YUZU Switch emulator achieves 20-100% performance boost on Android

The YUZU Switch emulator has received a huge performance boost on Android with NCE

Earlier this year, YUZU, the Nintendo Switch emulator, gained support for a new platform, Android. This allowed Android users to play compatible Switch games for the first time. This was made possible thanks to steady performance improvements for the emulator, which has dramatically lowered the hardware requirements of Switch emulation.

In YUZU’s latest progress report, the YUZU team confirmed that they have implemented Native Code Execution (NCE) to the Android version of the emulator. This update changes YUZU from being Android compatible to Android “native”. This change allows YUZU to run more efficiently on Android, increasing emulation performance, battery life, and game loading times.

The YUZU team have reported FPS boosts that are typically between 20-100% with the addition of NCE. However, exact performance games vary significantly on a game-by-game basis, as well as on a device-by-device basis. Below we can see NCE’s impact on game performance on Samsung’s Galaxy S23.

(YUZU Performance improvements with NCE on a Samsung Galaxy S23 at 1x Scaling)

NCE is not a perfect addition to YUZU

While Native Code Execution is a great addition to YUZU, the feature does not work on all Switch games. NCE support needs games to support the 39-bit address space to work, and many older Switch games function using the 32-bit or 36-bit address space.

While a lot of 36-bit Switch games become 39-bit with game updates, this is not the case for all titles. These games will force YUZU to revert to DynamicJIT. This prevents these games from benefitting from NCE, but they will work.

(YUZU Performance improvements with NCE on a Google Pixel 7 Pro at 0.5x Scaling)

The YUZU Switch Emulator is getting better and better

Currently, the YUZU emulator’s website claims that 644 out of 2699 games running perfectly. A further 813 games run “great”, and another 415 games run “okay”. That means that over 50% of Switch games run “okay” or better.

YUZU is not the only popular Switch emulator. Ryujinx is also worth mentioning, even if it lacks an Android version.

You can join the discussion on YUZU’s improved Android performance on the OC3D Forums.