I've never tried emulating anything in my life. However, yesterday, I tried to set up PCSX2 to run on my laptop so that I could try running SSX 3 using an emulator and a PS4 controller. Things were going smoothly, I was using the online guide for setting up PCSX2, the link to which was provided when I first opened the programme. Today, I ripped the game from the disk to an ISO image and I gave it a go. The game ran really slowly. Like, really slowly. I lowered all the plugin settings I could find to the very bottom and I gave it a go again. It wasn't playable, but it was better. The game was running at around half the speed. Is there anything I can do? I'm not hiding the fact that this is not a gaming PC. I hope to get one in a few months, though!

I guess the question is: can I get it to run any better without upgrading my hardware? Please remember that I have no idea what I'm doing. :p

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With an average laptop, there's not much you can do. 4GB won't get you anywhere. From my experience, you need about 8GB to run smoothly. If you want any help with settings, ask me. I'll try to help as much as possible.

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I see. I guess that there's not much I can do and I'll just have to wait until I save up for that PC. Thanks for the reply, man.

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I'm getting 60fps on this using PCSX2. My problem is (using xbox one controller) is that I can't spin using the analog stick, and I can't play this game with the d-pad.

Anyone know what's up? Tried in both PCSX2 and Dolphin, same issue with both.

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I think that you need to enable alternative controls in the game's options to be able to spin with the analogue stick.

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Ohhh man. Thanks for that, it works now.

I spent hours searching online on how to fix that spin in PCSX2 and here you are with the answer I needed.

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hey Morf, i can't wait to see your runs here man, and Kubi, you can configurate properly your emulator?

I followed an online guide somewhere. It works, it's just very slow.

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I'll be back asking for advice once I've maxed my character out. I've got a lot to learn on this

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Figured I would just throw out that I have a very detailed guide on getting PSCX2 working for SSX 3 here: https://goo.gl/x1GmUi

Hope this helps some of you

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I was actually just thinking of making a thread for this, glad to see there's already a thread. I've been running it on PCSX2 recently as well and it works like a charm, except for one small (fixable) issue - thick red vertical lines. It took me a while to figure out how to fix this and I'll put the solutions here to save anyone else the time if they get the same problem.

There are actually two ways to fix this, both in the same options area. On the PCSX2 start-up window, you go Config>Video (GS)>Plugin Settings, and then you can do one of these two things:

1. Change your renderer from a hardware renderer to a software renderer, thereby making more use of your graphics card to run the game than PCSX2 usually does (since PCSX2 is much more reliant on your GPU than anything else). Of course, this also means you'll need a good graphics card, and I get pretty bad slowdown using a software renderer w/ my PC's GTX 560 Ti, so I'd imagine a GTX 7-- (or AMD equivalents) and upwards would be needed to run it with a software renderer efficiently. I should note that this doesn't cover all games - I also run Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 on a software renderer and slowdown is almost non-existent.
OR
2. Keep using a hardware renderer and tick the Enable HW Hacks checkbox if it isn't already, then click on Configure Hacks and set skipdraw to 1. This allows PCSX2 to skip the rendering of textures it finds to be failing or not rendering properly.

Either way, both of these will get rid of those horrendously view-obstructing red lines. Hope it helps anyone who's having that issue.

Very good thing that you address that issue, Baron. Just a quick heads-up to anyone trying to fix the red lines issue:

1) You can also use older builds of the emulator.

2) You say switching to software is a solution, which is true, but I'm pretty sure I remember a discussion we had on Rithek's stream where he said that running on software could potentially be bad. I can't even confirm this happened, but I figured I'd let you guys know. I also don't know what exactly I mean by "bad" either, sorry for not having more information, but just know that if I remember correctly, it could potentially be a risk.

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Oh geez, really? Even if you don't have any more details on it, more details on it from anyone would be much appreciated then.

Just asked Rithek about it, and we also tested software renderer on our own setups. First of all, at least as far as he knows, there is nothing potentially bad, I don't know where I got that, sorry.

But, software rendering is definitely inferior. He tested it using a 980ti and I tested it using a 970, both of these being very respectable graphics cards (his especially). We still had significant slowdown, the game would run on average about 39-42 fps for me in game, which also directly affected the game's run speed too. Not sure about Rithek's results, but there was definitely significant slowdown. Not only that, but you also can't upscale the graphics either, it's stuck on native resolution.

Conclusion is therefore: it might not be harmful or bad for your card/computer, but it is definitely much worse than hardware rendering. If Rithek's graphics card or my graphics card can't run the game well while rendering on software, it's unlikely that any graphics card can. I'd steer clear of software rendering in general, it seems like graphics card model has very little to say in terms of running the game well. To get rid of the vertical red lines, try any of the other two methods.

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Huh, that explains why I can't upscale DMBMX2.

Still, good to have the extra details, thanks a bunch for checking that.