This week brought exciting news from the developers of the PlayStation 3 emulator, RPCS3. They announced that the emulator now boasts stable and native support for the Arm64 architecture across Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. This impressive feat even extends to the Raspberry Pi 5, truly pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible with emulation on such humble hardware. While we’ve previously seen the Raspberry Pi 5 tackle GameCube and, less effectively, Wii games, it’s now taking on the challenge of PS3 emulation with some clever tuning.
For those curious about the visuals, there’s a YouTube video showcasing the emulator running on Arm64 Linux with the Raspberry Pi 5. It’s fascinating to see the emulation process, albeit with significant settings adjustments. By scaling down to a resolution akin to the 273p output of a PlayStation Portable, some 3D games become playable. This includes titles like God of War, God of War II HD, Catherine, and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. Naturally, 2D games handle much more smoothly, but the fact that 3D PS3-era games can achieve playable frame rates on a Raspberry Pi 5 is quite remarkable.
Meanwhile, on the macOS front, embracing native Arm architecture rather than relying on x86 emulation has yielded substantial performance improvements on Apple Silicon. By ditching that extra layer of translation over demanding PS3 hardware emulation, framerates have increased dramatically — sometimes by up to 100%. This development marks a significant step forward, turning Arm-powered PlayStation 3 emulation from a distant hope into a tangible reality.
Comparatively, while the Raspberry Pi 5 emulation aligns more closely with a PlayStation Portable’s capacity, the Apple Silicon tests reveal the potential for high performance in genuine PS3 heavyweights like God of War III and Skate 3. These games are notoriously tougher to emulate than HD ports of older titles, yet they still run smoothly, provided the hardware packs enough punch.
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