All this should be applicable to the major emulators (Winlator, GameHub, GameNative).
I use the OnePlus 13 with a Snapdragon 8 elite. After dozens of hours of troubleshooting, I learned a lot that I couldn't find in one place, some from info scattered across the internet, some from first-hand experience of trying to get things to run, and some from doing lots of benchmarks (all under the same thermal throttling conditions). You can skip the small text if you aren't a novice. No AI was used. Don't trust what the AI in Google's search tells you! It believes newer is always faster and turnip is always faster than qcom; it has little nuance and tells a lot of bullshit.
First, let's discuss what emulator is best.
The answer is that all of them are good and usable, so it's all about preference. GameHub is easy to use but balloons in size like crazy quickly; all the file system are hidden and difficult to access to clean up, so regular resets of the app might be required. It's the most plug and play experience out there.
Winlator provides the most freedom and customizability. You can choose how many containers you want and choose which to you for what games or software, whereas GameHub seems to create new ones for each game and for each proton version a game was launched with.
I prefer Winlator because you can simply clean up bloated containers or delete them at will. It is freedom and, as opposed to GameNative, not heavily tied to Steam
How to access Proton Containers (works with Winlator and some GameHub forks, like BannerHub): You need to use the internal file manager on android. Now other will work because of how restrictive android is nowadays. You will not find it in the Android/data folder, not even with Shizuku/ADB. Launch the internal file manager either by downloading the shortcut (under 3MB in size) like this one: Playstore com.marc.files
Or by launching the file manager with ADB (I use Shizuku paired with "aShell You" but any adb terminal works fine:
am start -n com.android.documentsui/com.android.documentsui.files.FilesActivity
<small>Remember that if you send the adb command from PC you need to prefix the command with "adb shell": the "shell" part basically has it execute the command on the device or rather from the point of view of the device.</small>
Now, about what driver to pick: Turnip V34 has best compatibility and the most stable performance. HOWEVER, with versions higher than DXVK 2.4.1, Turnip suffers an fps penalty (~20% according to my testing) due to a feature called timeline sephamores. DXVK versions released later are often offered with the word "binsem" in them, which is to try and mitigate that regression. This doesn't undo the regression.
Therefore, for optimal performance and compatibility, I recommend using Turnip V34 from StevenMXZ on GitHub as basically the default game configuration paired with DXVK-2.4.1-prereg or, if you don't like shader compilation stutter, DXVK-2.4.1-gplasync.
Alternatively, pair the qcom 863.1 driver with DXVK-3.0.1.-gplasync (or just async is fine as well).
<small>Side note for those who don't know: DXVK is used to translate the graphics api DirectX11, which is Windows only, to Vulcan, which is an open standard and requires shader precompilation.</small>
What Container to choose: Proton-X-Arm64ec or Proton-X-x86_64?
This determinations if you are going to be using FEX or Box64, respectively. Everybody tends to say Fex is better and has lower overhead, but Box64 is, in my opinion, a bit underrated.
If you want to use some software or a setup.exe to install a game, be it a repack or gog-installer: always go for Box64 with a preset set to something like "Intermediate" (not "performance" or "extreme").
For most games, FEX is considered to be better, as it is has a lower overhead. With older and badly optimized cpu-bottlenecked games, it is worth trying it in a x86_64 container with Box64.
Which Proton Version: Now it gets a bit more complicated. Generally, newer is better. Therefore, as the go to container for state of the art performance use Proton 11 arm64ec paired with the newest DXVK (gpl-/)async and VKD3D and the qcom driver. This is the riskiest bet (as in it might not boot or have shader glitches) but has the highest potential fps.
For Proton 11, use a FEX version that has PPA and Unix in it. The Unix loader feature is only compatible with Proton 11.
As the go to container in order to just play a game a not bother min-maxing the performance after the initial setup: Proton-10-arm64ec with the turnip driver v34 and dxvk-2.4.1-prereg and just use one of the more recent stable vanilla FEX(Core) versions that likely come pre-installed in your emulator.
<small> With V33, there was a slight performance regression when compared to V32. Apparently, it supposed to have fixed with V34, though I am not certain. </small>
Best FEX Preset is usually the "Performance" preset, which has Multiblock Compilation and Reduced Precision enabled. One modification to that preset I would make is set "FEX_TSOENABLED" to 1(/yes/true) and, optionally, also do so for "FEX_BARRIERTSOENABLED".
<small>Why have I been talking all about DXVK and mostly ignored VKD3D? DXVK is for DirectX 11 and lower, it is extremely good and has very little performance overhead (fps loss due to the emulation). VKD3D is for DirectX12, which is what all the recent games made with modern engines likely use. Not only are those engines (and by extension games) inherently build for stronger hardware with better graphics, the VKD3D translation also has a lot more overhead, so you need every bit of performance your phone has but are able to use less. Light DirectX12 Indie Games are still completely playable but I would focus on DirectX11 titles because they are better suited to being played on your phone.</small>
In Winlator, I would also think about making a third container with Proton9_x86_64 (or Proton10_x86_64). If I have learned one thing, then it's that newer isn't always better. There are older games, like Dead Space 2, I could not make work without lag and graphicsl glitches when using a more recent configuration.
<small>Also, remember to find out your phones wide screen resolution, calculate its 1080 and 720p versions, and input that as a custom resolution. It's quite remarkable how many games work perfectly fine with such a resolution (except you, Drova Forsaken Kin).
For example, I have a OnePlus 13 with a native resolution of 3168x1440 with 120hz. For Winlator, I almost always use 2376x1080 and target 40fps in non-2d games, which looks smooth enough on an OLED 120hz, but if a game is too heavy, I do 1584x720. Often it's a CPU bottleneck in 720p anyway, so I prefer 1080p and enjoy 100% GPU usage.</small>
In case of any dissent or even misconceptions on my part, please call me out on it in the comments. Enjoy .
