Xenoblade Chronicles #HO

Version: r7436M (as found in xtreme2damax's thread in SVN Revision forum)

General Settings:

• Enable Dual Core [ON]
• Enable Idle Skipping [ON]
• Framelimit [50] <- this is important because the flashback and premonition sequences try to go beyond PAL framerate.

Display Settings:

• Load Native Mipmaps [ON] <- reduces visual stuttering caused by level of detail changes.
• EFB Scaled Copy [ON] <- fixes a bug where the game would sometimes reduce to native framebuffer size after a flashback or premonition scene.
• Pixel Depth [OFF] <- turn this on and the game will begin to crash at random.
• EFB - Enable CPU Access [ON] <- fixed some odd visual glitch that didn't appear until Makna Jungle.
• EFB - Emulate format changes [ON] <- same as Enable CPU Access, except the bug this fixes was much earlier.
• EFB - Copy [ON] Mode [TEXTURE] <- huge speedup, but corrupts the save game picture.
• Accurate Texture Cache [OFF] <- causes no end of crashing and visual bugs in this game.
• XFB [ON] Mode [VIRTUAL] <- without this the game wont render correctly.

Audio:

• DSP HLE Emulation (unless you have a CPU that can handle LLE).
• Enable Audio Throttle [OFF] <- causes audio stuttering even at 100% emulation speed if a lot of sounds are playing at once, better off using framelimit.
• Audio Backend [XAudio2] <- DSound had left-right reversed for my headset.

Things to not turn on:

• Display List Caching <- will cause the game to begin crashing after a couple hours, at which point you must use "View -> Purge Cache" to fix it, not worth the very minor speedup it provides.
• OpenMP/OpenCL Texture Decoders <- these can cause a lot of stuttering and freezing when you least expect it.

These settings are what I'm using to play on a 2.6ghz Core 2 Quad, before digging into the settings I had clocked the CPU up to 3.4ghz and seen no improvement. I know I read somewhere that someone stated the game is heavy on the GPU, but that just isn't the case, GPU meter was reading a maximum of 6% usage and 15mb on my 9600GT, the shader graph was barely showing any activity.

The interesting part of my findings was in regards to audio. We're all familiar with CPU and GPU demands of a game, but rarely do we encounter a game that really pushes sound department. Well this game is one of them. My headset (decoders but no processor) was seeing a lot of audio stutter in the game. My sound card (decoders and processors) was running the game flawlessly, as well as dropping the CPU usage from near max on each core down to around 60% on each core. I believe this is what is causing so much confusion among tweakers. It's rare that I encounter a computer these days that has a sound card, most just use the on-board AC97 decoder or some extension card that has an AC97 or Creative Audigy decoder. Sound is every bit as important as graphics and processing, do yourself a favor and pick up at least an old Sound Blaster Live! (kx-driver for those is awesome), if you want something better check out the audiophile websites out there for a list of cards that are more than just run of the mill decoders.

En el manglar de makna nada más entrar a la izquierda si no recuerdo mal xD