Why isn't PCSX2 as fast or easy to use as PPSSPP?

Post Reply New Topic

I don't get it myself, the PSP and the PS2 are roughly equivalent to one another in power, and they share a similar architecture, so if it's so easy to emulate the PSP, then why isn't the PS2 easy to emulate as well? I seriously think the PPSSPP team should make their own PS2 emulator, because I don't like how complicated PCSX2 is to set up, nor how demanding it is on resources.

I put this here instead of in the gaming forum because this is more of a technical question than one that relates to any specific game.

If I recall it has to do with the fact that the PS2 runs based on dual processors or something like that which were hard to emulate (which is why PS3 dropped PS2 emulation after they removed the hardware to run it natively).

I was just comparing the PSP and PS2 CPUs, and I've found that the PSP only has one vector processing unit, while the PS2 has two. That said, the PSP has a secondary CPU, the Media Engine, which is extremely similar to its primary CPU.

As far as their GPUs go, the PS2's GPU has a significantly higher fillrate than the PSP's, but they can both push around the same number of polys (PS2 is 37 million, while PSP is 33 million).

From what I can gather, the PS2 is more powerful, but the PSP compares pretty well despite that. It just baffles me how much more nicely PPSSPP runs than PCSX2. PCSX2 should require more horsepower, but not THAT much. I guess a lot of it comes down to how the software itself is designed; PCSX2 is really tailored to technical users, while PPSSPP is quite straightforward. PCSX2 is also plugin-based, while PPSSPP isn't. In my experience, plugin-based emulators tend not to be as robust as emulators that aren't.

I think it has to do with synchronizing the PS2's multiple processors. Also what are you using, a toaster? PCSX2 emulates fine on my newest computer AND my second to newest computer. Any decent i5 or AMD phenom II will emulate it fine.

A old i3 struggle on some games though, and Shadow of the Collossus is totally unplayable with it.

I'm using a Core 2 Duo E8500, though to be fair, the last time I used PCSX2 was back when it was just a Pentium Dual Core E6300. I was able to run a few games well (namely Odin Sphere and Katamari Damacy), but most had problems. This was with a good amount of overclocking, no less. I also remember trying to get Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando to work on my friend's i7 box, since the mipmapping in that game's engine only works properly in PCSX2's software renderer, and I figured that throwing a bigger CPU at it would help, but it was still slow.

I'm going to be honest, the only game I've played on PPSSPP was Wipeout Pulse, but it has insanely nice graphics for a PSP game from what I can tell, and I can run it at many times the normal resolution without a hitch.

Speaking of which, I should see how well one of the PSP Ratchet and Clank games works.

One of the main reasons why PPSSPP is as fast as it is is because it is a high level emulator. The concept there is basically replace most of the actual OS implementation with native x86_64 code designed to do the same thing. Also, I think the developers were mostly trying for a very intuitive interface for PPSSPP because all versions look the same, from the Windows 8 build to the Android build.

That makes sense. I don't see the point of using low level emulation for emulating systems as advanced as the PS2. We aren't seeing the same exponential increases in computing power nowadays that we saw as recently as a decade ago, so at this point in time, the only systems that can be reasonably emulated using LLE are older consoles such as the NES, SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, etc. Once they start making more powerful CPUs again, maybe then we'll start to see decent LLE emulators for newer systems.