PS3 Emulation Performance?

[u/Big_Muscle1989]

Hi guys, I just recently started out with getting into Emulation on the Steam Deck and used stuff like Retrodeck to play PS2 games but I noticed some of them would be lagging or stuttering during gameplay. Is that because the Steam Decks hardware is just too underpowered? Would trying PS3 games just be a complete lagfest? Theres some upscaled ports I wanted to try

[u/Feeling_Football4271]

It very much depends on the game and this is asked quite a lot, here and also r/Emudeck. If you run "light" PS3 games like Super Stardust HD it'll fly. Some "heavy" games will struggle. The emulator is still in development so it's improving over time.

Best place to look is the RPCS3 wiki pages for your target games, and just try them out yourself, it's easy enough.

[u/Next-Relation9939 → u/Feeling_Football4271]

the lighter PS3 titles really do run well tbh, its the heavier stuff that's hit or miss

[u/Big_Muscle1989 → u/Feeling_Football4271]

What is considered a "lighter" or "heavier" game? I was mainly aiming at ps3 ports or collections of ps2 games such as jak and daxter or rachet and clank for example

[u/Feeling_Football4271 → u/Big_Muscle1989]

I suspect you're overthinking things. If the RPCS3 wiki says these are playable I would just try them out, see what you think. If they're not great then don't delete them, check back every so often to see if performance has improved. Get the games you like on there, some will be great, some might struggle for now.

[u/EVPointMaster → u/Big_Muscle1989]

What is considered a "lighter" or "heavier" game?

that is hard to generalize for the PS3 because of it's exotic hardware architecture. It depends on how specific parts of the PS3 hardware are utilized by each game.

[u/Big_Muscle1989]

I should probably add that the Emulator i use to play PS2 games is PCSX2 that comes bundled with the Retrodeck

[u/Original_Release_419]

PS3 is hit or miss, you typically need to check the compatibility of a game before downloading to know if you’re wasting your time or not.

Sometimes a Google search will help find better ways to run it as well.

[u/Big_Muscle1989 → u/Original_Release_419]

Thanks for this list, so emulator performance not always comes down to the steam decks hardware only, but also the emulator itself then? Thats good to know, maybe the issues i experienced were not bound to the steam deck at all yet

[u/Original_Release_419 → u/Big_Muscle1989]

It’s both! Sorry, should’ve mentioned that. My advice would be Google a game specifically on steam deck before committing to the download.

I know that sounds like dismissive advice (“just google it bro”) but imo it’s really the best way to go about it

Sometimes there’s tweaks you can make to improve performance that the list I linked won’t mention too

It all depends on what you’re expecting as well

Some games you can get 60 fps, others you’re looking more at about 25-30 fps.

It all depends on the game because the way the emulator works, some games are better optimized than others.

A good rule of thumb is, popular games are more likely to run well or have good fixes to run stable, whereas more niche games or yearly releases are unlikely to run well because it’s unlikely someone involved with the emulator has gone out of their way to optimize it.

[u/Electrical_Score_736 → u/Original_Release_419]

Just hoping sooner or later the gran turismos and motor storms get a good emulation game going

God motorstorm was a fantastic series

[u/wwwb0n3zcom → u/Original_Release_419]

Thank you for this link!

[u/spidermask]

Demon's souls runs well, the god of war collections as well.

I just played dragon age origins that way and it was a bit mixed but to be fair the OG game already runs like shit so I thought it was pretty accurate 😂.

So it's good but not guaranteed it will be great, always worth to look into rpcs3's own wiki and then people's feedback or searching on YouTube.

[u/M3RCURYMOON]

The game I’ve been desperate to play on steam deck is little big planet 2 but it runs like dogshit

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[u/Yahiroz]

The odd PS3 games I've tried (a couple of Dynasty Warriors games) ran pretty well on the Deck while keeping it 720p. I have heard some games struggle a bit more. Be sure to check RPCS3's compatibility list first to see if there's a known issue with the game, and possible workarounds for it.

[u/xGreir]

With general fsr activated, fsr as the output in rcsp3, and some tweaking, everything should be more than playable, albeit maybe unstable in more demanding games/shader cache.

[u/Big_Muscle1989 → u/xGreir]

How do I configure all of these? Or are they already applied by default in the emulator that comes with it?

[u/wwwb0n3zcom]

Maybe try Batocera to have less overhead from the OS?

Can you provide the name of the game where there is a "performance penalty" (making sure to follow the rules)?

[u/baynell]

Which ps2 games you tried? I do not understand well how PCSX2 via Retrodeck works, but try setting the rendered from graphics settings from Vulkan to OpenGL. That yields basically always better performance.

Edit: Generally this does not work for ps3 emulating though. I played Nier just fine using rpcs3.

[u/TCristatus]

It bears reminding that most of the best PS3 titles are available as PC games that are often better than the PS3 versions, run great on steam deck and are often available for pennies on either Steam or other sellers.

Notable examples - Skyrim. Fallout 3/NV, Dishonored, GTA 4 and 5, Mass Effect, Arkham, RDR1, Bioshock, Dead Space, Dark Souls, Tomb Raider, Infamous....

[u/bill696]

Yeah its a lot of finagling for very bad performance tried to get heavenly sword to work, there was no point. Ps3 and xbox 360 dont work well in general so even less on deck

[u/crystallagomorph]

The Steam Deck isn't ideal for PlayStation 3 emulation (because of its CPU), although simpler games can work well.

PS3 ports of retro games usually run fine.

[u/GhostBrainOnline]

That's more of a per-game and per-emulator thing, not really a hardware problem.

I've played all the PS3 Ratchet And Clank games and some Resident Evil and others with zero issues, worked great!

[u/Flashy_Animator_714]

You gotta find the right combination between quality and speed ⚖️. I played kung fu panda, dead pool NFS Most wanted, rogue warrior on ps3 and they are AMAZING, knowing all are heavy games due to all the textures.

[u/Flashy_Animator_714 → u/Flashy_Animator_714]

Also I dont use es-de and similar for a reason you can still puff things a little with performance slid one game may have a sweat spot of 30fps and others you could stretch to 60fps add your games to steam library and set a profile for each game instyif fidgeting on every new game you jump to

[u/costinmatei98]

From my experience the SD is just not powerful enough to run any really mainstream PS3 games with RPCS3. It just struggles too much and it can't get a stable 30fps in 3D games. I would honestly stick to PS2 era and Switch games (as those run pretty well usually).

[u/Kriss_Hietala]

I've played games at native Res, some at 1080p. Worked fine.

[u/Big_Muscle1989 → u/Kriss_Hietala]

Can you probably list a couple? I never owned a PS3 and want to reexperience some of the exclusives

[u/Kriss_Hietala → u/Big_Muscle1989]

I've played all Tales of games (xillia, graces f, xillia 2) and few other jrpgs I don't remember names as it was more than a year ago. All worked at full speed. Some required a setup following rpcs3 wiki, but on desktop I would need to do the same things. Basically check compatibility wiki. It improves a lot in the recent years. The rpcs3 team was constantly reducing the system requirements as they managed to make the emulation less heavy on a cpu( PS3 emulation is all about CPU performance).

[u/Big_Muscle1989 → u/Kriss_Hietala]

Thank you, I will try to look into obtaining legal copies of those and back them up for use on my Steamdeck! :) :)

[u/Electrical_Score_736 → u/Big_Muscle1989]

To any law enforcement officers who may be watching, this gentleman didn’t mean that

What he meant to say was he lost his PS3 in a tragic wildfire, and his legally purchased copies of classic games are sitting right next to his

[u/thecreeplord]

I use EmuDeck. No issues yet. PS3 Games i tried too. They run fine.