PCSX2 (PS2 Emulator) : The Best PlayStation 2 Emulator for Windows and Linux

PCSX2 is a PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows and Linux, started by the same team that brought you PCSX (a Sony PlayStation 1 emulator). Currently,with a high end PC it can emulate hundreds of games at full speed !

[ Detailed Introduction ]

PCSX2 is an open source Playstation 2 emulator. It’s purpose is to mimic the the PS2 hardware, using a combination MIPS CPU Interpreters, Recompilers and a Virtual Machine which manages hardware states and PS2 system memory.

PCSX2 is the first PS2 emulator that slowly showed us that PS2 emulation is possible. Today it has a large game compatibility that keeps growing with each new version. For a full compatibility list you may want to check the official site before trying to play a game.

The PCSX2 project has been running for more than six years. Once able to run only a few public domain demos, recent versions enable many games to work at full speed, including popular titles such as Final Fantasy X or Devil May Cry 3. Visit the PCSX2 homepage to check the latest compatibility status of games (with more than 2000 titles tested), or ask your doubts in the Official forums.

[ How To Use ]

• < 1 > Install PCSX2 from the official website”
• < 2 > Copy the files from the “Bios” map to the Bios map in Program Files.
• < 3 > Copy the files from the “Plugin” map to the Plugin map in Program Files
• < 4 > Enjoy!

[ System Requirements ]

Minimum

• Windows/Linux OS
• CPU: Any that supports SSE2 (Pentium 4 and up, Athlon64 and up)
• GPU: Any that supports Pixel Shader model 2.0, except Nvidia FX series (broken SM2.0, too slow anyway)
• 512MB RAM (note Vista needs at least 2GB to run reliably)

Recommended

• Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) with the latest DirectX
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2ghz or better
• GPU: 8800gt or better (for Direct3D10 support)
• RAM: 1GB on Linux/Windows XP, 2GB or more on Vista

[ Tips ]

The PS2 has the ability to play the games of the older Playstation 1.

A new Bios dumper is already available that can dump your PS2 Bios,ROM1,ROM2,EROM and NVM.Get it HERE

For maximum compatibility it is recommended that you use a BIOS image different than SCPH10000.BIN which is the oldest one.That’s because with this BIOS there are problems in memory card emulation and in other sections.

[ Notes ]

Because of copyright issues, and the complexity of trying to work around it, you need BIOS dump extracted from a legitimately owned Playstation 2 console to use the emulator.

PCSX2 only takes advantage of 2 cores so far; so a quad-core processor will not help with speed. We still plan to add quad-core support at a later date, if possible.

[ Related Articles ]

• PCSX2 Guide
• PCSX2 Official Forum
• Search results forPCSX2 from YouTube
• Article about PCSX2 From Wikipedia
• Unable to load bios: ‘bios/’, PCSX2 can’t run without that

[ Related Documents ]

• PCSX2 Bios and Plugins files Collection (from UploadingIt.com)

[ Official Download ]

(from Emulator-Zone.com)