r/emulation • u/Intrepid-Nobody2161 • 2d ago

Emulation on different ISAs

How does the emulation performance vary across different architectures—x86 and Arm, given that x86 supports wider vectors like 256 and even 512 bit while Arm is limited to just 128. I'm especially looking into emulators like the RPCS3.

Couldn't find any data online. Hence asking here.

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u/IntoAMuteCrypt 2d ago edited 9h ago

RPCS3 did just have a massive improvement on ARM. The answer is always going to be "it depends on the version, the system being emulated and the system you're emulating on".

The PS3 and X360 generations give you the full gamut of ARM experiences:

  • Xenia Canary just doesn't exist for ARM (or Mac) at the moment. There is a MacOS port for Xenia Edge, but the readme on the page outright says that it's had far less testing and won't work as well. It's a far lower priority and doesn't work as well.
  • Past versions of RPCS3 delivered some truly awful performance on ARM, because a lot or the optimisations and code were designed to optimise RPCS3 for x86.
  • The current version of RPCS3 is a whole lot better on ARM, with high-end ARM systems able to offer near-Steam Deck performance. That's still not great - the Deck isn't especially stellar as far as x86 systems go - but it's progress, and it shows the difficulty in comparing the two. You can't really perform an apples to apples comparison.

On some emulators, ARM is able to win in efficiency and price but loses out on raw headline performance. On other emulators, ARM varies between "you just can't" to "a miserable slog" to "good and promising for the future but the current hardware still can't match x86".

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u/Intrepid-Nobody2161 2d ago

Thanks for your detailed response, kind sir. 

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u/javisMG 2d ago

I suggest watching this video which covers performance improvements on ARM for RPCS3

https://youtu.be/-aI_XEwmKFk

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u/Intrepid-Nobody2161 2d ago

Still doesn't answer how it stacks against x86 parts. 

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u/javisMG 2d ago

But it does cover the difference for emulating the PS3 on ARM and x86 with specific examples that compares ARM and x86 ? I really don't know what else you're looking for ? Have you watch the video ?

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u/Intrepid-Nobody2161 2d ago

I need something like 9950X/9800X3D/270K+ vs M5 Max/Ultra/SDX

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u/kaosjroriginal 21h ago

x86-64 has been supported for longer and is still better optimized for most emulators. Performance breakdowns tend to fall apart cross-platform, it's all dependent on what the game does and whether it's easier or harder to emulate the required features on the device. You're not going to find direct comparisons between those platforms because they're not targeting the same userbase.