Massive Lag in PCSX2 1.4,0 (Video Included)

[ShadowGaming]

Hello there. I've recently gotten into the emulator game, starting off with Pokemon roms and Gameboy emulators. Well one day I decided I wanted to go to my nostalgia days and get a PS2 emulator, the console I spent most of my childhood on. I get it, and I get Flatout and The Sims 2, and they each have their problems. Both of them stutter a lot. I recently got two more games I wanted to record for Youtube, Grand Theft Auto's Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories (not released on PC), and they stutter too. And by stutter I mean massive slowdown, because stuttering is putting it lightly. When I don't look at the center of the map in GTA, I get 100% speed, ~60 FPS, but when I do look at the center, it immediately drops to 40% speed or lower, and stays there. I used this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJiTDhlQ5Sk) to set up the emulator, copying the settings exactly. The current settings aren't the same anymore because I was tinkering but they were once, and nothing has worked. Here is the video showing you exactly what I'm talking about (I recorded it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXURg_h0S_o

How can I fix this, if at all? My specs are in the second video link.
AMD FX 8320 Black
Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 (Asus Strix 4gb OC)
16gb Kingston HyperX Fury 1886mhz

[deadlegion]

GTA Liberty City Stories...

http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php/Gran...y_City_Stories

allow 8 bit textures

[ShadowGaming]

That's helped a ton. Instead of 40% speed, I'm now getting at least 70%. I'd like 100% but you can't always get what you want. Perhaps that's possible but I don't know how to do it. Thanks.

[deadlegion]

You could try Vu cycle stealing and see if it's a little faster. But I think that can sometimes create other issues.

[Zaladane]

You could try Vu cycle stealing and see if it's a little faster. But I think that can sometimes create other issues.

Yup.

And GTA games can be tricky anyhow.

I would move both speed hack sliders up all the way and see what happens, then incrementally slide them back to fix any graphics glitches that may pop up from having them set too high.

[deadlegion]

Vu cycle stealing is mentioned on the wiki page for the PAL version at least...I do know it causes problems for heaps of other games like PCSX2 crashes completely, flickering characters and other things.

[Zaladane]

Vu cycle stealing is mentioned on the wiki page for the PAL version at least...I do know it causes problems for heaps of other games like PCSX2 crashes completely, flickering characters and other things.

It can do some pretty crazy things. Like floating cars

But I digress.

Oh and keep your graphics setup simple for now like native resolution, you can also try running it in a window and just resize it. Making sure you're not running a million background processes which Windows is known for will help too

[ShadowGaming]

Your suggestions have made LCS playable. Same thing with Flatout, although they all still get stutters, but it's not incredible slowdown. The Sims 2 is still broken, but I pretty much got these games for the nostalgia, and probably won't play too much of them unless I'm with my cousin, who played those 2 games with me a lot back then. Thank you.

The speed hack sliders are all the way up. For now they work, but I may tweak it a little and see if I can get better performance later on.