ePSXe on Intel GMA X3100?

[gpw11]

Hi, I'm not really all that new to ePSXe, in fact I've been using it on my desktop systems for probably 4-5 years now and haven't really run into any major problems after the initial tinkering period. I'm a firm believe that it's a great emulator and an invaluable tool for playing our older games.

Heres the thing; I recently bought a new laptop strictly for work and productivity purposes. As such, I wasn't all too concerned at the time with the video card and processor speed since I'd mainly be running Visio, Excel, One Note, Word and other similar programs. Then all of a sudden I realized it'd be pretty sweet to be able to play PSX games lying in bed so I decided to try out Final Fantasy Tactics...and that's where I've been running into problems.

System Specs:

-Intel Mobile Core2Duo T2310 @ 1.46GHz
-Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with 384MB shared video memory
-2048MB DDR2
-Windows Vista Home Premium

The game runs (mostly) fine in Pete's D3D, except when certain effects come into play. For instance when Agrias or anyone else does a special move in the first battle (the black night's [who's name I totally can't remember] attack is especially bad) the game starts 'skipping'. It's a frame drop, but it's a weird one. I've messed with the frame buffer effect settings but can't seem fix it, which kind of tells me it might be a problem with Intel graphics.

Here are my video plug in settings:

-------------------------------------------
Plugin: Pete's D3D Driver 1.1.76
Author: Pete Bernert
GFX card: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Window mode

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: 100.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 4
- Framebuffer texture: 0
- Framebuffer access: 4
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: software

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Unfiltered FB: on
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: on
- Game fixes: off [00004000]
----------------------------------------

Beyond that I can't get either of the OpenGL plug ins to work. Pete's OpenGL 2.8 gives me errors relating to the "render texture extension not being found" and something to do with "pixel format". Open GL 1.76 can start the game fine, but then it just skips. It's not a frame rate issue, it's more like playing a song from a scratched disk.

Normally, I'd assume this was an issue with not having enough cpu/gpu power to run something, but I'm pretty sure I used to play this on an old Celeron 900 with a Geforce 2 MX so I can't see that being the issue. Obviously if it's unresolvable I can resort to software emulation, but I'd really like to get hardware rendering working and figured it was a common enough mobile graphics chipset that someone may be able to help.

Thanks for your time and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Squall-Leonhart]

Plugin: Pete's DX6 D3D Driver 1.1.76
Author: Pete Bernert
GFX card: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT

Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Window mode

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 2
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 3
- Framebuffer access: 4
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: hardware

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: on
- Game fixes: on [00000001]

[gpw11]

Thanks. It still does it but that pretty much settles it; software all the way. Must be something with either Vista, intel's mobile chipset, or a combination of the two. That's too bad.

[jonc2006]

i think its the chipset that is the problem. if you cant get it to run right, try using another emulator like psx.