Poor game performance on PS2 and Gamecube

[Davidoptical1977]

Hi all,

I'm having some real slowdown when playing most PS2 games and some Gamecube games in Launchbox, sound and image stutters and freezes at points. PC can easily play up to date steam games and Playnite games with no issues.  I've tried looking through a bunch of really helpful threads on here, but after trying all the suggested fixes, still no joy. I'm running  Launchbox via an external 5TB hard drive on a windows 10 machine with 32GB ram and a Nvidia GeForce 1030 graphics card. All drivers etc up to date, VSYNCH turned off and refresh rate at 60htz. Really not sure what else to try? 

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

[neil9000]

6 minutes ago, Davidoptical1977 said:

Hi all,

I'm having some real slowdown when playing most PS2 games and some Gamecube games in Launchbox, sound and image stutters and freezes at points. PC can easily play up to date steam games and Playnite games with no issues.  I've tried looking through a bunch of really helpful threads on here, but after trying all the suggested fixes, still no joy. I'm running  Launchbox via an external 5TB hard drive on a windows 10 machine with 32GB ram and a Nvidia GeForce 1030 graphics card. All drivers etc up to date, VSYNCH turned off and refresh rate at 60htz. Really not sure what else to try? 

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

What resolution are you trying to run PS2 and Gamecube at?

 

[Davidoptical1977]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the reply, its running at 1080 at the moment, I've tried running it on various settings and no improvement. Does only seem to happen on some games (Burnout 3 for example has no sky and lags, likewise F_zero GX, but Mario sunshine runs almost perfectly?!)

[C-Beats]

I feel the need to make the following clear based on your statement. LaunchBox (or even Playnite for that matter) are NOT playing your games. They are opening the application that does. Given the systems you've named I also feel it's best to make sure you're using the correct emulators. Neither should be ran via RetroArch and should be played with the standalone emulators. GameCube runs off of Dolphin and PS2 off of PCSX2. The RA cores for those systems are garbage and should NEVER be used to emulate those systems.

[neil9000]

20 minutes ago, Davidoptical1977 said:

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the reply, its running at 1080 at the moment, I've tried running it on various settings and no improvement. Does only seem to happen on some games (Burnout 3 for example has no sky and lags, likewise F_zero GX, but Mario sunshine runs almost perfectly?!)

OK, well i had a feeling you were going to say that, so here is the bad news, your GT 1030 is not powerful enough to run those games at 1080p. Gamecube will mostly work at 1080p, but some specific games absolutely will not, F-Zero as you have discovered is one, the Rogue Squadron games would also be others, you would have to drop to 720p, possibly lower depending on what else system wise your GPU is doing at the same time. As for pcsx2, that needs even more power than dolphin does, so same deal there really. As for Burnout 3 specifically, if you are seeing the black sky issue then you are using a old version of the emulator and you need to update to a 1,7 era build, unless god forbid you are using retroarch for dolphin and pcsx2, if that is the case thats a mistake and you should use the standalone emulators for these systems.

[Davidoptical1977]

9 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

OK, well i had a feeling you were going to say that, so here is the bad news, your GT 1030 is not powerful enough to run those games at 1080p. Gamecube will mostly work at 1080p, but some specific games absolutely will not, F-Zero as you have discovered is one, the Rogue Squadron games would also be others, you would have to drop to 720p, possibly lower depending on what else system wise your GPU is doing at the same time. As for pcsx2, that needs even more power than dolphin does, so same deal there really. As for Burnout 3 specifically, if you are seeing the black sky issue then you are using a old version of the emulator and you need to update to a 1,7 era build, unless god forbid you are using retroarch for dolphin and pcsx2, if that is the case thats a mistake and you should use the standalone emulators for these systems.

Hi Neil,

Thanks for this, I'll try dropping to 720p, silly question: is it the Nvidia settings or the PC settings where id do this, I think I have the option to change both! (yep, I'm very new to this!) 

Yes, definitely running via dolphin and pcsx2 not retroarch!

Another dumb question, I've updated LB to the newest version, do i need to update pcsx2 separately to LB and if so, how? Sorry to be a pain and thanks for your help.

[Davidoptical1977]

Hi C-Beats, thanks for your reply.

Yes, definitely running through the correct emulators, I'll try the suggestions Neil made above and see how it goes.

Thanks again.  

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, Davidoptical1977 said:

do i need to update pcsx2 separately

Yes, as of right now LaunchBox has no way to see that your emulator needs updated. I believe both emulators in question have a "check for updates" feature, but you can just go to their website and grab the latest.

1 hour ago, Davidoptical1977 said:

s it the Nvidia settings or the PC settings where id do this

It's a setting in the emulator

[Davidoptical1977]

15 hours ago, C-Beats said:

Yes, as of right now LaunchBox has no way to see that your emulator needs updated. I believe both emulators in question have a "check for updates" feature, but you can just go to their website and grab the latest.

It's a setting in the emulator

Thanks for that, Dolphin all updated, but pcsx doesn't give you an option to, so trying to get that the hard way (without success so far!) 

Thanks again for your help, really appreciate it.

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, Davidoptical1977 said:

Thanks for that, Dolphin all updated, but pcsx doesn't give you an option to, so trying to get that the hard way (without success so far!) 

Thanks again for your help, really appreciate it.

You want the latest nightly.

 

[Davidoptical1977]

Hi Neil,

 

Thanks for that, ive managed to download and extract it but then im stuck after clicking the pcsx2 set up, it wants me to add bios files (mine are all on a hyperspin hard drive) ive tried copy and pasting where the bios file is on my drive, but it says no bios files in there? I was hoping it would be a simple 'click to update' kinda deal, but its looking like its wayyyy beyond my pay grade! I dont want to end up wiping/corrupting my current set up! Am i able to just copy and past the new pcsx2 exe file into the drive replacing the older version, or will this essentially kill the drive?