The Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator achieves a huge performance boost with its Prometheus release

Now, thanks to the emulator’s Prometheus update, the Yuzu emulator now supports multi-threaded processors, allowing the software to take advantage of modern processors. This has enabled significant performance boosts on modern gaming PCs, though high-levels or single-threaded performance are still preferred for emulation purposes. 

Over at BSOD Gaming, Yuzu’s multi-core update has been shown to offer performance gains of 2x or more in some Switch titles, reduce loading times in others and increase framerate stability in most Switch games. The only exception in this regard is The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which currently runs worse. A patch for the Yuzu emulator is in the works which is set to address these performance issues. 

Another recent update for the Yuzu emulator has significantly reduced the Yuzu emulator’s memory footprint, highlighting the rapid pace of innovation for the Yuzu emulator. If this rate of improvement continues, the Yuzu Emulator could deliver PC gamers an experience that’s akin to a Switch Pro 4K system. Not bad given the age of the Switch console. 

The development of the Yuzu Emulator’s multi-core support started in February 2020, which means that the Prometheus update for Yuzu was created within three months. Right now, many Yuzu games are now limited by Yuzu’s emulated GPU, which can be limited by single-core CPU speeds, GPU bus speeds (PCIe connection speed), GPU drivers and the user’s graphics card.  

Below is a video from BSOD Gaming which highlights the performance benefits of Yuzu’s multi-core update.