GSdx

[toyopsp]

perhaps the only thing being updated with the latest gsdx svns is the software rendering? I cant notice any speed difference in dx10 hardware mode between the latest svns and the official 1.7, some games are even slower with svn 759. at first, i thought svn 759 fixed a lot of games then i switched back to 1.7 and to my surprise, every game that ive tested that had an issue/problems/bugs/errors before are still fixed (eg. dark cloud 2, sotc, bully, xenosaga ep. 3 among others)

[John Aiton]

Originally Posted by toyopsp

perhaps the only thing being updated with the latest gsdx svns is the software rendering? I cant notice any speed difference in dx10 hardware mode between the latest svns and the official 1.7, some games are even slower with svn 759. at first, i thought svn 759 fixed a lot of games then i switched back to 1.7 and to my surprise, every game that ive tested that had an issue/problems/bugs/errors before are still fixed (eg. dark cloud 2, sotc, bully, xenosaga ep. 3 among others)

wrong, play suikoden 5 with a new svn and you'll notice many fixed errors over 1.7

[Mkilbride2588]

I believe I read somewhere that Gabest eventually wants to off-load all the work onto the CPU entirely, perhaps that is why he is working on Software mode.

[shuffle2]

well i for one vote for sticking with offloading to vid card over loading the cpu with more stuff (in addition to 2 pcsx2 core threads). It'll be nice when we all have quad/octo cores...but until then.... :'(
only time will tell though; so just chill out with the speculation, and get back to testing/enjoying games
[/whip]

[makotech222]

why would he want to load it onto the cpu? the vid card barely has anything to do in the first place, and the cpu is already busy emulating the game.

[gamersat678]

If anything the GPU needs to do more work and eliminate some work the cpu has to do. So far Gabest has done very well in that department.

[Proxy1]

You always want to make use of every piece of processing power available. It makes absolutely no sense to dump everything onto the CPU.

[cottonvibes]

It DOES make sense to load it onto the CPU for the future.

when CPU's are powerful enough to run everything all from the CPU, then the Software mode will be useful.

certain in-compatibilities with hardware of the future would be solved by using software mode.

for instance, say the graphic's cards 2 years from now have errors when rendering DX9.
then you can just use software mode, which would work perfectly.


And I also remember hearing something about Gabest wanting to focus on Software mode a while back...

[Mkilbride2588]

Yes, as Cottonvibes said, alot of advantages are in Software mode, compatibility mainly.

Ever wonder why certain games look better in Software? Because our current GPU's don't have all the parts required to run some games correctly(Refraction told me about this when he said why DX10 helps fix Graphical Errors)

With Software(CPU) Rendering, it emulates the GFX portion of the PS2 also, therefore pretty much maximum compatibility, albiet, alot more stress on the CPU, but eventually, let's hope it's not an issue.

I'm sure there will be alot of other GFX plugins eventually, GSdx just is going this route.

[gamersat678]

In the long run that would make sense. But for CPUS to emulate both parts right now and as of the next few years, it would be near impossible. Though, I'm glad software mode is being worked on but I believe maximum utilization of the GPU would be the best thing to do as of now. But I'm not Gabest so my opinion doesn't matter anyways. Keep chugging out the revisions Gabest.

[illy07]

please tell me a graphics configuration that will work good for me .....intel core duo E2160 2.07 ghz (i have maked a little overclock) ;2gb RAM ;graphics : ATI RADEON HD 2600/512mb ;windows xp sp3 ............

[AndreaB]

Current GPU ( 8000 series and newer from nvidia ) are going to be more powerfull than cpu and very versatile.
Also Nvida has developed CUDA a language to run C code directly on the GPU.

Current top level video card uses more power than a CPU and are more powerfull and this difference is going to grow.

The only advantage of software rendering is the easy way of getting a correct emulation. I don't think that current video cards are missing part to emulate ps2 correctly, simply they don't look similar and so emulation is difficult.

[Mkilbride2588]

No, current cards can't emulate certain PS2 effects, so ultimately, Software rendering is the only way to get truely 100% correct emulation.

The advantages of CUDA and PCSX2 have been discussed, and found not to be worth anything.

Yes, Software rendering is not faster than using a GPU, this we already know and have said again and again, but it runs games more correctly, which is why Gabest is doing this.

Think of it like this..

ZeroGS attempts to dump it all on the GPU, and look at it...(Obviously, for weak CPU's, but strong GPU's, ZeroGS would be faster, but it's still ughleh as hell, it'll catch up eventually though, but it'll never have perfect rendering if it only uses the GPU to render)

GSdx is going for correct emulation, not speed.

[GothicIII]

If we just can use the CPU-Power for emulation, then we have to wait...

There are 2 keys, to get full speed:

-Octa-Cores
-new SSE- or SSSE-instructions

I don't think, we can get above 3Ghz of CPU Power (with octas stable)...

[NexXxus]

wait again?

i think the problem isn't actually the hardware, its more the API (directX, etc..)
If we can use the hardware more efficient to emulate the GS then it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
Like blueshogun96 said, he has more opportunities with OpenGL instead DirectX to emulate the nv2x.

The rest of Windows is maybe limiting the access to the hardware too, so Linux would be an option to do something whats not directly possible with windows.


plz knock on my head if i told bull****

[rama2]

Ehm, zerogs is often bad looking 'cause its still buggy. It has nothing to do with how many
of the GS's effects can or can't be run on hardware. (I'm sure the few effects the gs does are possible in hardware).

Software rendering is more accurate though, usually pixel accurate. And thats why
certain things will work right away, which otherwise would need some more coding on a hardware renderer.

Btw, I'm sure you guys noticed the multithread option in gsdx svns recently.
Some quadcore users might already get fully playable speed with that one

[gabest]

Just a few remarks to keep speculations closer to reality :P

The main problem of the sw renderer is the low fill rate. I've just upgraded to e8400 and at 3ghz (and with a few new sse4 instructions) normal 3d games like squaresoft's run between 30-50 fps, since they don't use any depth buffer effects or fullscreen postprocessing or anything that would move around large number of pixels multiple times. Intel's next "sse" upgrade called avx will probably double the fill rate with 256 bit registers. (around 2011 :P) And btw, if the d3d renderer didn't skip those insane number of drawings what makes the sw renderer slow, it would probably suffer too, even if it could correctly emulate those effects, which is not the case yet.

Multithreaded rendering is about drawing alternating scanlines with different cores, boosts large sprite drawings but not complex 3d meshes where only a few pixel is visible from hundreds of triangles, so that is more likely to speed up games with heavy post processing or 2d. Since I don't have a quad myself, I can only test it by replaying gs files on two cores, the improvement is usually 25-50% in ideal cases.

[AndreaB]

so even the 128 pipelines of the g92 cores at 700Mhz aren't fast enough?

My hint at cuda was not for pcsx2, but to say that those cores are highly flexible unlike the older generation ( where texture units were only for textures and vertex processor for the shaders ).
we should also think that a d3d renderer must be generic or it will not work on all cards

[dantes]

wowww gabest friend i´m very happy because you are here, is very hard this thread about number of pixels multiple times, but is very stranger that intell core2duo has problems with that, core2duo has 1333mhz bus ss3,and special architecture supports and you can to has 4gb memory ddr2 and nvidia geforce 512mb, i can´t believe that ps2 is so hard to emulate with this, well is possible a double graphics out for to cover more graphics using 512mb ram ddr2 something like software mode and hardware at same time?micorsoft is very stranger because, this problems should not have the developers in graphics out in this year 2008, gabest good luck

[Dragonheart.by]

Did you understand what you just said?