Final Fantasy IX: FMV Lag

[Panaru]

Hey everyone, new to this forum and to psx emulation period so please, bear with me. Anyway, the game seems to run just fine except that it hangs unbearably in the opening sequence before even hitting "New Game" and on all other cutscenes for that matter. Any ideas as to what can resolve this? I'm using the P.E. Op.S. Soft Driver 1.17 if that helps any at all.

[TheMaister]

Can you give more detailed information on your pc and which plugins you are using?
Are you running from CD or ISO?

[Panaru]

PC Info: 1.6 ghz processor, 1 gig of ram, uhm.. well, frankly my graphics card sucks. Its an intel extreme graphics; one of those worthless integrated jobs that are irreplaceable.

Plugins: Video - P.E. Op.S Soft Driver 1.17
Sound - P.E. Op.S DSound Audio Driver 1.9
Cdrom - ePSXe CDR WNT/W2K core 1.5.2.

On the video plugin, I've got it running fullscreen mode at 1280 x 800, 60 Hz. 32 Bit on the color depth.

Dithering: Always dither g-shaded polygons

Using FPS limit and having it auto detect the FPS

Using System memory, and lastly, I have the Lazy screen updates thing activated under Special Game Fixes.

I turned of the "Use PC fps calculation" because Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VIII ran WAY too fast when it was on.

And, I'm using a CD, but this can be remedied if you say that an ISO is the only way to get it to work better.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else to add to that information, but if you have anything specific you need to know (Like my sound plugin settings maybe?), I'll be happy to reply.

Oh yeah, thanks for responding by the way.

[hushypushy]

1280x800? o_O

try setting it to like 640x480, and the nice preset...definitely turn off the special game fixes though.

anyway you might wanna try switching emulators.....and yeah an ISO would definitely improve performance.

been here? http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65247

[emusnicker]

FF9's cutscenes seem to be very processor intensive, perhaps because of the heavy use of XA sound?!

Anyways, I would recommend turning down the resolution some (high resolutions with a software plugin are not going to run smoothly unless you have an insanely fast processor) and creating an ISO. You might also try Eternal SPU for sound.

[dbhankins]

Actually, you can have multiple video cards in your machine and disable the one you're not using. If it's Intel graphics, you might not have an AGP or PCI-E slot either. In that case the best graphics card you're likely to be able to get is an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI 128MB. I used to have one in my eMachines POS, at least it made playable Enter the Matrix and Doom3 (barely).


Dan

[Stevedroid]

Well before any of that, I would try using a CD plugin other than the ePSXe built in one.

Try Xeven's as it's the easiest to use and performance/compatibility seem to be fine for me.

[Lord Zedeck]

Originally Posted by dbhankins

In that case the best graphics card you're likely to be able to get is an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI 128MB.

Actually, the top three cards for general PCI are probably the GeForce FX5600, GeForceFX 5500, then GeForce FX 5700LE (about in that order). ATI's PCI cards aren't too great. Youre right about the 128MB models though. Those cards can't handle 256MB effectively enough to be worth it. I know you said that's the best he's likely to get and not the best, but the GeForce 5500 and 5700LE are pretty common if you look (the 5600 is rare).

Anyway, using software mode uses the processor instead of the GPU to do the work. Raising the resoltion to that over the standard 640 x 480 made it need much more area to cover. I'm surprised you're seeing fine gameplay if cutscenes are fine. Lowering the resolution should work and probably looks better anyway.

One last suggestion. Make an ISO and see what happens. CD-Rom spindown and access rates will give occasional freezes when using a disc.