RPCS3 GPU recommendations increase due to dropped driver support
AMD and Nvidia have forced RPCS3 to increase its recommended GPU requirements
The team behind RPCS3, the PlayStation 3 emulator, has announced that it has increased its recommended GPU requirements for Windows. This is due to AMD and Nvidia’s decision to drop driver support for older Radeon and GeForce graphics cards. Now, the emulator’s recommended GPUs are Radeon RX 5000 series and GeForce RTX 20 series or newer.
Note that these increased hardware recommendations have nothing to do with performance. RPCS3 only requires a graphics card that is Vulkan 1.2-compliant and has active driver support from its manufacturer. For the most part, RPCS3’s performance is CPU-limited, making it the most impactful piece of hardware for this emulator. Because of this, RPCS3 has an official “CPU Tier List” to help PS3 fans determine whether their processor is suitable for PlayStation 3 emulation.
This change to hardware recommendations was made to ensure stability when RPCS3 is used with the recommended hardware. For this reason, the emulator officially supports much lower-end GPUs on Linux. On Linux, AMD and Nvidia’s older GPUs are still supported by open-source drivers. This allows AMD HD 5000 and Nvidia GTX 400 series and newer GPUs to emulate PS3 games. Detailed RPCS3 hardware requirements are available here.
This doesn't mean that RPCS3 is suddenly more GPU demanding, there's no associated code-side change.
PS3 is a CPU-based console and very CPU heavy to emulate due to its CELL arch. As long as you have a modern Vulkan 1.2 GPU, your CPU is ultimately what matters for performance.
— RPCS3 (@rpcs3) October 27, 2025
Intel GPUs remain unsupported
Note that Intel GPUs are not recommended for playing RPCS3. This applies to both the Linux and Windows versions of RPCS3. It is currently unknown why Intel graphics cards are not recommended. It could be due to bugs or other issues within the emulator, or because the RPCS3 team may not have adequately tested Intel hardware to issue an official recommendation. Either way, if you are into PS3 emulation, you’re probably better off sticking to Radeon or GeForce GPUs.
Update – The RPCS3 team has confirmed that Intel’s GPUs lack support for several Vulkan features that are required for RPCS3 to function. This includes support for shaderStorageImageMultisample, which the team said is a hardware feature and “not a driver problem”. Hopefully Intel can impliment these features into future ARC graphics cards.
You can join the discussion on RPCS3’s increased GPU requirements on the OC3D Forums.
