Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[aweigh]

there is still a bit of stuttering the first time you encounter a new Shader, but once it's cache'd it's smooth. Compared to builds from even a few weeks ago the difference is night and fucking day, though.

 

[Modron]

there is still a bit of stuttering the first time you encounter a new Shader, but once it's cache'd it's smooth. Compared to builds from even a few weeks ago the difference is night and fucking day, though.

So what kind of a rig do you need to get 25 fps in persona 5?

 

[aweigh]

i'm running intel i5 7500 (quad-core)
8gb of slowest possible ram
ancient mechanical HDD
gtx 1050 gpu

 

[aweigh]

i tried out the windows 10 compression "xpress16k" on the rpcs3 folder and also on the persona 5 disc/install folder and i believe it smoothed out the cache loading a bit further more.

of course, could be placebo effect and/or i just coincidentally happened to play an area where there would not have been cache loading regardless... but i think it did help.

EDIT: it absolutely did help. 100%.

EDIT #2: HOLY SHIT did it help!

It probably has to do with the fact that all thouse thousands of shader files are small in size, so when compressed with xpress algorithm they go down to 1/3 of the size, making the constant reading/loading of the shader files much faster. at least on my HDD anyway.

i used xpress4k option, the fastest one (fastest as in the least compression on the files, so that it finishes faster because i get impatient).

 

[Hirato]

That reading only happens on game start - your GPU driver also has its own cache, which has the already compiled versions of those shaders.

I use OBS to record and stream - I have some things to attend to, so I'll post my settings for this in a few hours.

 

[Urthor]

Alright I take aweigh's word time to try this out with the ole ancient 2600k and see how far we get.

Edit: it runs, it also pushes my temps to 85... damn I was a fool to stick with stock fan

 

[Hirato]

I wouldn't expect you to get the same performance as aweigh - his processor has TSX which nets about +50% performance compared to processes (like my threadripper) that don't have it.


My OBS settings - I'd highly recommend you tweak them to suit your PC, mine works great on a threadripper, but won't work so great if you want to do 1440p, don't have 8 cores to spare, or want to do use a GPU encoder.
If you're just recording and not livestreaming, I'd obviously suggest increasing the bitrate about 8x, and maybe using a slightly faster encoding setting.

Settings

1440p is just my monitor's resolution

What a livestream looks like

note: this game is running in a virtual machine with only 8 of my 16 cores, and the encoding is also being done inside of this VM

 

[Urthor]

Well the temps issue was solved by good ole cleaning the shit out of my fan, but still getting around 15 FPS everywhere

Does resolution scaling improve performance? I can turn it down off 1440p but I don't know if that improves framerate at all, for normal non emulated games the window size is entirely GPU derived.

 

[Great Deceiver]

What game are you trying? Your processor is very old by now. Mine too (an i5 3570k), I get 25-30fps on Drakensang 3. These WIP emulators are all very CPU hungry. I also couldn't get good (locked 30) framerates on Cemu and Zelda BotW.

Time to go through the very painful process of paying through the nose to upgrade mobo/cpu/ram.

 

[Urthor]

Persona 5.

Upgrading considering nothing is bottlenecked, still, still seems inane though so :shrug:.

 

[aweigh]

i realized just now this is the emulation thread lewl

 

[spekkio]

BROS, encouraged by BRO @makabb ITT, I've decided to give 86box a spin.

Tested regular, unoptimized (slower) version, it works as described.
OFC you have to set up everything and install OS first (same way as in virtual machines like Virtual PC or VMWare).
But since 86box / PCem are emulators and not VMs (you need bios files for example), stuff like hardware acceleration should work, so you can launch games and play at full speed.
Newfags not familar with old PC hardware, DOS and Win9x can be a little bit lost, but oldfags should feel right at home:

Tomb Raider 1

Software mode:

3dfx Mode:

Incubation

Software mode:

3dfx Mode:

Speed seems fine (at least in 3dfx modes) even on my ancient rig:

No idea if 86box is actually faster than PCem, but it's supposed to be.

Verdict:

Cool beans, will add Win9x section to the OP next time I'm updating it.

86box

Bios files (September 2017)

PCem

Bios files (June 2016)

Turorial for PCem, 86box has slightly different UI

 

[aweigh]

Goddamn that's neat. Never even imagined there would be an emulator for Win98.

Pretty sure that would solve my Wiz Empire 1 woes. (2001 PC game, old as fuck d3d or dx8 or 7, i don't even know). Used to run for me on Win7 with compatibility set ti win98, but I changed GPUs from AMD to NVIDIA and guess what?

fucking modern NVIDIA drivers don't support whatever old DX Wiz Empire 1 uses, but AMD drivers did! I imagine running a Win98 emulator would solve that though.

 

[spekkio]

BROS, dem feels...

PROTIP: For DOS games, it's wise to exit Win9x to the DOS Mode (it was the same back in the day). More memory and stuff.

OFC there's DosBox for DOS games and you can run almost all old Win x86 games in Win x64, but still - great piece of software.

 

[aweigh]

it would be awesome if there was a fork/build that was click-and-play like console emulators, and what i mean by that is that the HDD/gpu/parts were already pre-configured and win98 already in there, with the only thing left to the user being possibly directing the thing towards bios files if necessary.

i don't ask this because i'm lazy, but rather because it's a tall order to recommend a game to a friend and have to tell them they need to set all that shit up in order to play it; much different than someone using a console emulator for example.

 

[spekkio]

OP has been updated with following info:

PC gaming from the 1980-1990 era (DOS / Win 3.x)

DosBox

Official releases
Unofficial builds
Daum SVN Builds (GUI, Quicksaves, V-Sync, Direct3D & OpenglHQ Output, Glide emulation, moar peripherals, MT-32 and more).

PC gaming from the 1990-2000 era (Win9x + DirectX 7.0 + Pentium MMX + VooDoo graphics)

86box

Regular and Optimized builds

Bios pack (September 2017)

Fork of PCem. One hardware profile, supposed to be faster than original.

PCem

Official releases

Bios pack (June 2016)

Multiple hardware profiles, supposed to be slower than 86box.

Turorial for old PCem, 86box and new Pcem have slightly different UI

Just be warned:

CPUs faster than Pentium 233 and AGP GPUs (Nvidia / ATI / AMD) aren't supported by PCem / 86box.
And games requiring DirectX 8 (tested Sacrfice) run / look like shit on those (Pentium 200 + VooDoo 2 weren't enough to enjoy such games in the past).

 

[Lutte]

CPUs faster than Pentium 233 and AGP GPUs (Nvidia / ATI / AMD) aren't supported by PCem / 86box.
And games requiring DirectX 8 (tested Sacrfice) run / look like shit on those (Pentium 200 + VooDoo 2 weren't enough to enjoy such games in the past).

It may not always work but the best solution for older pc games in general and not just voodoo era is to try wrappers. Less time wasting process to set up and better performance in general.
http://dege.freeweb.hu/ for glide games
https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag anything directx
VMs are really a last resort. When all else fails.

Wined3d is particularly wonderful for games from dx8 era that have bugs on windows 8 and 10.

 

[spekkio]

I covered wrappers in the "unofficial patches" thread. But you're right. IF an old game works in Win x64, it's better to use wrappers than emulators or VMs.

Dege for glide games

You misspelled nglide:

http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide



At least when it comes to pure glide support (dgvoodoo supports DX 1-7 and D3D 8 as well). Both are great wrappers.

 

[yes plz]

Is there a step-by-step guide for retards like myself for getting PS3 saves to work on RPCS3? I know how to use BruteForce and have decrypted the save, made it so that it works for any user, and RPCS3 is finding it fine (it shows up in the Save Manager), but upon loading the actual game the save is no where to be found. The Title/Serial ID for the game and save both match, too.

EDIT: Never mind. I am, indeed, retarded. The title/serial ID was actually wrong.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Persona 5.

Upgrading considering nothing is bottlenecked, still, still seems inane though so :shrug:.

I feel you. It's very hard for me to justify spending 700 USD to upgrade my cpu/mobo/memory when I can still run 90% of current games at 1440p 60fps.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. It reminds me a lot of A Link to the Past. Runs great on Citra.

 

[aweigh]

yeah that one is on my to-play list for sure. it's meant to be a sort-of-sequel to link to the past.

 

[Urthor]

Link Between worlds was fantastic on an actual 3DS

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

BROS, dem feels...

OFC there's DosBox for DOS games and you can run almost all old Win x86 games in Win x64, but still - great piece of software.

Could you try if Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate / Rites of War work on this? They were BITCH to run on XP.

 

[Siveon]

Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. It reminds me a lot of A Link to the Past.

Maybe because it's set in the same Hyrule/is a sort of sequel to it.