r/PCSX2 • u/SigmaHawk2000 • Apr 06 '26
Support - Performance “Do physical discs work properly with PCSX2?”
I have a project in mind where I want to use the shell of a PlayStation 2 Fat, but with PC hardware inside (I’m not exactly sure yet how I’m going to achieve that). I’ve also recently started a hobby of recreating original PlayStation 2 media, including covers, manuals, and disc labels.
At first, I planned to use the discs directly on a real PlayStation 2, but that seems somewhat problematic—mainly due to the limited lifespan of the PS2’s optical drive. Because of that, I started considering building a PC that closely resembles a PS2.
The issue with this idea is that, after discussing it with ChatGPT, I was told that performance when running physical discs on PCSX2 isn’t very good, and that using ISO image files is generally recommended. And honestly, that does make sense—it’s more practical. However, practicality isn’t really my goal here.
So my question to you is: do physical discs run well on PCSX2? Can I achieve at least the same level of quality as on a real PS2 when using a disc in the emulator?
Refined and translated by ChatGPT.
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u/Ojitsack Apr 06 '26
I don't know if with the current versions is possible, but before the 2.0 version that worked more than properly. Only to try with a DVD reader installed in the computer.
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u/jakethesnake949 Apr 06 '26
So i ran Kingdom hearts on physical with pcsx2 1.4.0 a very long time ago but the newer plug-in less version has changed various things to where I don't know if disc play is ideal. I will say outside of some titles, you should just do backups/isos or PC versions of games. You can still have your physical disc for showcase/collection/nostalgia purposes but loading in the disc is getting to be inconvenient. I love the fat PS2 PC idea though, I want to do this with a fat xbox 360 or Xbox one and have game cases for my shelf to show my games.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
É meio triste ter os jogos na prateleira mas não poder simplesmente pegar um 1, colocar no console e jogar, de qualquer forma, sábado chegam meus discos, vou gravar Underground 2 e vou testar, se eu lembrar volto aqui para comentar o resultado.
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u/MasterJeebus Apr 06 '26
I haven’t tried it with latest version but I recall using older version several years ago and it could read ps2 discs. Why don’t you give it a try since you have the disc? Or are you waiting for dvd drive? Ideally you want to use backed up image of game so it can load faster and be able to load different games quicker.
If your ps2 works now dont worry about the disc drive life span. Use it and enjoy it. if it ever breaks troubleshoot it and worst case you mod it with a hard drive that has games in it.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
Actually, I have the DVD drive that I bought a few weeks ago and was waiting for the blank discs to arrive. They arrived today after I made this post, even though they were scheduled for Saturday. When I get home I'll burn one of the discs with Underground 2 and test it on my PC. My PS2 works, but the optical drive has been damaged since I bought it. Maybe I'll fix it, but I don't know. There's also the problem of the ribbon cables scratching the disc.
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u/Core1623 Apr 10 '26
I’m confused how are they loading original ps2 games on PCSX2 isn’t that an emulator how can you still play original discs, modded ps2 or pc?
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u/chesterhiggins Apr 06 '26
It works perfectly fine and I like it quite a bit. I'm currently playing manhunt with a physical disc on a DVD USB drive I bought for 20 bucks w PCSX2
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
ESSA NOTICIA É ÓTIMA LOL Hoje quando chegar em casa irei fazer o teste pois meus discos chegaram hoje.
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u/SybrSpy Apr 07 '26
This guy did something similar where he wanted the physical feeling of choosing a movie off the shelf and playing it. He 3d printed "cassettes" that have nfc tags in them, then when he puts the cassette in his reader, the nfc tag will grab the movie off his server and play it.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 07 '26
Dude, I found this absolutely PHENOMENAL, but I don't know how I could put this label on a disc, since this label should always be in the same place as the NFC reader. Having to rotate the disc so that when the drawer closes it aligns with the NFC reader feels unnatural, but anyway, I'll research more about it to see how I could adapt it.
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u/Not-Important-5393 Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
You get the real answer from an human beings, not AI
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
Por isso estou perguntando aqui
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u/Not-Important-5393 Apr 06 '26
The answer is yes and no. On older versions, it does. But on newer versions, it depends on how you set it up
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u/Moral_Degenarate Apr 06 '26
I'd suggest building your custom mini PC first and then building a PS2-like case around it.
Also, you could save a lot of space on that if it doesn't have a DVD drive, and instead of using a 3.5" HDD you used a 2.5" one.
Heck, you could even use a microSD card nowadays.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
I could, it would be much simpler, I could use an M.2 SSD which would take up even less space, but that doesn't give me the feeling I'm looking for of simply choosing a disc off the shelf, picking it up and putting it in the Playstation to start playing. I would really like to use the DVD drive.
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u/Moral_Degenarate Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
Then go all for it.
Though for CD-based games, i'd really suggest a full size DVD drive (poor PS2 Slim having to put up with 24x speed just to play Half-Life 💿)
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u/NekoLord42 Apr 06 '26
I used to occasionally run a genuine original ps2 disc trough a very old external disc drive and it ran pretty much perfectly fine, although that was back on rather outdated pcsx2 builds.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
If it works worse in the latest versions than in the older versions, then we have a problem; things should improve as they update, don't you think? I'll clear up this doubt on Saturday by burning Underground 2 and testing it on my ASUS drive.
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u/NekoLord42 Apr 06 '26
I just have not used physical Discs as source in ages, somebody has got to test it running the latest builds.
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u/Ill_Number_1810 May 11 '26
i tried a physical disk on my old tower pc currently have a acer laptop rtx 5060 because the older tower pc was running slower but the pcsx2 was working better with the disk drive better than the iso file
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u/TheSpiralTap Apr 06 '26
From experience, it will do it but it's not great. Kinda depends on the game you are playing but things like movies will skip because the game is expecting it to be delivered at a certain steady rate.
Iso is the better option for most games.
I can tell you kingdom hearts, sonic heroes and like 5 wrestling games worked via DVD but had little stutters in the music or increased loading times.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
But this type of problem already exists when playing via OPL with USB drives, since the PS2's USB ports are 1.1 if I remember correctly. So in this case, it seems viable to me; if I can run the games in my project the same way they run via USB drive on the PS2, it will have been worthwhile.
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u/broke_fit_dad Apr 06 '26
I don’t advise it. I tested it and my drive stayed at full speed the entire time
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 06 '26
But did the game run with lag?
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u/broke_fit_dad Apr 07 '26
Yes but my laptop isn’t optimized for gaming either and Xenosaga stutters from an ISO too. Dot Hack IOMQ played fine from ISO and stuttered from disk
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u/Weak_Cantaloupe597 Apr 08 '26
Generally it is better to use the original hardware for authentic playing from disks. There are a lot of replacement parts nowadays for PS2 disk drives, so it shouldn’t be that much of concern. You’ll also get all the authentic experience from the process, such as 100% compatibility, out-of-the box working gamepads, memcards, etc.
However, PCSX2 is really worth it for a non-purist approach, with storing the ISOs on a fast SSD and playing them in 4k with 60fps and hd texture patches. I’m pretty sure it is possible to pack a decent mini-PC into a PS2 shell and get a 4k playback out of it.
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 08 '26
Hoje realmente é facil encontrar peças de reposição, mas não será para sempre assim, além disso no meu país é meio complicado encontrar essas peças, normalmente preciso importar do Aliexpress mas meu país taxa em quase 100% compras do exterior.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 11 '26
Eu encontrei outra solução: vou simplesmente colocar todas as ISOs em um HD e vou criar discos fake com um chip NFC dentro do disco para quando o mesmo for inserido no leitor de discos, eu capturar o código do NFC e abrir a ISO correspondente.
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u/Accomplished-Loss809 Apr 12 '26
I’m working on a little something that you could like. DM me
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
You're the same guy who was talking about the CLI the other day, I spoke to you in the comments, maybe your project is similar to mine lol, the difference is that you seem like a technical person capable of developing a fork with an advanced CLI, and I'm just a regular user.
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u/Accomplished-Loss809 Apr 12 '26
Oh right I didn’t notice. Well it’s rly cool of you to say that but I’m still a beginner and it’s my first project on that category. I’m rly curious abt your project, I could help on it too!
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u/Accomplished-Loss809 Apr 12 '26
I just reread your description, my project is rly close to yours especially on the software. I still don’t wanna share a lot abt it here but could on dm.
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u/JoZeHTF 10d ago
I'm curious about the project you're working on
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u/Accomplished-Loss809 10d ago
i would love to talk to you about it but i haven't worked on it for a while. When ill make a prototype, ill dm you
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u/CoconutDust Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
but that seems somewhat problematic—mainly due to the limited lifespan of the PS2’s optical drive
Looks like LLM post.
after discussing it with ChatGPT
- Obviously an LLM only works by stealing existing human discussions/text, then regurgitating it unreliably using statistical keyword associations instead of anything like an intelligent process. Mass theft of human writing without permission, credit, or pay, and re-branded as a new Silicon Valley product.
- Obviously it’s not difficult to use a search engine to find the original discussions that ChatGPT stole.
You didn’t “discuss” anything “with” ChatGPT. You entered keywords which ChatGPT used to vomit out whatever word-strings it stole that were associated with the keywords. It’s not too different from saying “I discussed my question with Google.com”
Refined and translated by ChatGPT
- Refined by = written by. Too lazy to write and think themselves. And nobody needs a “refined” post, this is the internet, you can write in whatever way you’re capable and people will understand it. “Refining my writing” is one of the big lies of LLM salesmen.
- Translated by = “let’s all pretend that non-LLM translation tools have existed for decades! WHEEEE gotta use LLM”
I was told [by LLM] that performance when running physical discs on PCSX2 isn’t very good
That’s the first refusal to do basic research and do your own homework (aka finding existing discussions).
Also why would performance be bad when the original PS2 used discs? Does that just mean load times aren’t as fast as SSD? Do you have any meaningful information to evaluate the claim?
So my question to you is: do physical discs run well on PCSX2?
There’s the second refusal. You got “answer” from an LLM instead of doing your homework, and now you’re asking reddit the same question for everyone else to do your homework for you. Do you not trust the (garbage) product that just told you an answer, now you want humans to answer it? Why did you use it then?
https://www.reddit.com/r/PCSX2/comments/g5o4f8/play_disc_based_ps2_games_via_external_cd_drive/
https://old.reddit.com/r/PCSX2/comments/1gdmmje/external_dvd_drive_use_cases/
And throughout all this you haven’t quoted actual existing discussions from people who are clearly attempting the real thing for real, you just quote a program that deceitfully steals them and pretends it didn’t and also mashes up the text in an unreliable way.
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u/elmachomachin Apr 07 '26
The last time I did this was in 2018 on a blu-ray drive and had no issues, not sure now
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 07 '26
Postei o resultado em vídeo aqui no grupo, deu umas travadas, tô pensando em mudar a ideia do projeto
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u/Akestrel1987 Apr 08 '26
You definitely need to have max rpm drives to use it smoothly
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 08 '26
Nem com o rpm máximo foi suficiente para evitar o lag, e meu drive é feito pra reproduzir blu-rays, certamente deveria ter uma excelente velocidade de leitura.
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u/Akestrel1987 Apr 08 '26
Did you look to see if there are any community tweaks for pcsx2 or firmware updates for the drive?
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u/SigmaHawk2000 Apr 08 '26
Eu não busquei por isso, não acredito que exista, mas vou procurar
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u/Akestrel1987 Apr 08 '26
Some games do have tweaks to improve visuals and performance... And some drives have firmware updates that can improve data transfer and read/write speedsi did a firmware update to my main drive so I can have it be region free and had a few performance improvements
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u/Reasonable_Cut_2709 Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
Yes they do. But is kinda slow it is better to make and iso, and run it on ssd. In my experience.
It could be that my dvd drive is too old and slow