Cons:
* requires ~180MB of physical memory (virtual memory is the same so it
doesn't impact the 4GB limit)
From steam: 98.81% got at least 2GB of RAM. 83.62% got at least 4GB of RAM.
That being said, it might not really increase RAM requirements as OS could put the
new allocation in the swap.
Pro:
* code is much easier
* remove at least half of the signal listener
* last but not least, it is way easier for profiler/debugger
Let's the kernel manage the memory either with builtin lazy allocation or
swapped memory.
Avoid to handle SIGSEGV manually (nicer for debug) and removes 250 lines of code.
Threading VU1 took a lot of rewrites and new code to make possible (MTGS, microVU, gifUnit...), but we finally got to the point where it was feasible, and now we've done it! (so now everyone can stop complaining that pcsx2 only takes advantages of 2 cores :p).
The speedups in the games that benefit from it are great if you have a cpu with 3+ cores (generally a 10~45% speedup), however games that are GS limited can be a slowdown (especially on dual core cpu's).
The option can be found in the speedhacks section as "MTVU (Multi-Threaded microVU1)". And when enabled it should should show the VU thread-time percentage on the title bar window (Like we currently do for EE/GS/UI threads).
It is listed as a speedhack because in order for threading VU1 to have been a speedup, we need to assume that games will not send gif packets containing Signal/Finish/Label commands from path 1 (vu1's xgkick). The good news is very-few games ever do this, so the compatibility of MTVU is very high (a game that does do this will likely hang).
Note: vs2010 builds and Linux builds need to be updated to include "MTVU.h" and "MTVU.cpp".
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/trunk@4865 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
Pcsx2 now has a gifUnit class which acts like the ps2's gif and executes a single gif transfer at a time (and performs path arbitration according to priority and path3 slicing).
This new code is generally a speedup for most games. Particularly VU heavy games like GoW.
This revision breaks old saved state compatibility so don't update if you wish to keep playing with your old saved states.
Leave comments if this revision fixes or breaks anything...
Message to GS Plugin authors:
This new code now uses only 1 gif callback to transfer data to the gs plugin (GSgifTransfer).
pcsx2 also is garaunteed to send full GS primitives to the plugin. So you don't have to account for partial-transfers anymore.
Thanks goes out to shadowlady who tested around 500 games for me :D
Note 1: The old gif code is still in this revision, and can be enabled by the USE_OLD_GIF macro. The old code will be deleted soon.
Note 2: This revision also enables assertion dialogs in devel builds, and changed a lot of assume cases into assertions.
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/trunk@4821 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* Moved VIF dynamic recompiler buffers to the recompilers section of PCSX2.
* Using RecompiledCodeReserve for the VIF SSE functions.
* Minor bugfixes to VirtualMemory class implementations.
* Improved error handling and error message display.
* [TODO] : implement a call to cpuShutdown() to clean up VIF unpack/SSE reserves.
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/trunk@4169 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* PCSX2 uses significantly less memory when starting.
* Overall memory use reduced (mildly for some games, significantly for most).
* EE and IOP main memory are now fixed at 0x20000000 and 0x24000000 -- useful when using external cheat apps.
* Properly implemented the 'Shutdown' menu option -- Shutdown now unloads the entire PS2 virtual machine and reduced PCSX2's memory footprint to bare minimums.
* Some more meaningful errors for when memory is a problem (out of memory, low virtual memory, etc).
* Bugfix for pxsFmt when formatting long/large strings (over 1k)
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/trunk@4029 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* Removed some missing / obsolete files from codeblocks projects.
* Fixed a segfault on exit
* Implemented a platform-consistent pointer value string formatter (%p has no defined standard)
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/newHostVM@4026 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* Applied the new RecompiledCodeReserve to the VIF recompilers (saves another 4-8mb of memory, depending on game).
* Fixed a bug in pxsFmt / FastFormatUnicode (string formatting).
* Final round of error handling cleanups.
(branch is basically ready for re-integration -- needs some testin for obvious/show stopping bugs, thanks!)
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/newHostVM@4025 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* Preliminary implementation for the SpatialArrayReserve class, which will be used for recompiler lookup tables (large portions of these tables are never used by many games). Will put it to use and test it soon.
* Finished implementation of TryResize method for reservations, which will be used by PCSX2 if the operating system runs low on ram.
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/newHostVM@3992 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* Moved profiler management to the RecompiledCodeReserve class.
* Improved error handling some more.
* Numerous minor cleanups.
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/newHostVM@3991 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
* SuperVU note: SuperVU recompiler now uses two separate 8mb caches for VU0 and VU1 (needed in order to simplify/saneify the reserve/alloc stages of pcsx2 app startup).
* Added MemsetFast.inl, which houses SSE intrinsic versions of memset and memzero, for use on aligned data targets.
git-svn-id: http://pcsx2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/newHostVM@3975 96395faa-99c1-11dd-bbfe-3dabce05a288
Gregory Hainaut