GSdx

GSDX is the most known graphics plugin for PCSX2 dated back to 2007 and initially developed by Gabest (although he still is it's main contributor). GSDX uses DirectX and is currently able to utilize DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 APIs. It also can switch between hardware rendering and software one. Some of many of the impressive features of GSDX are high rendering resolution, anti-aliasing filtering, many deinterlacing modes, full screen mode, correctable aspect ratio, et cetera. DirectX 10 mode is confirmed by many to be the most compatible (in contrast with DirectX 9) but some game will still be working better under DirectX 9. You can find the official GSDX thread here.

Hardware requirements

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.
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).
Please do not forget to update your DirectX (Web installer, Runtime package) specifically if your PCSX2 does not want to work demanding to update DirectX or complaining about some missing dlls.
You will also need to update your system with Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86, x64).

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 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 thus this dll will be your safe choise.
• SSSE3 -- is Intel 2006 revision to SSE3 CPU extension supported 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 (but it may not happen for quite a time).
• SSE4 -- is Intel 2006 CPU extension consists of two subsets 4.1 and 4.2. GSDX only uses 4.1 set so you'll need Intel CPU with codename Penryn or newer (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 (but it may not happen for quite a time).

The difference between these versions is 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

Hardware vs Software
DX9 vs DX10
DirectX updates
All GUI GSDX settings
Hidden settings in ini file

List of games will perform better in DirectX 9 mode

Please add some info here!

List of ingame keys

The information on hotkeys usable by GSDX is scarce and hard to find. All shortcuts listed here are accessible at any time whenever the emulated game is running.

• F5 -- cycle-switches through interlacing modes. Those mode are useful when you're playing NTSC games or game have some "lining" artifacts. On the real PS2 those "artifacts" are used to present the picture in the most smooth way possible but they can become quite noticable and bothersome when you play your game on the PC. This feature tries to help solving the problem but some cases are still incurable. If you like to read more on deinterlacing, try Wikipedia article. Note that some modes can slightly decrease performance while the others can blur the whole picture, decreasing the amount of details thus deinterlacing is to be used only when it's necessary. GSDX supports the following modes:
  • None -- no deinterlacing is applied (default)
  • Weave tff
  • Weave bff
  • Bob tff
  • Bob bff
  • Blend tff
  • Blend bff

• F6 -- cycles through different spect ratios. Includes 4x3, 16x9 and "stretch to screen".

• F7 -- (?) some kind of deinterlace mode, please add info here

• F8 -- takes the screenshot of the current screen. Screenshots are taken in the current rendering resolution (not the resolution of your GSDX window) and stored in snaps folder of your PCSX2.

• F9 -- switches from the hi-res rendering into native resolution (which is rather small, for ex. 512x448 for NTSC-U). The native resolution can be used to avoid some severe graphics glitches occured in some games in video or special sequences when they are rendered in high resolutions (for example in 1024x768). Some 2D objects can also suffer from wrong rendering in hi-res modes. You can switch runtime to native resolution finish the critical game section and switch back to hi-res.