Optimum settings for FF9 ( sorry if this has been done before )

Just started with emulation as my psx has broken, playing FF9 and was wondering if anyone could share any tips on getting the best emulation performance.

Currently I'm having problems with lower framerates and slow music using the menu screens, and battles can get really sluggish. Is there any way to keep music tempo constant?

I'm using all of Pete's pluggins, and run bith win2k and win ME, is there any difference for performance?

Thanks for any help anyone can give, I'm really sorry if this has been asked months ago

Oh my system specs

1ghz AMD Athlon
512 ram
32mb GeForce 2 MX
SB live
DVD and cd-r drive

[Kane]

Are you usin the PAL version?

[Recca]

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.58
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce2 MX/PCI/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Fullscreen - Desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 2 - edge clamping supported
- Garbage collection: on
- VRam size: 32 MBytes - 113 textures usable

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: 200

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 1
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: off
- Subtractive blending: activated

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: on
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: off
- Game fixes: on [00000004]

Ohh and if your using the pal version, you will need a patch, instead of burning it use petes cdr plugin.

[Kane]

Not only that, but when usin the PAL version, it is best to set the framlock to 60FPS. You can also patch the ISO usin the built in patcher in ePSXe 1.5.0. Other than that, stick pretty much with Recca's config, and bear in mind taht any special blurring effects (Battle trasitions, etc) are likely to slow down the machine as there is no fast implementation of Frambuffers in hardware on the PC.

Thanks for that guys. I am using the pal version ( i do own it ), burnt it to hard drive as an iso and used a region selector patch. IS that alright? I'll just try those settings out.

[Kane]

Use the patch which is a trainer too. That works.... it's called Final Fantasy 9 Protection Fix, +13 Trainer & PAL/NTSC Selector

Excellent, those configs work great. Thanks everyone! All i gotta do now is get 100 in that fight scene

[bossker1]

Ok, I need some optimum settings for my CPU...its really starting to f up, and it looks REAL, REAL ugly...

I have a P3, 550 Mhz with a TNT2 graphics card...
not too much to work with...if you guys can tell me what to use (im using pete's soft driver 1.54 and PeOps soft driver isn't really working for me)
My operating system is windows XP and one main problem im experiencing is on the battle field i cant see the menus...don't ask me why they worked before, but after trying to get good video settings the f---d up...any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

[Arpanet]

Originally posted by bossker1
Ok, I need some optimum settings for my CPU...its really starting to f up, and it looks REAL, REAL ugly...

I have a P3, 550 Mhz with a TNT2 graphics card...
not too much to work with...if you guys can tell me what to use (im using pete's soft driver 1.54 and PeOps soft driver isn't really working for me)
My operating system is windows XP and one main problem im experiencing is on the battle field i cant see the menus...don't ask me why they worked before, but after trying to get good video settings the f---d up...any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

Uh... check the off-screen drawing? Not sure if there's even an option for that on Pete's Soft... but if there is it should be set to 3.

[Ranma Kawaii]

Originally posted by bossker1
Ok, I need some optimum settings for my CPU...its really starting to f up, and it looks REAL, REAL ugly...

I have a P3, 550 Mhz with a TNT2 graphics card...
not too much to work with...if you guys can tell me what to use (im using pete's soft driver 1.54 and PeOps soft driver isn't really working for me)
My operating system is windows XP and one main problem im experiencing is on the battle field i cant see the menus...don't ask me why they worked before, but after trying to get good video settings the f---d up...any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

Errr... Snap out of it man, you should be using PETE'S D3D / OPENGL...

[password0k]

My comp is not similar to yours, except for the processor. Here are my specs, I hope they help. To optimize it, I had to fool around with the "experimental" settings, also frame skip or something.


Lewpy's Glide©ø Plugin Configuration Information v1.35
-----------------------------------------------------

Computer Information
OS : Microsoft Windows 98 (v4.10 Build 1998)
DirectX : DirectX 8.1 installed
Processor : Intel Pentium III, 499Mhz (1 off) (00/0673)
16kb L1-I, 16kb L1-D, 512kb L2 (on-chip)
Memory : 128Mb

Core Emulator
ePSXe : D:\GAMES\EPSXE140\EPSXE.EXE
: 25/06/2001 20:31, 153088 bytes

*------*----------------------*---------*------------------*
| Type | Name | Version | Date |
*------*----------------------*---------*------------------*
| BIOS | scph1001.bin | | 17/07/2000 23:28 |
| CDR | cdrSeguASPI.dll | 0.3 | 06/08/1999 00:03 |
| GPU | gpuLewGlide.dll | 1.35 | 01/08/2001 20:05 |
| SPU | spuEternal.dll | 1.10 | 09/11/2001 03:33 |
*------*----------------------*---------*------------------*

*-----------------------------*---------------------*
| ePSXe Configuration Item | Current Setting |
*-----------------------------*---------------------*
| Sound Enabled | Yes |
| CDDA Enabled | Yes |
| XA Enabled | No |
| XA Read Enabled | No |
| SPU IRQ Hack | No |
| CDROM Drive Letter | E |
| CDROM Accurate Timing | No |
| Disable CDROM Status | No |
| Country | AutoDetect |
*-----------------------------*---------------------*

Glide©ø
Board : Voodoo3 (tm)
Version : 3.10.00.0658
File : C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\glide3x.dll
: 02/11/2000 12:32, 329728 bytes

*-----------------------------*---------------------*
| Plugin Configuration Item | Current Setting |
*-----------------------------*---------------------*
| Active Configuration | 1 |
| Active 3dfx Card | 1 |
| Enable HotKeys | No |
| Resolution | 800x600 |
| Refresh Rate | 60Hz |
| Emulate MASK Bit | Yes |
| Dynamic Texture Caching | Yes |
| Custom FrameCap | 60Hz |
| On-Screen Display | Off |
| Frame Skip | Enabled |
| FrameRate Limit | Full-Rate |
| System Type | NTSC |
| FrameCap Method | New |
| Draw Method | Bright |
| Alpha Blending Mode | Advanced |
| Bilinear Filtering | Disabled |
| Alpha Testing | Normal |
| FrameBuffer Access | Write |
| Off-Screen Drawing | Extra |
| Polygon Mode | Textured |
| Texture Windows | Enabled |
| VSync | Enabled |
| Banshee Code | Disabled |
| MDEC Format | Texture |
| Experimental Flipping | On |
| Experimental Screen Sizing | Off |
| FrontBuffer Rendering Fix | Off |
| FF7 TextureWindow Fix | Off |
| DMAChain Fix | Long |
*-----------------------------*---------------------*

Argh, what a dilema, I'm having to decide between nice Extended 2D texture filtering which causes slow down in the menus but prevents the field screen from looking blocky, or resorting having to drop down a resolution and to 16 bit colour in order to keep the menus running at the same FPS.

Does anybody know of any tweaks or utilities that will help me get some more 2D filtering power out of my machine? :stupid:

system specs as above, thanks again chaps

[Kane]

You shouldn't have to do taht. My old 650+GF2MX did it fine.

[Marcis]

that sounds like an fsaa problem to me. I had the same problem and setting it to auto-control in windows instead of 4x fixed it.

[DrizzXII]

bossker1:
These settings work perfect for me, no slowdowns at all so far.. i am like only 3 hours into the game though :P
My systems a little better then yours but you could lower the resolution to 640x480, just make sure you use 16bit color and not 32bit.. 32bit killed the old tnt cards. I use 16bit for everything myself, barely notice any difference and its faster by far.

Duron 650@840MHz
512mb pc133 ram
ASUS V6600 Geforce1 Deluxe (SDR)
NTSC
____________________________
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.58
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce 256/AGP/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 1024x768 Fullscreen - Desktop changing [16 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 6
- Garbage collection: on
- VRam size: 32 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 60

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: on
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: off
- Game fixes: on [00000200]
-----------------------------------------

[RobXMcCarthy]

Yes as drizz said, use Filtering at Extended + Sprite smoothing.
Normal extended or standard make backgrounds look like crap...
The MAIN thing is, make sure you are using a resolution that is a multiple of 320 and 240 (ex 640 x 480) the reason is texture stretching, the PSX version is origionally at 320x240, so the textures are optomized for that. when you go to resolutions that are not a multiple of that resolution, much more goes into scaling textures (not just X2 or X3), also you get more glitches.
That it why people recomend 640 480.

[RobXMcCarthy]

btw, the best results can be achieved at 1280 x 960 as it is the highest conventional resolution that is a direct multiple of 320 by 240. just incase you wanted to know.

[RobXMcCarthy]

Extended (2) with smoothing @ 1280 x 960
(notice the blocky textures)

[RobXMcCarthy]

btw, this is using petes OGL 1.58
Extended plus Sprite smoothing (6) with smoothing @ 1280 x 960