Setting up Windows version: Difference between revisions

<br />We will start with configuring plugins then move onto Core settings configuration and Folders 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. Selecting your new plugin and changing its configuration may also be required.

'''If you select a different plugin from the drop-down list you will not be able to configure it until you press ''apply'' button!'''

The plugin configuration page will look like this (see the picture on the left).

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===Graphics (GS) plugins===

At this time you will be able to use 3 GS plugins:

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 at least 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 updated in years. Still 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====

The default PCSX2 installation has GSdx in 5 versions: SSE2, SSSE3, SSE4.1, AVX and AVX2. They are in fact the same plugin compiled using different optimization instruction sets.

<br />Use only the appropriate version for your CPU otherwise the emulator may crash. Also note that the difference between the versions speed-wise is in fact minuscule and only some games are showing any improvements in speed when using more optimized version. So if you are unsure, your safe choice is the SSE2 version. Here's the order from the slowest to the fastest one for reference:

The new AVX and AVX2 instructions give a minor speed up '''only in the software mode of GSdx''' and do not improve the hardware mode.

<br />Note to AMD users do '''NOT''' mistake SSE3 with SSSE3 (1 extra S) and SSE4A with SSE4.1, they are totally different and are '''NOT''' supported on AMD systems before Bulldozer/Bobcat. Please fall back to SSE2 plugin instead in case your system has older CPU.