PCSX2 0.9.7 review

Since in my last PS2 emulator review I didn't go into much detail about the actual PCSX2 itself, more its history, I thought that I would do a review of the newest version of the PCSX2, version 0.9.7.

This version is still in Beta, and even has a disclaimer when you first run the emulator. I have found some bugs, but as I said, it is still beta so they are expected.

In this revision, the entire GUI appears to have been rewitten with a more intuitive and better looking feel to it. Here are a few side by side comparison screenies to show the difference between version 0.9.6 and 0.9.7, which should give you an idea of how much improvement has been made. Version 0.9.6 on left, version 0.9.7 on right.

Main GUI

Console output screen

Plugin selection screen

As you can see from the screeshots, the overall look of the emulator has improved greatly, but the question is, has the performance? For me, the answer is yes, most games seem to run noticably faster, such as "Shadow Of The Colossus" for example, in 0.9.6, it ran at roughly 30FPS in most parts of the game, in 0.9.7 i get about 40FPS, with speed hacks enabled in both versions.


With the new revision have come new plugins, well, more up to date versions anyway. I can't say much about this as I haven't had much time to experiment but it seems that they have fixed some bugs from the previous versions, especially the GSdx plugin and the LilPad plugin. In this new version, you usually need to update your directX to use the GSdx plugin, but this doesn't seem to be much of a problem, especially not since it improves the performance.

My opinion
The new version of thr PCSX2 definately looks the part, and it seems that the internals of the emulator have also improved. The PCSX2 team have done a great job of rewiting their emulator and I hope that the full version of this revision will be released soon, along with the source code, which isn't released yet.