The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has become the best choice for Sony's PS3 emulator, RPCS3, as revealed in the developer's CPU ranking list.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" CPU with AVX-512 support preferred for PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3

The newest processor from AMD surpasses the competition, including rival Intel. Additionally, RPCS3 attained AVX-512 support just a few days ago which we reported here. Luckily for the open-source emulator, AMD's latest Zen 4 microarchitecture supports AVX-512 instructions.

In RPCS3, AVX-512 support obtains a thirty percent improvement on performance, gaining the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, the most influential processor to assist with emulating the PS3 environment. Results showed that the AMD Zen 4's single-threaded performance is crucial due to the CPU surpassing the Intel 11th Gen Core 'Rocket Lake' CPUs, as seen on this Reddit post.

The Sony PlayStation console is established on the Cell processor showcasing one general-purpose Power core and eight SPEs, or synergistic processing elements, that features an instruction set architecture with 128-bit SIMD organization and in-order execution that is proprietary to Sony Electronics. The Cell CPU delivered direct equivalence and large file registers, which AVX-512 multi-core processors support. Furthermore, the LLVM compiler can choose the best code path for the compiler to execute, offering a performance increase of thirty percent.

The AMD Ryzen 7000 Desktop Processors feature:

Up To 16 Zen 4 Cores and 32 Threads+29% Performance Uplift In Single-Threaded AppsBrand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD25% Performance Per Watt Improvement Vs. Zen 3>35% Overall Performance Improvement Vs. Zen 3~13% Instructions Per Clock (IPC) Improvement Vs. Zen 3Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 SocketNew X670E, X670, B650E, B650 MotherboardsDual-Channel DDR5 Memory SupportUp To DDR5-5600 Native (JEDEC) Speeds28 PCIe Lanes (CPU Exclusive)105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)

Even though current PC hardware can emulate the Sony PS3 console, RPCS3 adds to the experience through AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology with increased frames per second.

While tests are still being completed comparing the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU to the Intel Core i9-13900K, there is much speculation that AMD will dominate the game emaultion market with the help of AVX-512 support, especially when showing a thirty percent increase in performance.

News Sources: RPCS3, Reddit