Games run slower all of a sudden

[Cap'n Fultz]

Hiya !
First of all, I apologize *if* this is a problem that has been talked about before, I didn't find more posts about this though. I'd appreciate being sent to the proper post for this if that's the case.

But now to the main problem:

I was playing Castlevania (Dracula X Chronicles, for the original games if that's any important) and beat about ~half the game without any problems whatsoever.
I then closed the emulator and went back to it later in the day where I noticed that the game is running at an incredibly slow speed without me changing any of the settings. I saw that my PPSSPP version was outdated and proceeded to download the newest version where everything seemed alright except for when I go to save rooms where the game still tends to run at an incredibly slow speed.

Again, I didn't change any of the settings. I later proceeded to mess around with Frameskip and a few more options ( all without being successful, unfortunately ).

I doubt that it had something to do with dust clogging up the fans of my Laptop since I was able to play it incredibly smoothly at the day it happened, until the emulator decided to, well, not run as smooth.

Also my Laptop isn't the strongest one due to its age ( ...2 gigs of ram...), but, sorry that I repeat myself, it was able to run everything smoothly so far.

Is this a problem that anyone here has experienced before and that someone has a solution to ?

[[Unknown]]

It could be that your video card driver was updated. I would suggest checking if there are further updates.

What video card does your laptop have?

You could see if you're able to change settings between Vulkan and OpenGL - it might help.

-[Unknown]

[TkSilver]

While it is possible for computer hardware to slowdown over time due to physical reasons (mainly head because your cooling is clogged with dust being the most common), this tends to not be something that "suddenly" happens. Hard drive failure can be "sudden" (well there is usually warning or it got dropped), but that would usually effect more then just a single program.

Software changes are often the cause of sudden performance loss so...
1. Did you update anything between it working fast and when it slowed down?
2. Did you install anything ""?
3. Did you visit any shady sites ""? If you did when is the last time you ran a good virus scan? (I recommend MalwareBytes for manual scanning)

[Cap'n Fultz]

Heyo !!

Thanks for the fast replies, I appreciate it.

Now to the suggestions:
"What video card does your laptop have?"
My Laptop uses the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600. I checked for updates, found nothing.

"You could see if you're able to change settings between Vulkan and OpenGL"
I'm afraid I have no idea where to find Vulkan in the settings. I researched a bit and found out that it's in a special build or something (?) and I was linked to a website that looked a bit shady to be honest.

"Did you update anything between it working fast and when it slowed down?"
Absolutely not.

"Did you install anything ?"
Also nope.

"Did you visit any shady sites ? If you did when is the last time you ran a good virus scan?"
I rarely go to those kind of websites, and the last time I ran a virus scan was today !
Thankfully, nothing was found.

I messed with an option or two, without anything getting better about this situation. I also tried setting PPSSPP to default just to make sure that I really didn't mess with any option without noticing. Still nothing though.

( Also as a little sidenote: The day this first happened was when I stopped playing, left my Laptop on and came back two hours later. Nothing was done with my Laptop during those two hours. )

Thanks for replying though.
Cheers !!

[[Unknown]]

Very strange. I know there have been issues with some ATI cards.

Assuming you're using a recent PPSSPP build from here:
https://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/

Or the latest stable version - v1.6.3 (but the latest build may work better, actually...), then you'll see Vulkan in the graphics options under "Backend" if your video driver supports it. But that card is probably too old - you might try Direct3D 11 or Direct3D 9, though.

If there were no software updates, that's very strange. The only thing that I can possibly imagine causing it to change after being great for a while is - we keep track of what types of graphics the game uses, and try to "precache" some things to make it faster. Maybe this is somehow causing issues for you.

To explore that, check the "memstick" folder inside PPSSPP's folder, and PSP under that. If that doesn't exist, look for "PSP" under My Documents instead.

Inside PSP (which ever place you find it), there should be a "SYSTEM" folder, and then a "CACHE" folder inside that. Delete everything inside the CACHE folder while PPSSPP is closed, and then start it back up.

If this does help, that would be very interesting. I don't really expect it to, but it's the only thing I can think of that would change performance after playing through half a game.

-[Unknown]

[Tabris666]

(09-11-2018 03:57 PM)Capn Fultz Wrote:  Heyo !!

Thanks for the fast replies, I appreciate it.

Now to the suggestions:
"What video card does your laptop have?"
My Laptop uses the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600. I checked for updates, found nothing.

"You could see if you're able to change settings between Vulkan and OpenGL"
I'm afraid I have no idea where to find Vulkan in the settings. I researched a bit and found out that it's in a special build or something (?) and I was linked to a website that looked a bit shady to be honest.

"Did you update anything between it working fast and when it slowed down?"
Absolutely not.

"Did you install anything ?"
Also nope.

"Did you visit any shady sites ? If you did when is the last time you ran a good virus scan?"
I rarely go to those kind of websites, and the last time I ran a virus scan was today !
Thankfully, nothing was found.

I messed with an option or two, without anything getting better about this situation. I also tried setting PPSSPP to default just to make sure that I really didn't mess with any option without noticing. Still nothing though.

( Also as a little sidenote: The day this first happened was when I stopped playing, left my Laptop on and came back two hours later. Nothing was done with my Laptop during those two hours. )

Thanks for replying though.
Cheers !!

Vulkan is a new api we could say is an updated version for opengl (since they work kinda similar in windows) you need to get the runtime from the official site pof lunarg that is only if you want to use vulkan but in windows opengl and vulkan had almost the same performance and they are better then directx11 (kinda useless to include an api that doesnt have a runtime and you are forced to download the needed dlls from external sites since d3dcompiler_47.dll is only available on windows 10 that dll works fine on windows 7 and 8 but is unavailable from microsoft since directx11 doesnt a runtime update and is weird since directx9 had updates for around 9 years)

PPSSPP is working slow and having lots of problems is the latest version,weird thing is that olders version that worked fine on my PC now they dont work with the error "memory base pointer not found" (or similar) and for some weird reason they get updated or force me to update (the exit button gets overlapped by the update button so you press it without knowing) and the weirdest of all is i removed the check for updates option and still tries to update.

My advise is use older version and stick to it since latest version are barelly functional (most of my games dont work at all and i have a lot and they worked fine in the past but now they are a mess some go ingame others are playable but they delete saves and some games have new game + but need to save and restart the emulator sadly due to that error the game becomes unplayable and save states are a big no!! since games have a proper native save so what is the point with snapshot save none at all they are rather willing to break all native saves and keep the snapshot save instead of keeping the native saves working and remove everything related to snapshot saves (since 3d games and 2.5 games have problems with that feature as proven by demul developers,pcsx2 developers,dolphin developers )