Setting up Windows version: Difference between revisions

<br />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.

<br />Here you can choose how the graphics will be rendered.

 

*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.

<br />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.

'''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.

*''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 [http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Custom-Shaders-for-GSdx?pid=334766#pid334766 HERE]. Open the zip file and extract the PCSX2Fx_Settings.txt and shader.fx files in the same directory with ''pcsx2.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.