PCSX2

PCSX2 is a Playstation 2 emulator for Windows and Linux. It has been started by the team behind PCSX (PS1 emulator) back in 2002. The development remains mostly active through all these years. The emulator archived some playable speeds only by mid-2007 and the later versions have improved speed and compatibility making it both the ultimate solution for PS2 emulation and the instrument to keep and preserve the PS2 legacy in the modern world. Though not yet perfect the program can successfully emulate most of the commercial games for PS2 in playable speeds and good visuals (often even better than the original PS2 had ever archived).

Up until now the program has plugin architecture making it possible to expand it's capabilities by attaching additional plugins. Although the plugins are numbered and unlikely to increase their quantity in the near future the plugin approach still has its positive moments (it's possible to use newly updated plugins without changing the version of the main program and vice versa). As of late 2009 the program only supports x86 architecture and can efficiently use no more than 2 cores on multicore CPUs (1 core is used for the main emulation purposes and the second is for plugins' purposes like rendering graphics, output sounds or PAD works). While the increase of number of useful cores may happen in the future it still remains a mystery when this will happen because the division of the general emulation thread into two or more is a very hard and complex task (original PS2 has multi CPU architecture and the correct timing between emulated CPUs is complicated enough without dividing every CPU into more than one thread).

Setting up PCSX2 guides

• For Windows version guide please see the page Setting up Windows version.
• For Linux version guide use Setting up Linux version link.
• Macintosh OS-X users may find Setting up Mac version page useful.