User:DoctorMuerte/test1
WINDOWS GUIDE PROPOSAL
Usefull links for myself:
http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php?title=User:DoctorMuerte&action=edit
http://pcsx2.net/config-guide/official-english-pcsx2-configuration-guide.html
http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php/Setting_up_Windows_version
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Official-English-PCSX2-configuration-guide-v1-2-1
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-PCSX2-Wiki-collaboration-thread?pid=415385
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Collapsing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Collapsible_list
WORK IN PROGRESS!
Images are gonna be on different positions for better looking
Please read the discussion page
I'm gonna have to fit this somewere later on:
There are 3 tabs, Plugins, BIOS and Folders. Plugins tab of the Plugins/BIOS Selector: First off, you can uncheck the use default setting checkbox at the bottom and select a folder of your choice by clicking Browse. This is the folder from which PCSX2 loads its plugins. At the left you see which component each plugin emulates (GS, PAD, SPU2 etc), in the middle you have the plugin selection drop down, and at the right there is the Configure button which will open the configuration dialog for the respective plugin you have selected. Keep in mind that whenever you change the selected plugin, you will have to press the "Apply" button for the emulator to load the new plugin and make the Configure button available for it. Now onto the actual plugin configuring: |
PROGRESS SO FAR
I'm going to do this in 3 phases:
- Copy/pasting and adapting contents from the guide
- Adding further reading and its links
- General improving the visuals, changing placement for images, etc.
By now I'm at phase 1, and done until GSdx, second tip.
In this guide we will try to explain how to download, install and properly configure PCSX2 1.2.1 on a Windows environment, and also give some tips for running games. The latest version of the guide is to be found on the official forum.
You can also watch the video configuracion guide here. Part of this guide has been translated to many languages, you can find those translations here. The user avih made a shorter version of the official guide here
There is also a Linux and a Mac version of this guide.
Overview
PCSX2 is a Playstation 2 emulator capable of running commercial games. It's an open source proyect and runs on Windos, Mac and Linux. Like its predecessor project PCSX (a PlayStation emulator), is based on a PSEmu Pro spec plug-in architecture, separating several functions from the core emulator. PCSX2 requires a copy of the PS2 BIOS, which is not available for download from the developers, due to the copyright concerns and legal issues associated with it.
Prerequisites
Bios
You will need the BIOS file from your Playstation 2 console. This is not included with PCSX2 since it is a Sony copyright so you have to get it from your console. Visit the tools section on the PCSX2 site to find out how to do this.
Minimum requirements
These are the minimum system requirements to run PCSX2, bear in mind most games will be unplayable slow:
- CPU: Any that supports SSE2 (Pentium 4 and up, Athlon64 and up)
- GPU: Any that supports Pixel Shader model 2.0, except Nvidia FX series (broken SM2.0, too slow anyway)
- 512MB RAM (note Vista needs at least 2GB to run reliably)
Recomended requirements
These are the recommended system requirements to run PCSX2:
- Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) with the latest DirectX
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2 GHz or better OR i3/i5/i7 @ 2,8 GHz or better OR AMD Phenom II @ 3,2 GHz or better
- GPU: 8800gt or better (for Direct3D10 support)
- RAM: 1GB on Linux/Windows XP, 2GB or more on Vista / Windows 7
<+span style="color:red">Warning: Because of the nature of emulation, even if you meet the recommended requirements there will be games that will 'NOT' run at full speed, due to emulation bugs or other limitations. |
Getting PCSX2
You can get PCSX2 for Windows here. There are 3 versions available for download: standalone installer, web-installer and Windows binaries.
Standalone Installer
This will download the installer for the latest stable version of PCSX2. After opening it, you will be able to select the installation options.
On the next step, you will be asked to provide the location for PCSX2 to install, the image illustrates the defaul installation path:
After clicking the Install button, the emulator is going to be installed to the chosen location. The installer is also going to create the following folders (that can be set to a different location anytime you want) under the user's My Documents folder:
- bios: This is where you should store the bios file of your PS2, PCSX2 will look for it here by default.
- cheats: Cheats will be stored and read from here. These are .pnach files.
- inis: This folder is responsible to hold the configuration files for the emulator. You can make PSCX2 load different configurations for each game creating a shortcut to pcsx2.exe and using command line arguments.
- logs: Emulator logs are going to be stored here.
- snaps: Screenshots taken with the F8 key are stored into this folder.
- sstates: Savestates are stored here.
Tip:
Remember that savestates made with a certain version of PSCX2 won't be compatible with other versions of the emulator.
Save your game's progress on your memory card before updating PCSX2!.
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Web installer
The web installer follows the same procedure than the standalone installer, but it downloads the installation files after the user presses the Install button.
Windows binaries
This option download the folder containing the Windows binaries. Just unpack it at the desired location and run pscx2.exe. This option will not create Start menu entries or a desktop shortcut.
This is ideal if you want to keep the application portable. You will need 7-Zip to decompress the file and the Visual Studio 2013 redistributable for this version to work. Download it here.
The emulator is going to create the folders mentioned on Standalone Installer at the first run.
Running PCSX2 for the first time
PCSX2 has a first time configuration wizard to help you configure it easier so we'll first go through that. PCSX2 will automatically store all settings, memcards and new files generated in general in your Documents folder if you used the installers, or in the same folder pcsx2-r5875.exe is located at if you used the binary version.
In the first dropdown, simply select the language you want the program to be in.
In the second screen you will be able to choose which plugins you want to use. The default plugins are the ones with the higher compatibility and usually fastest too, so before changing them make sure you know what you're doing.
Here you can also specify a different folder for your plugins if you want, by unchecking the use default setting checkbox and selecting a folder of your choice by clicking Browse. Open In Explorer simply opens a file explorer window in the folder you have specified.
In the third screen, you will be prompted to select your BIOS image from the list. If you can't see anything on this list, you need to either copy your BIOS files in the folder seen below, or change that folder to point to where you have your BIOS image saved. For more information about the BIOS, check the BIOS configuration section of this guide. If you can't make a selection, you will not be able to use PCSX2. Click Finish to end the First Time Configuration Wizard.
This is the main GUI (Graphical User Interface) of PCSX2:
From here, you can change the settings or plugins used by PCSX2 as you see fit.
Plugin configuration
PCSX2 is a plugin oriented program. Your pcsx2.exe is the main processor that can emulate the real PS2 on the PC but it does not work alone. It needs a graphics plugin to display the game graphics and a sound plugin to play game sounds and music, and it also needs a pad plugin to allow you to play using your keyboard, mouse or gamepad. Moreover there may be more than one plugin of each type so you may choose which is better suited for a particular game. All plugins are stored (by default) in the plugins folder of your main PCSX2 folder. Some plugins like GSDX for example can be updated quite often so you may want to renew only this plugin (out of all plugins). In order to do it you'll need to download the updated version and extract it by using the archiver into your plugins folder. The changing of some settings (choosing your new plugin) may also be required.
We will start with configuring our plugins then we will move onto Core settings configuration.
Go to Config => Plugin/BIOS selector to select and configure the plugins PCSX2 will use.
You'll see a screen like this:
Graphics
First, you will want to check what version of pixel shaders and DirectX (on Windows) your graphic card supports. You can do that here.
For the time being you will be able to use 3 GS plugins:
- GSdx v0.1.16
- ZeroGS v0.97.1
- GSnull driver v0.1.0
GSdx v0.1.16 is a DirectX 9 and DirectX 10/11 plugin by Gabest which recently got greatly improved in both speed and image quality. It requires pixel shaders 2 and SSE2 to work and Vista/Windows 7/8 with a DirectX 10 compliant graphics card for the DirectX10/11 mode. ZeroGS is a very old plugin which has not been developed in years. A very small number of games works better with this plugin than with GSdx, you can try it as a last resort. GSnull is, as the name suggests, a null graphics plugin which will not output any kind of video. It is used for debugging purposes.
GSdx
Select GSdx v0.1.16 and press the Configure button.
Placeholder for GSdx screenhot, probably thmbnail
First of all, GSdx comes in 5 versions: SSE2, SSSE3, SSE4.1, AVX and AVX2.
Only IF your processor supports these instruction sets, use highest version you can, since it will be faster for you in this order from slowest to fastest:
- SSE2
- SSSE3
- SSE4.1
- AVX
- AVX2
The new AVX and AVX2 instructions give a minor speed up only with the software renderers of GSdx and not the hardware ones. Note: AMD users do NOT mistake SSE3 with SSSE3 (1 extra S) and SSE4A with SSE4.1, they are totally different and are NOT supported. In this case use the SSE2 flavor.
Tip: *SSE2 supporting CPUs: Check here *SSSE3 supporting CPUs: Check here *SSE4.1 supporting CPUs: Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn series (E7xxx,E8xxx and Q9xxx models), Intel Corei3, Intel Corei5, Intel Corei7, AMD Bulldozer/Bobcat *AVX supporting CPUs: Check here *AVX2 supporting CPUs: Check here You can also use CPU-Z to find out your processor's supported instruction sets. |
To use the DirectX10/11 mode, you will have to be running Windows Vista or Windows 7/8 with a DirectX10/11 compliant graphics card (check previous link). DirectX10 and DirectX11 modes of GSdx for the time being are exactly the same in both terms of speed and compatibility. The only difference is that you will only see the first if your graphics card supports up to DirectX10 and only the second if your graphics card supports up to DirectX11.
Adapter
Here you can select which graphics adapter GSdx will use.
Very useful for computers which have a dedicated graphics card and an onboard graphics chip, so the user can select the much faster dedicated graphics card explicitly.
Renderer
Here you can choose how the graphics will be rendered.
- By selecting "Direct3D9 (Hardware)", GSdx will use the Direct3D capabilities of your graphics card, boosting the emulation speed significantly.
- By selecting "Direct3D10/11 (Hardware)" (only selectable in Vista/Windows 7 with DX10/11 graphics card), GSdx will use its Direct3D10/11 mode which is usually the fastest mode and sometimes even more compatible as well. Highly recommended if your system supports it.
- By selecting "Direct3D9/10/11 (Software)", GSdx will use its built-in software renderer, which will not use your graphics card at all, but your processor instead. This way the emulation speed is greatly reduced but you get maximum compatibility. Recommended if you encounter graphics bugs with the Direct3D (Hardware) renderer.
- By selecting "OpenGL (hardware)", GSdx will use the OpenGL backend, which at this time is a slower equivalent of the DirectX renderers, with the same or worse compatibility. It's the best option for Linux users.
- By selecting "OpenGL (software)", GSdx will use the OpenGL backend in software mode, with the same characteristics as described above.
- By selecting "Direct3D9 (null)", Direct3D10/11 (null)", "Null (software)" or "Null (null)" the plugin will simply not render anything, thus not giving any output on screen. Use it only if you want to e.g. Hear some music since with this mode you get a dramatic speed increase.
Interlacing
Here you are able to choose between None, Auto and 6 other interlacing techniques, which are used to remove the "shaking" of the display. We recommend leaving this to Auto for most games.
In parentheses, you can see what kind of effect and maybe disadvantage (e.g. like the half FPS note in blend) each one of these modes have.
Tip:
You can cycle through them when running a game by pressing the F5 key.
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Scaling Subsection Only available if a Hardware Renderer has been selected above. Here you can tweak various settings to improve the visual quality of your games by increasing the resolution the textures are rendered at or applying filtering. Do keep in mind that changing the native resolution of games can cause various glitches (from the usual very minor glitches to more serious ones in rare cases).
- D3D internal resolution: Here you can specify the exact resolution you want resources to be rendered at!This way, if your PC is powerful enough (mainly your graphics card), you can play your favorite ps2 games in much higher resolutions making the graphics crisp and more detailed.Note that the higher the resolution, the more resources the plugin will have to use, thus making emulation much slower.
- Original PS2 Resolution - Native: If you check this box, the plugin will render in the native resolution of the ps2 (that is why Custom Resolution and Scaling get grayed out)
- Scaling: Set it to Custom to use whatever you set in the setting below (Custom Resolution). Setting it to 2x-6x will multiply the game's internal resolution by that value and render it. So if a game's native resolution is 640x320, setting this to 3x will render it at 1920x960 (triple of the native resolution). This way some upscaling bugs are prevented which would be present if you set a Custom Resolution in the boxes below.At this time most games and graphic cards can do x2 or x3 scaling fine but get a sharp speed drop at higher settings.
- Custom Resolution: When Scaling is set to custom, you can input here whatever resolution you want the game to be rendered at.
Shaders subsection
- Enable Shade Boost: By checking this a new set of options will become available to you via the settings button at the right. Click settings to adjust saturation, brightness and contrast to your liking for the video output of GSdx. You can click the reset button on the lower left to set the sliders to their initial positions.
- Enable FXAA: By enabling this GSdx will apply the FXAA anti-aliasing algorithm to improve the visual quality of your games with a usually minor speed hit. You can toggle FXAA on and off by pressing the PageUp key.
- Enable FX Shader: Since version 1.2.0, PCSX2 is able to use external shader programs to add various effects and visual improvements. By default, PCSX2 comes with 4 simple scanline shaders (which you can cycle through while running a game by pressing F7). For a huge set of shader effects which include UHQ FXAA, Bilinear FS Filtering, Bicubic FS Filtering, Gaussian FS Filtering, High Quality Blended Bloom, Per-Channel Gamma Correction, Scene Tone Mapping, RGB Colour Correction, S-Curve Contrast Enhancement, Texture, Sharpening, Pixel Vibrance, Post-Complement Colour Grading, Cel Shading, Scanline Emulation, Vignette and Subpixel Dithering you can download Asmodean's shader file from our forum HERE. Open the zip file and extract the PCSX2Fx_Settings.txt and shader.fx files in the same directory with pcsx2-r5875.exe. You can change the settings of the shader by opening the PCSX2Fx_Settings.txt and following the included instructions and finally saving the file with your changes. Use with caution as setting huge values here can have an enormous impact on speed. Note that you can use external shaders even with a GSdx (software) renderer, which is the best way to get higher visual quality with this rendering mode.
Tip:
You can toggle the use of external shaders on and off by pressing the Home button while running a game.
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Hardware mode Subsection
Only available if a Hardware Renderer has been selected above. Here you can change some settings for extra performance or video quality.
- Texture filtering: This tickbox has 3 states. Checked, grayed and unchecked.
- When checked, everything on screen both 2D and 3D will be bilinearly filtered.
- When grayed, filtering will be done as on a PS2. This is the preferred setting.
- When off, bilinear filtering is disabled completely. Lowers video quality but may help some slower graphic cards.
- Logarithmic Z: This setting may help when some of the games graphics are "see through". Can be toggled only with graphics cards that do NOT support a 32bit Z-buffer.
- Allow 8-bit textures: Uses more efficient "palletized textures" for all rendering which reduces the graphic card RAM requirements. On the other hand it increases the processing load and can cause visual bugs. Recommended to try both and see which gives you the most performance.
- Alpha Correction (FBA): (DX9 mode only) Keep this enabled as it fixes some blending problems that the DX9 mode has. Can also cause some issues.
Hacks Subsection
Check Enable HW hacks to enable the options described below. Click configure to select which you want to enable.
These settings are ONLY for advanced users that know what they are doing. These settings can and WILL cause serious glitches if used in games that don't need them! (only affect hardware modes).
Software mode Subsection Only available if a Software Renderer has been selected above. Here you will find options to tweak how many threads the renderer will use and turn on/off the software AA.
Hit Ok to save your changes or cancel to go back to the main Configuration window ZeroGSZeroGS is a DirectX 9 plugin developed by ZeroFrog and is aimed for graphics cards which support pixel shaders 2.0 or higher. As noted before if your card does not meet that requirement you will get an "Error opening gs plugin" message and pcsx2 will terminate.
You can toggle it while running a game by pressing "F7".
ZeroGS Advanced Options
GSnull PluginAs explained at the start of this section this is a Null plugin thus it will not render anything on screen. Press Configure to get a menu with a checkbox where you can check/uncheck "Enable Logging" which will enable/disable GS logging. It should be used for debugging and developers.
SoundPadCDVDDev9USBFirewireBios configurationCore configurationEE/IOPVUsGSGS WindowSpeed HacksGame fixesPresetsMisc. Settings configurationShortcuts/hotkeys configurationFurther readingThe compatibility listBug reportingOther useful guidesCompiling and developement |