[Xymet]

Well, I tried tweaking the settings for Final Fantasy VIII for the past two weeks and I've been getting quite some results.

These are my settings and they work pretty well for me, except for minor glitches observed rarely.

Using
GPU: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.8
SPU: Eternal SPU Plugin 1.41
CDR/ISO Plugin: Pete's CDR ASPI/IOCTL Driver Version 1.11 (or) EPSXE Internal ISO plugin

GPU Settings
==========
Resolution & Colours
-------------------
For Fullscreen Mode
Desktop Resolution = 1024 x 768 (640 x 480 is prefered)
Colour Depth = 32 bit

Internal X resolution = 2
Internal Y resolution = 3 (if possible otherwise 2)
Stretching mode = 0. (3 looks better i think)
Render mode = 1 (2 if supported)

Textures
--------
Texture filtering = 0 or 5 or 6 (looks better than others for me)
Hi-Res textures = 2 (looks really nice)

Framerate
---------
Default settings

Compatability
-------------

Offscreen Drawing = 1
Framebuffer Effects = 2 (3 is slow but better looking for me)
Framebuffer Upload = 0

When using frame buffer upload settings high you may notice a glitch during battles. During battles where you see the HP of your characters a big black transparent box appears. If you don't want that set Framebuffer upload to 0. However when using 0 setting, you may notice when you go from one place to another a shaky effect during the transition. To correct this you may have to set the settings to 2 or 0. It depends on the card.

MISC
-----

MDEC filter ON
Special Game Fixes ON
Enable 0x0002
Enable 0x1000

Even using these settings, during your visit to the Fire Cavern, you will notice that the battles look a bit hazy and blurry. I tried the OpenGL plugin of Pete (1.76 version) and got the same results. However when I turn on Direct Framebuffer Updates in the Special Game Fixes, this problem is eliminated. I wonder if Pete would implement that Fix in his OpenGL2 version. Anyways...

SPU Settings
------------
For the Sound Plugin, you can use either Eternal SPU Plugin, Eternal Lite SPU Plugin or ePSXe Internal SPU.
When using Eternal SPU / Eternal Lite SPU Plugin, I had these settings on

Audio Device
------------
DirectSound with a Buffer Size 15 or 65

Audio Out Method
-----------------
SPUasync - Async mode = Wait or Smooth
(or)
Thread

Special Game Fix
---------------
Turn on Update before accessing register.
Others turned off

CDVD Plugin
-----------
When using Pete's CDR ASPI/IOCT Driver;
Use Asyn read for Caching method,
and use read subchannels.

These settings were implemented on a Computer with P4 2.4 Ghz, NVIDIA Geforce 6xxx series. 1024 MB RD Ram. SSE, SSE2, MMX supported PC.