GSdx: Difference between revisions

1,472 bytes added ,  11 October 2009
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==Hardware requirements==
==Hardware requirements==


Minimum hardware requirements is a graphics card with pixel shader v2.0 which's pretty much any modern graphics card. Most of the PCSX2 emulated games are not hungry for GPU power but rather bottlenecked by CPUs so you will not need anything extra special for your games in emulator. However some certain scenes in some games can be slowed down significantly if your card is weak. It maybe because it's hard to optimize graphics code when you're working with a common emulation case rather than applying your code for each game individually. Also beware using PCSX2 with graphics hungry games on laptops. Some of them are not supposed to work on constant 100% load and can overheat easily damaging your laptop.<br />
Minimum hardware requirements is a graphics card with pixel shader v2.0 (which's pretty much any modern graphics card) and SSE2 CPU (all non-SSE2 CPU are not usable with PCSX2 and there are quite old). Most of the PCSX2 emulated games are not hungry for GPU power but rather bottlenecked by CPUs so you will not need anything extra special for your games in emulator. However some certain scenes in some games can be slowed down significantly if your card is weak. It maybe because it's hard to optimize graphics code when you're working with a common emulation case rather than applying your code for each game individually. Also beware using PCSX2 with graphics hungry games on laptops. Some of them are not supposed to work on constant 100% load and can overheat easily damaging your laptop.<br />
For DirectX 10 mode you will need DirectX 10 level card (for nVidia it's from 8xxx series, for AMD it's from HD2xxx desktop and from HD2400 laptop) running under Windows Vista (or later).<br />
For DirectX 10 mode you will need DirectX 10 level card (for nVidia it's from 8xxx series, for AMD it's from HD2xxx desktop and from HD2400 laptop) running under Windows Vista (or later).<br />
Please do not forget to update your DirectX ([http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en Web installer], [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04AC064B-00D1-474E-B7B1-442D8712D553&displaylang=en Runtime package]) specifically if your PCSX2 does not want to work demanding to update DirectX or complaining about some missing dlls.<br/>
Please do not forget to update your DirectX ([http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en Web installer], [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04AC064B-00D1-474E-B7B1-442D8712D553&displaylang=en Runtime package]) specifically if your PCSX2 does not want to work demanding to update DirectX or complaining about some missing dlls.<br/>
You will also need to update your system with Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package ([http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en x86], [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA9257CA-337F-4B40-8C14-157CFDFFEE4E&displaylang=en x64]).
You will also need to update your system with Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package ([http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en x86], [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA9257CA-337F-4B40-8C14-157CFDFFEE4E&displaylang=en x64]).<br />
 
In most cases you'll have several dlls for each GSDX version. '''SSE2''', '''SSSE3''' and '''SSE4'''. Which one to choose depends on your CPU installed.
* SSE2 -- is the Intel 2001 CPU extension features many additional instructions for 64-bit and floating point operations. AMD adopted these instructions from Athlon 64 CPUs in 2003. Your CPU will surely support SSE2 and so that dll will be your safe choise.
* SSSE3 -- is the Intel 2006 revision to '''SSE3''' CPU extension suppoted only by Core 2 processors. Warning: If you try to use dll of this version on Pentium 4/AMD CPU you will encounter a crash when the code reach SSSE3 optimized part.
* SSE4 -- is the Intel 2006 CPU extension consist of two subsets 4.1 and 4.2. GSDX only uses 4.1 set so you'll need Intel CPU with codename [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2#Penryn Penryn] or higher (E7xxx and higher for Code 2 Duos and Q9xxx and higher for quads). As of now AMD only partly supports SSE4 (calling it SSE4a) which sadly will not be enough for GSDX. Warning: If you try to use dll of this version on non-supported CPU you will encounter a crash when the code reach SSE4 optimized part.
 
The difference between these versions is quite vague. You won't notice any FPS gain when you switch from SSE2 to SSE4 version but theoretically there may be some parts in some games that may benefit from these optimizations.


==Quick guide to the settings==
==Quick guide to the settings==
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