Dual Core needed to run SSF?

[Master_OrHan]

Can someone confirm that you need a Core 2 Duo to run SSF? This seems ludicrous to me as that is like 100 times the original power of the Sega Saturn. I was running ePSXe 1.7 great on my P4 with a FX 5500 PCI card. Now I have HD 3850 AGP and more RAM and SSF is still slow and choppy!?! Comments anyone?

 

[Master_OrHan]

I can run nullDC at full 60 FPS but not SSF? That is not good programming, I don't care how many processors the Sega Saturn had.

 

[Alexander_13]

yes for ssf you need a dual core type of pc

 

[Master_OrHan]

What I really mean to ask is, has anyone out there run SSF stable at 60 FPS with no slowdown on a P4? PSX emulators will run stable at 60 FPS w/no slowdown on a P4, so why not SSF? nullDC runs perfect on my P4, SSF shouldn't require this much. Hopefully Cassini is a little better.

 

[Alexander_13]

yes for your pc cassini is better but SSF is for dual core and forward

 

[FatTrucker]

Runs mostly ok on my creaky old 2Ghz Athlon. I think a lot of the confusion came when the emulator author posted the specs of his rig and everyone assumed that was the new benchmark. Will run very well with a C2D though. It does vary from game to game and its still not a complete emulator so there are still a number of bugs.

 

[Master_OrHan]

Runs mostly ok on my creaky old 2Ghz Athlon. I think a lot of the confusion came when the emulator author posted the specs of his rig and everyone assumed that was the new benchmark. Will run very well with a C2D though. It does vary from game to game and its still not a complete emulator so there are still a number of bugs.

I was hoping you would chime in and state how it runs on your PC. So you are saying you get full 60 FPS with no slowdown on a single core 2 GHz CPU? That is the news I wanted to hear. I can't get it to run on my PC at all and I'm not sure what the problem is, especially since nullDC runs silky smooth at 60 FPS.

Would also be great to get an ETA on Steve Snake's Saturn emulator.

 

[FatTrucker]

Nope not everything runs at a smooth 60fps but many games run perfectly well with a very playable 45 - 50fps. Most recently I played through Guardian Heroes, occasionally it would lag a little but very playable. But then its not a finished emulator.
Yes Hopefully Steve Snake will get a Saturn Emulator out, integrated with Fusion along with his others and I could die a happy man.

 

[leon_belmont]

Absolutely not dual core needed,of course dual core is better though.

I run it perfectly full speed at my Intel Pentium D 3.4GHZ ,2GB RAM, with an ATI SAPPHIRE SERIES 256MB ,i played Castlevania,Crown,Cotton Boomerang,Super Hang On ,and many many others at full speed.

 

[Master_OrHan]

Absolutely not dual core needed,of course dual core is better though.

I run it perfectly full speed at my Intel Pentium D 3.4GHZ ,2GB RAM, with an ATI SAPPHIRE SERIES 256MB ,i played Castlevania,Crown,Cotton Boomerang,Super Hang On ,and many many others at full speed.

I believe the Intel Pentium D 3.4GHZ IS a dual core, so it should run properly on your PC.

I know this will run great on the E8500 I hope to get one day, just wish it would run like the PSX emulators do on my P4 and they run fantastic. :thumb_up:

 

[leon_belmont]

Nope,its just single core a normal P4.

 

[Zach]

The Pentium D line are two prescot cores on a single chip, with no hyperthreading support.

So yes while it is a dual core processor, I don't think its really in the same league as the Core 2 Duo line.

And whether people want to believe it or not. The Saturn was an incredibly complex machine, and the fact it had multiple CPU's makes ALL the difference in how it is emulated, as well as the power required to emulate it.

You can't compare it to emulating a PSX either, because simply put, the Saturn was the more powerful machine of the two.. It had more processors and more RAM. By default it was the more capable machine, and if Sega had not screwed up all its marketing attempts, would have been a great life long contender against the PSX.

Also you need to realize that game consoles up to this point in time, were using highly customized RISC CPU's which are completely different from x86 CPU architecture. RISC CPU's are highly efficient at mathematical calculations and a lot of the stuff involved in rendering graphics, and it takes a great deal of extra power to match the capabilities of a RISC CPU when you are emulating the chip on an x86 platform.

Programming skill always comes into play, as we can see from past emulators that have gotten better over time, but the Saturn out of all consoles emulated, has historically been one of THE most, if not the single most, difficult to do. That is why there have been so few Saturn projects and the ones that exist now are moving so slowly. No one had either the skill or the balls to attempt it on a regular basis.

And yeah I wish Steve were hurry his butt up and get that Saturn emulation integrated into Fusion.. My mouth has been watering ever since he e-mail me that full-speed w/sound youtube video of Burning Rangers.

 

[Master_OrHan]

The Pentium D line are two prescot cores on a single chip, with no hyperthreading support.

So yes while it is a dual core processor, I don't think its really in the same league as the Core 2 Duo line.

Thank you, the "D" in Pentium D is for dual core I believe and the entire Pentium D line is nothing but dual cores.

And whether people want to believe it or not. The Saturn was an incredibly complex machine, and the fact it had multiple CPU's makes ALL the difference in how it is emulated, as well as the power required to emulate it.

I agree on this point as I have read that programmers found it very difficult to code for the Saturn because of it's complex CPU architecture.

You can't compare it to emulating a PSX either, because simply put, the Saturn was the more powerful machine of the two.. It had more processors and more RAM. By default it was the more capable machine, and if Sega had not screwed up all its marketing attempts, would have been a great life long contender against the PSX.

Also you need to realize that game consoles up to this point in time, were using highly customized RISC CPU's which are completely different from x86 CPU architecture. RISC CPU's are highly efficient at mathematical calculations and a lot of the stuff involved in rendering graphics, and it takes a great deal of extra power to match the capabilities of a RISC CPU when you are emulating the chip on an x86 platform.

This I debate somewhat because the RAM had a difficult time interfacing with the multiple CPU's somewhat negating the advantage of them. No doubt it is more difficult to emulate than the PSX but I still question needing a dual core which is many many times more powerful than the original Saturn CPU's. P4 HT should do the job IMO.

Programming skill always comes into play, as we can see from past emulators that have gotten better over time, but the Saturn out of all consoles emulated, has historically been one of THE most, if not the single most, difficult to do. That is why there have been so few Saturn projects and the ones that exist now are moving so slowly. No one had either the skill or the balls to attempt it on a regular basis.

And yeah I wish Steve were hurry his butt up and get that Saturn emulation integrated into Fusion.. My mouth has been watering ever since he e-mail me that full-speed w/sound youtube video of Burning Rangers.

I want to see an emulator of ePSXe quality with plug-ins that enhance the image quality, controller plug-ins supporting analog, sound plug-ins, etc. Put the Dreamcast in Fusion as well for the ultimate Sega hardware emulator!

 

[Zach]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about the RAM.. Without knowing much about the Saturns internal architecture I can't see how it would make it "difficult" to communicate with the RAM in some way or situations..

Based on my experiences with the Saturn, it loaded games faster (because of the RAM), the games tended to have smoother FPS in real time than the PSX did (again because of the RAM) and overall would have been capable of a lot more things. The RAM was clearly beneficial as if you compare PSX to Saturn graphically a lot of the PSX games have a grainy "software" rendered look to them, while the Saturn was capable of producing much more arcade like glossy graphics.. Virtua Cop is a good example I think, as well as Daytona USA. Those games would have been radically different on a PSX port and would not have looked as good or played as fast.
the PSX port for Grandia always had this feeling of "slowness" when it came to rotating the camera as well, I suspect that is absent on the Saturn and perhaps it even looks a little better graphically than the PSX version.

But I'm not really trying to get into a whole debate about which was the better system.. just pointing out it had hardware that gave it superior potential.

 

[Master_OrHan]

This is a quote from Wikipedia, which actually does contain valid info IMO.

"The implementation of dual CPUs within the Saturn was not ideal. The biggest disadvantage of the architecture was that both processors shared the same bus and had problems accessing the main system RAM at the same time."

The dual CPU configuration caused a multitude of problems, the most relevant being that emulators today find it hard to reproduce the algorithms of the Saturn code. It also gave the Saturn an edge in 2D rendering as most people well know. I like both systems,so I don't claim to be a fanboy of either and I used to own both as well.

 

[Zach]

Well the shared bus issue I can understand, it would make it hard to utilize both cores in parallel if the data bus was choked all the time.

 

[Master_OrHan]

Precisely, I believe this is why the PSX was known to have superior 3D because the dual CPU's of the Saturn were not utilized well in tandem due to insufficient bus bandwidth.

 

[donna]

There are two key things to keep in mind when running SSF:
CPU Power - The minimum CPU requirements for SSF: 4 Core (2 Core recommended) numberle
SSF requires a lot of processing power for the simulation and for each player's individual character models. For this reason, you should make sure your computer has enough power before running any number of simultaneous sessions 5 letter words