While the first part of the Uncharted series by Naughty Dog was more of a pen test in a new genre for the studio, Uncharted 2 is a serious work on mistakes and improvement of the game in all existing aspects: art-design, graphics, sounds, directing, framing and script.
In the previous blog we talked about how to tune the first Uncharted for more or less adequate performance in RPCS3 emulator, and in this article we will describe how to make Uncharted 2: Among Thieves demonstrate minimal-comfortable frame rate. And believe me, there is a lot to tell here. But let’s start with a classic preface:
First and most importantly, check the version of your emulator: it must be at least RPCS3 v0.0.29 Alpha | master (main branch). Update it if necessary. If your version is significantly newer, it is likely that you will not need some of the settings. Try to play the game without additional changes. It may happen that with the settings below, the game will refuse to run at all. In that case, let us know in the comments of this post and we will try to compile a new guide as soon as possible.
Well and the second: at this moment in the functioning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on the emulator RPCS3 some problems are observed: starting from rare visual artifacts in the collision of the camera with objects, to less rare program crashes and critical bugs, as well as, significant FPS drops in graphically (essentially geometrically) loaded scenes.
Also, don’t forget that this title has not yet received the status of “Playable”. Therefore, no one gives 100% guarantees that you will be able to pass the game to the end without catching some critical bug.
RPSC3 configuration for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
First, start the emulator and right-click on the “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” icon, then left-click on “Manage Game Patches” in the drop-down menu:
Here you need to activate as many as nine patches:
Essentially, the main ones are:
- Disable SPU Post-processing;
- Disable Mesh Trimming;
- Enable GPU Lighting;
- Disable Motion Blur.
These patches significantly increase FPS, as well as, reduce the amount of graphical artifacts.
Optionally, you can also disable the Skip Intro video, which by default cannot be skipped.
In general, you can limit yourself to these five options, however, we would recommend activating all the patches that are shown in the screenshot above.
Then click on “Apply”, then “Save” and right-click again on the “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” icon, then click on “Change Custom Configuration” in the drop-down menu:
In this window set the settings according to the selected options and screenshots below.
Graphics card configuration (GPU)
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Anisotropic filter | Auto | Use only Auto value, as any change of this setting will cause graphic artifacts! |
| Resolution scale threshold | 160 x 160 | Only with this option you can increase the internal render resolution above 720p. |
| Write color buffers | On | Fixes backlights when the camera collides with objects. |
| Multithreaded RSX | On | Significantly increases game performance. |
| Asynchronous texture streaming | On | If you have a relatively powerful GPU (RX 470+ / GTX 1060+), enabling this option will improve performance. |
Advanced settings (Advanced)
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Accurate RSX reservation access | On | If your processor doesn’t support the TSX instruction set (and most chips don’t support it, since Intel itself has essentially nailed its technology), then you need to enable this option. |
| Read depth buffers | On | Additionally removes backlighting. Activated only when using Async Texture Streaming. |
| RSX FIFO accuracy | Atomic | Significantly increases game stability. |
Now let’s move on to the obtained results. And as we wrote at the beginning of this blog: there is a lot to talk about.
Unfortunately, owners of old processors (for example, Ryzen 1000 or Xeon E5-2600v3) will not be able to play Uncharted 2: Among Thieves comfortably. On my personal PC with Ryzen 5 3600 chip and RTX 3090 videocard at all above described settings I get something around 16 FPS in especially heavy-loaded scenes and up to 30 FPS indoors, as well as simple locations.
Here we should probably clarify something: before our interventions in the settings, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves produced 2-7 frames per second.
It’s not hard to guess that 16-30 FPS is not what most gamers want to see when playing a relatively fast-paced third-person shooter. Nevertheless, I can assure you that such a number of frames per second for this game is just on the edge of comfort. Plus, if your system unit is equipped with a 12th-13th generation Core chip, or Ryzen 7000, then the problems of low FPS will practically not affect you. Even Core i5-12400F that we have in our lab produces 25-30 frames per second.
Here are screenshots taken on AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor and RTX 3090 videocard:
As a result, having spent more than four hours on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, we found out that the emulation is not perfect: in some places there are noticeable graphical artifacts, lighting problems, flickering textures and so on. Also, it should be noted that the game crashed several times, but when restarting the gameplay continued without any problems.
Now a couple of words about the required hardware on the current version of RPCS3 v0.0.29+ emulator. According to our measurements, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is more or less adequately emulated starting from 6-core chips of AMD Zen 2-3 / Intel Skylake/Rocket Lake generation and AMD Radeon RX 400 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 videocards, and for comfortable running in stable 30 frames you will need a high-frequency 6-core (better 8-core) Alder Lake (Core 12-13) or Zen 4 (Ryzen 7000) chip. Otherwise, significant performance issues will be extremely difficult to avoid.
Test the above settings and describe the results in the comments, as well as ask your questions.
