God of War, the classic 2005 PS2 game has received a major update for the unofficial native port on PC. The new version 3.0.1 patch improves overall performance and supports more hardware for those who wish to play the original game on the latest hardware. This patch fixes some major optimization problems that would previously restrict the framerate on less powerful computers.
Patch 3.0.1 adds GPU renderer and cuts setup time
This project is an evolution of the original version 3.0.0 which brought Early FINISH and Profile-guided optimization. Version 3.0.0 offered a 20% improvement during heavy battles and a 5% average increase in performance. Now the version 3.0.1 update offers further improvements based on VU1 code and reduced system overhead.
The updates to the VU1 code provide an increase from 51 to 57 FPS in average frame rate. During intense combat there's an improvement from 51 to 55 FPS. The update reduces thread wake-ups by about 150000/second to reduce the CPU load. There's also Performance, Balanced and Quality graphics profile support with sharp scaling and FXAA anti-aliasing.
The compatibility has received a big boost with a new GPU renderer for old Intel GPUs. Users are now warned if their CPU doesn't have the necessary SSE4.2 instruction set support. The first play and optimization setup has also been reduced from 63 minutes to only 24 minutes based on testing. You still need to provide your own original game files to be able to use the launcher.
The dev says it still doesn't maintain a consistent 60 FPS through the entire game. They are working to get it to the 60 FPS locked target but it's not fully there yet. You can grab the latest version on their official page. This latest update helps make the classic game even more playable on more hardware.
The VU1 optimizations are the real win here. Cutting thread wake-ups by 150k per second reduces CPU overhead significantly. This is how you fix emulation latency without brute forcing the clock speed.