Irritating slowdown for Castelvania Symphony of the Night.

[Volte]

Alright, so here are my computer's specs.

Athlon AMD 64 2X 3800 running at 2.0 ghz
ATI Radeon x1800 512mb
2 gigs of ram
Windows XP

Now, see here's the thing that gets me. My old computer would run this game perfectly, and it was an inferior machine.

Here's the scope of my problem. If I find configuration that gets the sound running properly, the whole game will run at about 85-90% speed. If I get the game running smoothly, the sound will crackle irritatingly.

I'm using the following plugins:

Sound: Eternal SPU 1.41
Video: Pete's OpenGL2 Renderer

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: Radeon X1800 Series

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x1024 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 3
- Keep psx aspect ratio:
- No render-to-texture: 9%
]

- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- TexWin pixel shader: on
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 40.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 2
- Framebuffer effects: 2
- Framebuffer uploads: 1

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: 0/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: on
- Game fixes: off [00000000]

CD: Peops

Take the video settings with a grain of salt, really. NOTHING I've tried fixes the issue.

[jonc2006]

you should use pete's software plugin with that game because it is 2d. but as far as the settings you have posted go, you do realize you have the FPS limit set to 40, right? that would make the game run slower than what it should.

edit- one other thing, you should download and run amd's dual core optimizer, as your cpu might be causing some speed issues for you.

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Last edited by jonc2006; September 26th, 2008 at 01:34..

[Volte]

Originally Posted by jonc2006

you should use pete's software plugin with that game because it is 2d. but as far as the settings you have posted go, you do realize you have the FPS limit set to 40, right? that would make the game run slower than what it should.

A point well taken, friend. 40 is a number I got from someone online. What would you suggest, or do you suggest I use the automatic?

UPDATE:

I switched over to soft, after doing some research. Now I'm plagued with an interesting issue. The game now runs at varying speeds. Sometimes it will slow down briefly before speeding up faster than normal. Also, there is crackling in the sound, which also runs at the same varying speeds as the game.

Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.1.18
Author: Pete Bernert and the P.E.Op.S. team

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x1024 Fullscreen - [32 Bit]
Stretch mode: 7
Dither mode: 2

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

Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: on [00000000]

also, I just got your edit. I will give this optimizer a try.

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Last edited by Volte; September 26th, 2008 at 01:43..

[TheWarzone1]

for framerate: turn off the FPS limit and set it to auto-detect and see what that does

[Volte]

Well, that optimizer I downloaded made every difference in the world.

The game runs on a dime, with no discrepancies whatsoever. I wonder how if this will improve other games as well.

Thanks for your help, guys!

[jonc2006]

just so you know anyway, the limit for NTSC versions (what you probably have) should be 60FPS and for PAL it should be 50. setting the plugin limiter to auto can be fine as well however you should be aware that epsxe 1.7.0 has an internal framerate limiter that can be toggled on/off with the F4 key. it can conflict with the plugin limiter if they are both being used at the same time, so only use one of them. i find the internal limiter to be more accurate so i suggest using that one but if you feel the plugin limiter is good enough then that can work fine too.

__________________

Antec 900/Antec Truepower Quattro 1000W/eVGA 780i SLI/Windows XP Media SP2 & Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1/Intel Core 2 Duo E8400@4.0GHz/Dual eVGA e-Geforce GTX280 1GB DDR3 SLI Enabled/Creative SB X-Fi XtremeGamer/Corsiar XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400 DDR2/Dual WD Caviar SE16 500GB 7200RPM HDDs

The Official jonc2006™ Emotion Chart.
Courtesy of PCXL-Fan after he tried to steal my identity on Steam because I am so awesome.
Official jonc2006™ Fan Club
Official jonc2006™ Trophy Collection