FF7 battle swirls

[vuuDi]

When ever a battle swirls comes, the game slows really badly (video and sound). Same happens after battles in the resultscreens. Besides this, the game runs fine. I'm running the game from imagefiles. I'm using ePSXe 160 but also tried 152 with no results.

specs: athlon xp2200+,512mb pc2700 ddr,radeon9700,win xp pro

drivers: nforce 2.45,dx 9.0b,radeon omega 2474a (hacked catalyst3.6 driver. has worked fine with every game)

open gl settings: anti-aliasing 4x, anisotropic filtering 16x, vsync off

and configs:

===GPU===
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.74
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9700 Prototype x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x960 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: on

Textures:
- B8G8R8A8
- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

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

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

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00010401]
->Adjust framebuffer access
->Fake sub. blending/FSAA
->Mixed software FB access

I have tried some other settings but nothing seems to help.

===SPU===
Eternal SPU Plugin 1.41

Device: DirectSound
Buffer size: 64
Audio out method: Thread
Special game fix: Update before accessing register

Everything else is off. SPU IRQ hack is off.

---
Sorry for my crappy english and thanks for your time.

[Andrew Hruska]

Try the new Catalyst 3.7. it might help.

Also, you have a "RADEON 9700 Prototype" ? you must be special or your drivers are weird.

Try lowering the offscreen drawing or just turn off the swirlys

[vuuDi]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hruska

Try lowering the offscreen drawing or just turn off the swirlys

I have tried lowering offscreen drawing but the start of battles are still slow. Also I noticed that sound lags a little during battles. I guess my problem has nothing to do with the swirl effect.

Btw, how can I turn them "completely off"? Changing offscreen drawing from 4 to 3 disables the effect somewhat.

Originally Posted by Andrew Hruska

Try the new Catalyst 3.7. it might help.

Also, you have a "RADEON 9700 Prototype" ? you must be special or your drivers are weird.

What's so weird about my drivers? Omega has better image quality but its maybe a little slower than ATI's own drivers. Since my radeon is tweaked from 9700np to 9700pro, omega is better choice. Check out www.omegacorner.com if you are interested.

Oh well, might as well try the new catalyst.

[Kane]

Have you tried running from an ISO?
Have you tried enabling hte ATi framebuffer fix?

[vuuDi]

Originally Posted by Lord Kane

Have you tried running from an ISO?
Have you tried enabling hte ATi framebuffer fix?

Did you read my post? Yes I'm running the game from an image (.bin). Whats this hte ati framebuffer fix? You mean mixed software FB access? Tried that one. Check my gamefixes above.

[Kane]

My bad for skimming the post....
How about the D3D plugin?
Is your HDD fragged?

[vuuDi]

D3D seems to have the same problem. HDD is fine.
New catalyst didn't help either.

[didamangi]

How about changing the:

Framebuffer texture to 2
Framebuffer access to 3

And did you try the game without using AA?

[vuuDi]

Originally Posted by didamangi

How about changing the:

Framebuffer texture to 2
Framebuffer access to 3

And did you try the game without using AA?

These settings make the game even slower. Disabling AA didn't help.

[Kane]

What about running in 640x480 with FSAA on max?

[fivefeet8]

Try changing your FB texture to 3. Hardware+software. ATi Radeon cards are slower with FB effects than Nvidia's. Your resolution is probably making it worse.

[cloudvii]

hi just turn the frame skipping on and the speed will improve .

[vuuDi]

Now that I have played the game a little longer seems like its not only battles which are lagging, the game runs quite slowly.

I must say that my original settings work best from all what you guys have suggested. Raising FPS limit to 70~ speeds up the game (even swirlys work some what) but ofcourse its not playable.

Btw, I just tried FF9 with ePSXe and it runs really nicely

[Titus03]

Please, test Pete's OpenGL2-plugins and run with ePSXe 1.5.2 if you still have slowdowns with resultscreen. 1.6.0 is slower with FFVII.

[cloudvii]

hey have u tried what i've told u ?

[Devil N]

FF7's battle swirls are VERY fillrate intensive, they can even hog a Radeon 9700. When you turn on FSAA, it only gets worse, since more fillrate is needed in that case.

I've got a Geforce 4 Ti4600 myself, and every game that works in ePSXe runs at full speed on my computer at 1152x864x32 (without FSAA), but the battle swirls in FF7 are the only exception. When I set the resolution to 800x600x32, then the swirls go at full speed.

So the choice is to either turn off swirls, turn down your resolution, or just bite the bullet and live with it.

[vuuDi]

Originally Posted by cloudvii13003

hey have u tried what i've told u ?

Yes i have.

Originally Posted by Devil N

So the choice is to either turn off swirls, turn down your resolution, or just bite the bullet and live with it.

As i already said, its not only the swirls slowing down. music, movies etc also lag sometimes. And none of those help.

[fivefeet8]

Originally Posted by Devil N

FF7's battle swirls are VERY fillrate intensive, they can even hog a Radeon 9700. When you turn on FSAA, it only gets worse, since more fillrate is needed in that case.

I've got a Geforce 4 Ti4600 myself, and every game that works in ePSXe runs at full speed on my computer at 1152x864x32 (without FSAA), but the battle swirls in FF7 are the only exception. When I set the resolution to 800x600x32, then the swirls go at full speed.

So the choice is to either turn off swirls, turn down your resolution, or just bite the bullet and live with it.

Actually, they are only fillrate intensive with FSAA enabled. Current video cards have more than enough fillrate for the effects. It's the Framebuffer read/writes speed that affect those effects. Radeon cards are known to have slower framebuffer reads than Nvidia cards. A geforce4ti card has a 2 to 3 times faster framebuffer read speed than radeons. That's why petes has included the framebuffer fixes for Radeons. It uses software fb effects when needed.

On my Fx5900u, I'm getting full speed Framebuffer effects with 8xS FSAA at >1024x768 resolutions.

[cloudvii]

can i ask why doesn't ff7 pc have the same problem?

[Kane]

Because the swirls are done differently on FF7 PC. PP7 PSX was designed for PSX hardware, where framebuffer intesive siuations are acceptable. FF7 PC took a different route as framebuffer access is so slow.