The very popular Playstation emulator. Tips for other uses.

Configuring ePSXe
ePSXe uses plugins by the PSEmu standard. These aren't provided with the emulator. Get them from ngemu.com. The most popular author of plugins is Pete Burnert. Most known for his GPU plugins.

My RivaTuner setup

RivaTuner Release Candidate 10:
Direct 3D tweaks:
Mipmapping settings:
- Mipmap LOD bias adjustment: -3.0
- Enable user mipmaps: On
Automatic mipmaping settings:
- Number of automatic mipmap levels: [Disabled] 0
- Filtering mode for automatic bitmaps: [Disabled]
Bilinear Z-buffer sttings:
- Enable 24-bit Z-buffer: On
- Z-buffer validation method: Always Enable W-buffer: On
- W-buffer in 16-bit modes: [Disabled] 16-bit fixed point
- W-buffer in 32-bit modes: [Disabled]
24-bit floating point Blitting settings:
- Enable wait after blit when DDBLT_WAIT flag is specified: Off
- Always wait after blit: Off
- Limit the maximum number of queued blits to the frame buffer: Off
Syncronisation with vertical retrace: Auto
- Prerender limit: 3
Texture memory settings:
- Amount of system memory for PCI textures (MB): 0 (My GeForce2 supports AGP Texturing)
Texture format settings:
- Enable DXTC texture compression: On
- Enable 8-bit palettised textures: Off (I play FF7 which needs this off)
Texture filtering settings:
- Degree of anisortopy: determined by Direct3D application Texel origin adjustment: 3
Compatibility settings:
- Enable table fog emulation: On
- Show nVidia logo when running Direct3D applications: Off
Enable Anti-aliasing: On
- Anti-aliasing method: none
- Force anti-aliasing in all Direct3D applications:
Off Multisampling settings:
- Enable multisample masking: [Disabled] Off
OpenGL tweaks:
Syncronisation with vertical retrace: Off by default
- Pre-render limit: 3
Buffer flipping settings:
- Buffer flipping mode: Auto select
Texture quality settings:
- Default bit depth for textures: 32 bits per pixel
- Enable S3TC quality trick
Texture filtering quality settings:
- Force fast GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR filtering: [Disabled] Off
- Default degree of anisortopy: level 1 (off)
Hardware compatibility settings:
- Hardware acceleration mode: Max acceleration mode
- Enable GL_SGIS_MULTITEXTURE in 16-bit modes: [Disabled] Off
- Disable support for enhanced CPU instruction sets: Off
Texture memory settings:
- Amount of system memory for PCI textures (MB): 1 (My GeForce2 supports AGP texturing)
Disable Quadro specific features and driver optimisation: [Disabled] Off
- Hardware accelerated lines support: Quadro boards only
- Enable unified back / depth buffer: [Disabled] On
- Use page flipping in windowed mode when possible: [Disabled] On
Pixel format settings:
- Enable overlay: [Disabled] Off
- Enable stereo: [Disabled] Off: via shutter glasses

Enable anti-aliasing: Off (for WildARMs) On (for Final Fantasy IX)
- Anti-aliasing method: 2 x 2
- Enable texture sharpening: [Disabled] Off

ePSXe

ePSXe - Enhanced PSX emulator 1.5.2 Config:
Sound: - Enable Sound (Select to enable ADPCM sound): On
- Enable CDDA Sound (Select to enable CDROM sound): On
- Enable XA Sound (Select to enable XA sound in MDECs): On
- Enable SPU IRQ hack (need in some games): Off
Bios:
- Select Bios File: bios\Scph7502.bin
Netplay:
- Select Netplay Plugin: Disable Netplay
Memory Card:
Select Memcards Files: - 1: memcards\epsxe000.mcr - 2: memcards\epsxe001.mcr
Options:
- Auto load ppf files enabled: Off
- Country: Autodetect

GPU
It doesn't matter which video card you have, I recommend using Pete Burnett's plugins. Nice interface, nice graphics, nice emulation, nice stability: Pete's Direct3D DirectX7 GPU: New Matrox (M400) and ATI chipsets (Radeon)
Pete's Direct3D DirectX6 GPU: Old ATI (Rage 128), old Matrox (Millenium 2), and old nVidia chipsets (Riva TNT)
Pete's OpenGL GPU: New nVidia chipsets (GeForce 256 to GeForce4)
Pete's Software GPU: Lesser known chipsets (S3 Savage). Used only if you have trouble with the other GPUs.

If you have a 3dfx based video card. You should use Lewpy's Glide GPU without any doubt. I used this with my Voodoo3 and I had no problems.

I use Pete's OpenGL GPU because my GeForce2 starts laggin' up when using Pete's D3D DX7 GPU. Here's my configuration:

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.71
Author: Pete Bernett
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce2 GTS(It's the Pro really)/AGP(4x)/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x1024 Fullscreen - Desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: on

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: WildARMs: 4 (Extended w/o Sprites - unfiltered 2D) Final Fantasy IX: 6 (Extended w/ Sprites - filtered 2D)
- Hi-Res textures (2xSaI, much vram needed): on (for WildARMS, off for Final Fantasy IX)
- Palettized texture windows: on
- Garbage collection: on
- VRam size: 0 MBytes (Autodetect)

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto (FPS limit: 60fps)

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3 (Enhanced - shows more stuff)
- Framebuffer texture: 3 (Gfx card buffer - can be slow)
- Framebuffer access: 0 (Emulated vram - ok for most games)
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- TV Cusion Effect: Off
- Game fixes: on [00000202]
0x0002: Extended mask bit check "FF9 MDEC polygons, mask bit needed"
0x0200: G4 Polygon cache "ONLY for FF9 battle mode... yellow rect"

SPU
Now that the author of (PSX SPU Plugin Devlopment Project) Eternal SPU has sorted out the problems in Metal Gear Solid. I use it all the time. I'll never change, it's a beautiful plugin. What's more, it's easy to use. Here's my configuration:

Plugin: Eternal SPU Plugin 1.30
Author:
Buffer: - Sound buffer size [1 - 999]: 8
Audio out method:
- Thread
- Async Mode: Simple
Misc:
- Show realtime config window: Off
- Wait for XA buffer is free: Off
Special game fix:
- Update before accessing register: On (FFIX users, turn this on!)
- SPU IRQ - Wait CPU action: On
- SPU IRQ - Force interruption flag7: Off

CD-ROM
Choosing a CD-R plugin for Windows 95/98/ME users is easy. Windows NT/2000/XP users don't really get a choice. Again, Mr. Pete Bernert comes out on top for me. If you experience trouble with this plugin, use the ePSXe standard one (that comes with it):

Plugin: Pete's ASPI/IOCTL CDR Driver 1.10
Author: Pete Bernert

- Interface: W9X/ME - ASPI scsi commands
- Drive: [0:0:0] CREATIVE DVD-ROM DVD1241E V0.36
- Read mode: BE_2 (ATAPI SPEC 2) (Test your own drive, this is my one, Creative PC-DVD 12x)
- Caching mode: Async read - fastest, additional asynchronous reads

Misc:
- Try to limit speed: Off
- Don't wait till drive is ready: Off

Error handling:
- Try again on reading error. Retry count (1-10): 5
- Show message box on reading error: Off

PPF patches:
- Use PPF patch file: Off
- File:

Subchannel reading:
- Use subchannel SBI/M3S info file (recommended)
- File:

Final Fantasy IX
PC gamers longed for the release of FF9PC. Never happenned. Nevermind, we can emulate it 99% well. Good enough for me. Here's a few basic tips that will help you configure ePSXe for FFIX.

Make an ISO

An ISO is a dump of a CD. Most players of FFIX on an emulator use an ISO. ISOs are created by using programs such as the popular CD-RWin and my favourite ISOBuster. I recommeded ISOBuster mostly because of the lack of errors it finds. If it does find errors, you can tell it to ignore them. When I was using CD-RWin, I was dumping CD3 and 4 of FFIX, I got errors I couldn't skip through, I could on ISOBuster. Download it, right click on your FFIX CD, select Extract To... | RAW data (.bin). It should extract the CD to [filename].bin. I called all of mine ff9.bin and put them indifferent folders.

Patching your region's version

Where did you buy your copy of FFIX? Europe? Then it's going to need a patch. There are different patches for different regions of Europe too. To my knowledge, there are patches for Italia, Deustchland, Espanol, France, and the United Kingdom. Most of these can be obtained through a very help Aldo Vargas at Aldo's Tools. Also, the patching tool should be there to. If not, search - on say Google - for "IPS patcher".

Choosing the correct plugins

This is very important, especially soundwise. The plugins which I recommend are all perfect at what they do. For a GPU, choose the one which best suits your card. As earlier stated, I choose Pete's GPUs. The current version is 1.60. Remember, when you choose Pete's, always enable G4 Polygon Cache when playing FFIX. I have it on all the time, it doesn't affect any other of my games. Sound. Sound!. Sound is the most important plugin to choose correctly. Where FFIX is concerned, Eternal SPU is perfect. Proper emaulation, good sound, and support for a lot of soundcards. The current version is 3.