seperate cd plugin or use internal?

[BluDChyLD]

Is there any reason to choose a 3rd party one (petes etc) over the built in cd plug in in terms of speed and compatibility?
Thanks

[Kane]

Pete's one is better for CDs as it supports async reads and read ahead.
If you are using an ISO, just stick with ithe internal.

[Prafull]

yes pete's plugin is better for the reasons mentioned by lord kane.
I myself use pete's plugins.

[sithspawn]

i personally use pete's cdr plugins (have some noticeable speed difference with some games).
now that u mention it, lord kane, which one's better: async or read ahead?

~sithspawn

[Xeven]

actually SaPu's Cdr plugin supports additional async reads as well, although i think the difference in performance between pure sync to sync + additional async only comes into play if the bottleneck is the drive itself..

[Kane]

...dunno, I don't use anything other than ISO's so it's a moot point. I think it would depend on the game. A game like FF9 which uses a lot of data in a stream (MDECs) would probs be better off with read ahead, but another game that accesses data all accross the CD would be better with async...
I could be wrong tho...

[Xeven]

actually doing an additional async read when the games reads from totally different sector areas (area being curr_buffered_sector + width_sectors_buffered) would slowdown reading because the probability of issuing another read on another area while still doing the async read occurs, in this case you either have to wait for the async read to finish before issuing another read, or issue a read and let the cdr drive take care of it, either the cdr chokes because its trying to read different areas of the disk at the same time, or if the timing was that the new read issued started at ~the end of the current async read, then it'l probably okay. Of course such problems could probably be fixed by adjusting the number of bufferered sectors per read, as needed. For reading large files, like MDECS, async makes things more "seamless", since while the emu reads from the buffer, you're already reading some 'more' sectors from the disk, so in essence asynchronous reading is very good for reading contigous areas of a cdrom disk..

Sometimes is good to do "intelligent" async reading, if for example the emu reads a file that is really big, + async reading would be nice, if the emu is currently reading an area of the disk where the file is small, not issuing the async read would probably be better..

Now, what the heck did i just say?.. i dunno, even i confused myself..

[Prafull]

Additional plus points in pete's cdr plugin are subchannel and ppf options and also to create those sbi and m3s files.

[G-Pitts]

Use pete cdr plugin or Sapu`s cdr plugin. This plugin give the best speed and has high compatibality (at least for me). By the way, the best way to play psx games is to play them from ISO which will give you speed and eliminate many cdr problem.

[fivefeet8]

I use the internal win2k cdr pluggin most if not all the time.. Ease of use and works fine and dandy on my system..

[Xeven]

i know this is totally unrelated but, do you guys use the read subchannel option for the Pete's Plugin? Did you find any games that wont work if subchannel reading is not turned on?

[G-Pitts]

My cd drive didnt support subchannel read but all my games run fine if I play them from CD with subchannel option off.

[Ultragunner]

some solves issues like the dragon warrior problem so there is also a need to try all of the any plugins available.

i myself use the internal most of the time and my alternate is cdr mooby.

I have found these plugins work best for me 1.Sapu's. I don't use subchannel reading so it doesn't matter that this plugin does not support it, yet. 2. Internal. Excellent choice, always has been, always will be. 3. Pete's. See the comments about the internal, plus it does the PPF patches automatically. But Dino Crisis is the only game that I have that needs this.
So, the main reason that i choose SPU's is because it handles my DVD drive perfectly, better than the other two and my DVD is drive I use mainly for PSX games.
sincerely,
sx/amiga

[ready2rumbel]

First off, what is 'subchannel' for? Secondly, I prefer the internal CD-ROM plugin of ePSXe 1.5.1 cause Pete's causes games to chop slightly sometimes, not obvious chops but the game soesn't look as smooth as when i'm using the internal plugin. If there's a way of getting round this, i'll surely give Pete's plugin another try.

[Shadow Lady]

I think Sapu's cdr is so great cauze of the autodetected options ^^

but I tried on adripsx ile and Resident Evil Survivor and there are some conflicts on xa, when pete dont do that... didnt try on epsxe anyway ;P<span style="height: 11; Filter: Glow(Color=black)>

[SSJ4 Gogeta]

I am not aware of these technicalities in CD plugins but as far gaming is concerned I only used the internal CD plugin of ePSXe or use an iso image to minimize CD usage due to the fast wearing out of the CD motors and being forced to buy a new one at an early time..........

[Kane]

Originally posted by ready2rumbel
First off, what is 'subchannel' for? Secondly, I prefer the internal CD-ROM plugin of ePSXe 1.5.1 cause Pete's causes games to chop slightly sometimes, not obvious chops but the game soesn't look as smooth as when i'm using the internal plugin. If there's a way of getting round this, i'll surely give Pete's plugin another try.

Subchannel reads are for certain copy protected games. The copy protection relies on loking at subchannel information encoded in data tracks, and these options allow the reading of said information.