A few hints for improved gameplay experience on PC

[Azerino]

Hello all! I have been fiddling with this wonderful emulator for a while, and decided to share what I have learned from using it. Also, I wanted to thank the developers for this wonderful emulator, which really gave me nostalgia as I sold my PSP a couple of years ago.

Just for clarification, I'm not trying to take away from the great stickies in this forum. If you're new to PPSSPP, go ahead and read those to get yourself introduced to the emulator. However, I would like to go a bit in-depth to some options of this emulator and tell you what I have discovered.

Just for reference, here are my computer specifications:

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU: AMD Athlon II P320 Dual-Core Processor 2.10 GHz (Laptop)
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 4500 Series
Memory: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR2 RAM
HD: 7200RPM 320GB

As you can see, I haven't got a killer gaming rig. I can still run my favorite games just fine. Your mileage may wary, as different games require different amounts of computing power.

But let's begin optimizing our gameplay experience.

Foreword: I'm not a "professional" at computer-related stuff. I simply have a passion for gaming and I want the most out of my games. That's why I have gone to lengths in trying to maximize my gaming experience on this emulator, as I really loved some PSP games.

The recommendations and suggestions listed here are derived from my own experience only. I haven't gone through every game to test my theories, so you may see different results. However, I do recommend reading these hints and trying them out - perhaps they can help you.

1. Fixing choppy sound
The most recurring issue I have had with this emulator is crackly sound. To my understanding, getting the sound to work has been quite a challenge for the developers, and the current implementation still needs some fine-tuning. Regardless, I'm impressed by how well the emulator supports most games.

The problem I have had with sound, is that it usually works, but not perfectly. In Patapon games and Disgaea 2, for example - the sound would work but I could hear a slight but continous crackle when the BGM was playing.

In Disgaea 2, opening certain menus within the game would cause the background music to distort and crackle like a jackhammer.

This can fixed quite easily. In your PPSSPP settings, navigate to SYSTEM, and set your CPU Speed to values between 222-1000 MHz. You should not have it set to 0 (auto), as the emulator doesn't quite know whats good for you.

I found out, that for Patapon, a setting of 222 MHz was sufficient for my PC, but in Disgaea 2 - the problems remained. When I cranked the speed to 800 MHz, I got a noticeable result and the game no longer freaked out when opening those certain menus.

Just for safety, I maxed out the CPU Speed at 1000 MHz. I would recommend this setting in case your computer and game can handle it.

YOU HAVE TO QUIT THE GAME YOU'RE EMULATING AND RESTART IN ORDER FOR CPU SPEED CHANGES TO TAKE EFFECT! DO NOT BE FOOLED BY IT BEING AVAILABLE FOR TWEAKING IN-GAME!

The experimental atomic audio locks feature has only made my sound problems go from bad to worse, so at this point I wouldn't recommend enabling it.

The same goes for Sound speed hack and Low latency audio. However, if you're playing a musically intensive game like Patapon, for example, turning on low latency audio is a must. If your PC can handle it, then go for it, keeping in mind the other things mentioned here.

However, the important thing to note here, is that CPU Speed can marginally affect your gameplay experience, and you should definitely raise the speed if you're having similar problems.

2. Random crashes on ATI cards
There's apparently a compatibility issue with PPSSPP and newer AMD drivers for legacy video cards. Since I have a old video card, I have been suffering from these issues. However, this issue has been noted and a workaround does exist - a older video card driver.

For more details, check the sticky thread on top of this forum. I cannot stress what a life saver that thread was for me, so I'm throwing a mention about it here aswell. Check it out if you have a older ATI video card!

After downgrading my graphics driver to 11.11a, I haven't had a single crash.

Of course the emulator may still crash for other reasons, and if you are using a newer graphics card or a NVIDIA card, this thing won't affect you.

3. Optimizing demanding games
Some games are packed with action and improved PSP graphics, so they will demand a higher amount of resources.

In cases where a game is lagging, and you wan't to squeeze out maximum performance without losing much image quality, pay attention to these options.

Change Rendering Mode to Non-buffered Rendering
This is a setting which gives out a huge performance boost. It might not work with all games, as some require buffered rendering to be on. Some games also have very specific requirements as to which rendering mode to use. Search the forums for these exceptions, I won't go into them. Note however, that the "Read Framebuffers to Memory (CPU)" and "Read Framebufers to Memory (GPU)" options are way more demanding than the simple Buffered Rendering. And personally, I haven't found a visual difference between the three in my games.

Rendering resolution and upscaling textures above 2x
I would never recommend rendering or upscaling above 2x, simply because the overall visual improvement is so marginal that it doesn't warrant the performance cost. I would leave the rendering resolution at 2x, same for the upscale.

If the game cannot warrant both of these options, then turning off Upscaled textures might be enough to resolve your FPS issues. I would prioritize turning it off first, as it causes a huge performance hit.

For the Upscale type, I have left it at the default xBRZ. It seems to offer the best quality/performance ratio.

If you see graphical glitches, you should also enable Deposterize and see if it resolves them. I personally keep Deposterize always on when I have the Upscale enabled. In my tests it doesn't seem to cause a huge performance hit. If your PC and game can warrant the upscaling, deposterize shouldn't really cause much of a difference in terms of performance.

4. Super Advanced & Confusing 100% Speed Tweak
When I was playing Disgaea 1, I noticed that when VSync was on, my speed capped at 99.6%. This caused the audio to crackle ever so slightly. I think I read somewhere that the audio crackles and problems are mostly related to the game not running at 100% speed, as this decreases the interval in which the emulator processes new audio information. When the emulator is running at less than 100, it lags behind of where it should be. (This is my theory, not official information.)

So what I did was I set the Alternative Speed to 100% in the Graphics menu. Then in-game I just toggle the alternative speed mode on and BANG - constant 100% speed.

Why it does this? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense but it worked for me. On a side-note, doing this also decreased my input-lag and made the game feel more responsive.

If you want to find out more about the individual options, check the stickied guides that you can find from this forum. They are a great reference and helped me get started. For most tweaking, though - these are all the options you need.

I would hope that someone found some things from this post useful, as it took countless of hours to figure out why my audio wasn't playing back perfectly. I also wasted a lot of time trying to figure out a workaround from my broken ATI drivers.

Well - I'm loggin' off for now. Have a great day, everyone!