PS3 Emulation Tested on PS5 under Linux with RPCS3 – Does it work?
Digital Foundry Tests PlayStation 3 Emulation on PlayStation 5 using the RPCS3 Emulator
Using the PlayStation 5’s Linux Project, Digital Foundry has tested the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator on Sony’s newest console. Using RPCS3, the team were able to play PS3 games on PS5, something Sony has been unable to achieve officially.
Many PlayStation 3 exclusives remain locked to that platform, despite a push for strong backwards compatibility in all current-generation consoles. Simply put, the PlayStation 3’s exotic hardware is difficult to emulate, but does PS5 have what it takes to make this possible?
Can PS5 play PS3 games?
Using a hacked PlayStation 5 running Linux, Digital Foundry tested a variety of games with the RPCS3 emulator. Some ran great on PlayStation 5, while others struggled to achieve even PS3-level framerates.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 ran Ridge Racer 7 at a stable 60 FPS at 4K with Anisotropic Filtering set to x16. This delivered better visuals than the game’s original PS3 version, and even with these upgrades, PlayStation 5 delivered stable performance. A solid start for PlayStation 3 emulation on PlayStation 5.
(Images from Digital Foundry – YouTube)
For Resistance: Fall of Man, a popular launch title for the PlayStation 3, 4K 30 FPS performance was achievable on PlayStation 5. However, frame pacing issues made the gameplay experience subpar. That said, a patch for the game on RPCS3 could address this issue. If Sony wanted to bring this game to PlayStation 5 with a 4K upgrade, it is clearly possible.
(Images from Digital Foundry – YouTube)
The PlayStation 3 is a hard console to emulate, especially on PlayStation 5
Sony’s PlayStation 3 uses exotic hardware. Its Cell processor and SPUs are difficult to emulate. The PlayStation 3’s processor is fundamentally different from the x86 CPUs used in modern consoles, which means PlayStation 3 workloads need to be completed differently on modern hardware.
Sadly, the PlayStation 5’s Zen 2 CPU is not ideal for emulating PlayStation 3 games. When the RPCS3 team released its CPU Tier List, AMD’s Zen 2 CPUs are classed as “C-Tier”. With support for new instructions, AVX-512 specifically, AMD’s newer Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPUs make up most of RPCS3’s A, S, and S+ performance tiers. That’s how important more modern CPU features can be to PS3 emulation.
Sadly, there are instances where PlayStation 5 cannot run PS3 games at PS3-level performance. These games are not GPU-limited; they are CPU-limited. More specifically, they are limited by the performance of RPCS3’s SPU emulation, which runs much faster on more modern AMD/Intel CPUs.
Below, we can see that RPCS3 on PS5 runs Killzone 2 at lower framerates than the game on PS3. Digital Foundry also tested this game at 1440p (a 4x resolution boost) and achieved the same framerate, confirming it wasn’t GPU-limited.
For many PS3 games, especially later in the generation, features like MLAA were enabled via the PS3’s SPUs. This means that MLAA-disable patches can make many games run faster on RPCS3, as they reduce the challenging SPU workload. This has visual consequences, though this can be countered by running PS3 games at higher resolutions on RPCS3.
(Images from Digital Foundry – YouTube)
A mixed bag, and PS3 games on PS5 is possible using RPCS3
Digital Foundry has proven that much of the PlayStation 3’s library is playable on PlayStation 5 hardware using RPCS3. In the video below, Ridge Racer 7, Resistance: Fall of Man, and the MotorStorm series were shown running at higher resolutions with stable framerates. That said, not all PS3 games run well, and many of the system’s heavy-hitters would not run well on PlayStation 5.
With faster CPU hardware and support for instructions such as AVX-512, Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 6 console could emulate PlayStation 3 games more easily. In theory, PlayStation 3 emulation on PlayStation 6 could be a killer feature for the console, enabling support for PS3 classics with a 4K resolution boost and other potential upgrades. That said, it remains to be seen if Sony wants to do this. After all, building a bespoke PlayStation 3 emulator for PlayStation 6 would still be a challenge, even for Sony.
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