Framerate Issues with Drakengard on PCSX2

[Jyrakos]

Ok, I've played a few games on PCSX2 (Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Chaos Legion, and a few others), and I haven't had issues. However, I started attempting to play Drakengard, and as soon as I have control of my character, the framerate drops down to 45 or lower. Is there some setting I can change to keep it consistently 60fps? I'd be happy to share my comp's specs if someone can help, but I don't know which specs you'd need. Here are the settings for my emulator (note: Manual Game Fixes is turned off).

[meganova]

Which one? Drakengard 1 or 2? Any changes to the GSdx settings?

Run the emulator, go to the console logs (second window that appears alongside PCSX2), and then copy the first line (PCSX2 1.2.1 compiled, etc) until the 'Plugins loaded successfully' line and post it here.

Not sure if Drakengard need it, but Game Fixes need to enabled everytime you run the emulator, as it not only apply specific settings to the games, but will also improve their performance.

[messiahgov]

Try more Speedhacks, like MTVU.

[Jyrakos]

Which one? Drakengard 1 or 2? Any changes to the GSdx settings?

Run the emulator, go to the console logs (second window that appears alongside PCSX2), and then copy the first line (PCSX2 1.2.1 compiled, etc) until the 'Plugins loaded successfully' line and post it here.

Not sure if Drakengard need it, but Game Fixes need to enabled everytime you run the emulator, as it not only apply specific settings to the games, but will also improve their performance.

Drakengard 1. (Haven't tried Drakengard 2 yet.) I don't know what you mean by GSdx settings.

Here is the copied text:

PCSX2 1.2.1.r5873 - compiled on Feb 3 2014
Savestate version: 0x9a0a0000

Host Machine Init:
Operating System = Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Physical RAM = 4095 MB
CPU name = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Vendor/Model = GenuineIntel (stepping 0A)
CPU speed = 2.998 ghz (2 logical threads)
x86PType = Standard OEM
x86Flags = bfebfbff 0c08e3fd
x86EFlags = 20100000

x86 Features Detected:
MMX.. SSE.. SSE2.. SSE3.. SSSE3.. SSE4.1

Reserving memory for recompilers...

Loading plugins...
Binding GS: C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\gsdx32-sse2-r5875.dll
Windows 6.1.7601 (Service Pack 1 1.0)
Binding PA C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\lilypad-r5875.dll
Binding SPU2: C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\spu2-x-r5875.dll
Binding CDV C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\cdvdGigaherz.d ll
Binding USB: C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\USBnull.dll
Binding FW: C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\FWnull.dll
Binding DEV9: C:\Media\Games\Emulator\PS2\Plugins\DEV9null.dll
Plugins loaded successfully.

[meganova]

GSdx is one of the video/graphic plugins for PCSX2 (Config -> Video), and since you didn't know about it, so I assume none of the settings were changed then.

Forgot to ask this earlier, but what is your graphic card?

It's impossible for the game to run at 60fps consistently, unless you have a very good specs, as the framerate will always drop whenever you control the character and even worse when there are lots of animation going on.

However as pointed by previous poster, go to Speedhack settings, Enable MTVU under the microVU Hacks and then click OK.

Run the game afterwards and see if there any improvement to the gameplay, but if there are only minor changes, then go back to Speedhack settings again, and increase the VU Cycle slider bar to 1, then try running the game again.

Keep doing the previous step until there are significant changes, or something which you consider 'playable' (40-50 is good considering with your current specs, IMO).
Don't put it to max however, as that will only make the game unstable which leads to lots of crash/freeze and other issues.

[Jyrakos]

GSdx is one of the video/graphic plugins for PCSX2 (Config -> Video), and since you didn't know about it, so I assume none of the settings were changed then.

Forgot to ask this earlier, but what is your graphic card?

It's impossible for the game to run at 60fps consistently, unless you have a very good specs, as the framerate will always drop whenever you control the character and even worse when there are lots of animation going on.

However as pointed by previous poster, go to Speedhack settings, Enable MTVU under the microVU Hacks and then click OK.

Run the game afterwards and see if there any improvement to the gameplay, but if there are only minor changes, then go back to Speedhack settings again, and increase the VU Cycle slider bar to 1, then try running the game again.

Keep doing the previous step until there are significant changes, or something which you consider 'playable' (40-50 is good considering with your current specs, IMO).
Don't put it to max however, as that will only make the game unstable which leads to lots of crash/freeze and other issues.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (though a friend has a 600-series that he's giving me soon).

And I tried all of that, but I didn't see any improvement on the gameplay at all. The framerate (according to the top of the program) goes between 40-45 fps (with occasional dips to 35 or so), but it is drastically slower than playing on the PS2 console.