This is the best processor to emulate PS3 games according to RPCS3

A popular community-driven chart ranking the performance of the Sony PlayStation 3 RPCS3 emulator has brought a new flagship processor to the throne. AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X has overtaken the current Intel Core i9-12900K to become the number one in the “S Tier” class of processors for speedy PS3 fun.

The new AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors have made a name for themselves in a wide range of computing tasks since they were released from orbit at the end of September. You can read more about the power of AMD Raphael in our in-depth AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X review. But one of the lesser streaming benefits of processors like the Ryzen 9 7950X and its Zen 4 architecture brethren is AVX-512 support – something deprecated by Intel a few generations ago. It turns out that AVX-512 SIMD extensions can provide quite a big boost in RPCS3.
RCPS3 works with or without AVX-512, of course, but with support now enabled in updated versions of the emulator, those with Zen 4 architecture processors can reasonably expect a performance boost. by 35%. It’s something not to be sniffed at, but surprisingly it doesn’t really lift the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X flagship CPU head and shoulders above its Intel Alder Lake rival, it’s only about 5% more fast. Indeed, RCPS3 is one of those applications that traditionally seem better optimized for Intel processors, as we noted in a previous article on this emulator.
playstation 3 emulator performance chart
Above is a screenshot of the RPCS3 [desktop] List of processor levels, like maintained by community members Yahfz and Loweys Litsman. Other users may see slightly different performance specs, depending on the wide range of PC configurations and variety of components available, so just use the chart as a good rough guide.

If you don’t have an ‘S Tier’ processor to play with RPCS3, remember that several much more affordable processors can still “beat the [original] PS3 frame rate in most titles. Even an affordable i3 12100 falls into this category, and for general playability at PS3-like refresh rates, you can go with even lower or older generation CPUs.

Will the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X enjoy a long reign as king of RPCS3? It seems fairly certain that the 13th Gen Intel Core Raptor Lake processors will be more than 5% faster than the Alder Lake architecture predecessors, which should wipe out the current winning margin of the AMD Raphael chip. The first Intel Raptor Lake chips are set to release on October 20, with pre-orders opening a week earlier.

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