problem I have is that audio is kind of garbled, as you can hear in this recording:
Changing the audio settings between Xaudio2 and OpenAL doesn't make a difference, nor does using 'null' and saving to a file -- they're all equally garbled. Flipping the 16-bit and downsampling settings don't seem to make a difference either, nor does switching output audio devices between USB speakers and motherboard audio with headphones. CPU emulation options to use interpreter make the audio ssoo cchhooppyy that it's much worse, so can't tell whether that improves quality in theory.
My suspicion is that there's an audio-processing thread in the emulated system that's running too slow and maxing out per-core performance... I don't see any maxed-out cores in the task manager, but if the thread is being interrupted often it can hop cores so wouldn't be visible that way:
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=1204]](https://forums.rpcs3.net/attachment.php?aid=1204)
Has anybody gotten this game running with smooth audio on a faster PC, or can confirm my diagnosis about bad single-core performance maxing out on audio?
I haven't tested any other games yet. Can break out Visual Studio for profiling if I have to, but Windows dev is not my native environment.
Anyway -- *AWESOME* project and I look forward to playing with it more when I get a beefier gaming PC.
I ripped a couple more of my game discs (Tekken 6, LittleBigPlanet) and saw similar performance issues; audio sometimes ok during title screens but gets pretty bad fast when there's action on screen, and frame rates dipping lower than I want them.
Based on this and more research in the forum, I'm pretty sure the slow per-core speed of the old Xeon is biting me: a more current i5 or i7 in the mid-3GHz-to-4GHz range should easily be twice as fast, which provides a *lot* more headroom for the emulation overhead.
Would it be possible to add some details to the CPU requirement on the Quickstart page? In particular I've seen recs for at least a 4th-gen i5/i7, and for 4 cores minimum (eg, not a 2-core laptop or a super-old low-GHz part).
In the meantime I'll save my pennies for a nice Coffee Lake i5 or i7 and dream of emulators... Thanks all!
I know this machine is on the slow side, but it's technically in spec and I figured I'd give it a whirl and see what breaks.
Fully understood that the answer may be "get a faster PC". Managed to get Katamari Forever (US edition, BLUS30336) imported and it works! Runs some scenes at full 30fps, while complex scenes slow down to 22-26 or as low as 13-16. Rendering looks great at 720p despite the intermittent slowdowns; performance doesn't seem much different at 480p or 1080p.
The main problem I have is that audio is kind of garbled, as you can hear in this recording:
Changing the audio settings between Xaudio2 and OpenAL doesn't make a difference, nor does using 'null' and saving to a file -- they're all equally garbled. Flipping the 16-bit and downsampling settings don't seem to make a difference either, nor does switching output audio devices between USB speakers and motherboard audio with headphones. CPU emulation options to use interpreter make the audio ssoo cchhooppyy that it's much worse, so can't tell whether that improves quality in theory.
My suspicion is that there's an audio-processing thread in the emulated system that's running too slow and maxing out per-core performance... I don't see any maxed-out cores in the task manager, but if the thread is being interrupted often it can hop cores so wouldn't be visible that way:
Has anybody gotten this game running with smooth audio on a faster PC, or can confirm my diagnosis about bad single-core performance maxing out on audio?
I haven't tested any other games yet. Can break out Visual Studio for profiling if I have to, but Windows dev is not my native environment.
Anyway -- *AWESOME* project and I look forward to playing with it more when I get a beefier gaming PC.
I ripped a couple more of my game discs (Tekken 6, LittleBigPlanet) and saw similar performance issues; audio sometimes ok during title screens but gets pretty bad fast when there's action on screen, and frame rates dipping lower than I want them.
Based on this and more research in the forum, I'm pretty sure the slow per-core speed of the old Xeon is biting me: a more current i5 or i7 in the mid-3GHz-to-4GHz range should easily be twice as fast, which provides a *lot* more headroom for the emulation overhead.
Would it be possible to add some details to the CPU requirement on the Quickstart page? In particular I've seen recs for at least a 4th-gen i5/i7, and for 4 cores minimum (eg, not a 2-core laptop or a super-old low-GHz part).
In the meantime I'll save my pennies for a nice Coffee Lake i5 or i7 and dream of emulators...
Thanks all!
This post was last modified: 10-11-2017, 11:43 PM by brion.