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In this review of PCSX2 0.9.5 Public Beta, I will discuss the configuration and system specs required to get a fully functional PS2 Emulator going on your PC. I will be benchmarking the software with a fairly intensive piece of software for PC Emulation, namely Final Fantasy XII by Square Enix. PCSX2 is the most functional, and more importantly, supported, PS2 emulator available today. There are multiple plugins to support assorted hardware and forums explaining configuration techniques. Before I get into too much detail about this emulator, be warned, you will need a powerful computer, 3Ghz+ Dual Core CPU, and at least an 8800 GT Graphics card to achieve high quality graphics at acceptable frame rates.
Also you will need a PS2 Bios, which you will have to 'dump' from your own PS2 (Tools are available to achieve this goal). Firstly you will see the general config screen and the system output, these give you a basic rundown on your system specs, and the available configurations. Press 'Config' to continue... | |
After you press Config, you get to the general settings for all components, ie sound, control pads, cd-rom, and most importantly graphics. Please note, you will need a decent video card, I am using an 8600M GS, which is 'just enough'. 
From here we will press 'Configure' again. GSdx gives the best performance for series 8 and above Nvidia cards, as it can take advantage of DirectX 10 and Shader models 2.0 and 3.0, the most important settings are outlined below:  | The 'Resolution' section is the native resolution of your display, in my case 1280x800 @ 60Hz. I have chosen to render in Direct3D 10 (Hardware) Which is DX10. The aspect ratio is widescreen 16:9 and the most important factor to allow good reporoduction of PS2 graphics, is to have to internal resolution set as a multiple of the native PS2 resolution of 480x300, in my case, I have enough GPU power to double that at 960x600, this will give better than PS2 resolution, as you will see in the screenshot below. NLOOP Hack has been enabled for speed, and Texture Filtering enable for quality. |
Finally, here is a screenshot, showing a few interesting aspects of the render: 
You can see the clarity, and best of all the FPS is at just about 50, which is the standard output of this PAL version of the Game FF XII, the game is rendering in 16:9 widescreen, at double PS2 Resolution (this has been resized to fit as a screengrab!), it is taking 61% of my Dual Core Merom T7500 2.2Ghz CPU (The new beta has great settings enabling Dual Core processing which greatly increases speed). So, to wrap up, the game plays perfectly in better than PS2 resolution, great sound, the only downside is that the FMV's are a little jumpy, hopefully someone will find a fix for this! - Links of Interest -
PCSX2 Official Site
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