I'm a newbie speedrunner and I wanted my first recorded speedrun to be an old PS2 game that I played as a child, but I don't have a PS2 anymore. PCSX2 is an awesome program that plays my old games in a even better way than my old PS2 and it makes it even easier to record since it is playing it on the PC. However, as soon as I begin recording in OBS - BAM! My FPS drops from 60 to 30-36, dropping the speed of the game in 50% making it impossible to speedrun. I've already changed a bunch of configurations in the program and still, after 12 tries, not a single change happens. Is there any way to fix this? EDIT: My CPU usage when OBS is not recording is 20-30%, when OBS is recording it jumps to 97-100%

I wouldn't say PCSX2 is better than OG, but to each their own!

OBS using the CPU is pretty normal, there are a few things you can do to reduce the impact. I assume you have OBS settings in advanced mode

1. Reduce FPS from 60 to 30. (Video tab). Maybe even lower resolution to make it look less stretched.

2. If you have a supporting GPU, you can offload the encoding to your GPU (Nvidea NVENC, AMD whatever). Or keep it on X264. (Output, recording tab).

3. If you decide to go to X264, or if Nvidea NVENC doesn't speed things up, make sure to lower the bitrate a bit, and set the "CPU Usage Preset" to something faster (The faster it goes, the lower impact on your CPU).

Otherwise, you might want a better CPU. What is your current CPU if I may ask?

The above advice is good so I’m not gonna re-hash any of that. But I do want to provide you a warning that you should double check with the mods of the game you want to run to see how they feel about emulator.

PCSX2 is not a good emulator, it’s very inaccurate compared to a real console (it often has varying load times day by day depending on how your machine is running that day). As a result of that, it’s commonly banned from LB submissions, or sometimes it’s divided into its own category. Double checking with the mods or the LB rules might be good.

If you’ve already done that then this advice is moot, but I wanted to provide it just in case.

Thank you all for the great responses, As for my CPU, it is an AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2 GHz). I admit, it's not the best CPU in the market but it runs my games pretty well and since my school takes 14 hours of my day ( 10hr school day + 4 hrs commute ) I barely have time to play anyway, so I've decided to not to buy a better CPU. When it comes to the emulator, the rules of the game I'm speedrunning don't say anything about emulators, so I guess it's allowed?? (Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey (And yes, I want that to be my first speedrun) in case you want to check it)

Try a window capture of pcsx2 or maybe game capture also try to look into your settings and put it on ultra fast Settings > Output > Enable Advanced Encoder Settings and change the x264 preset to "ultrafast" (you might have to tick the advanced option box)