I’ve had Emudeck before and played a lot of emulators fine but I struggled even getting PS3 to run. Not sure if I did something wrong. I’ve heard PS3 games can be a bit hit or miss on the Deck, but I’ve also seen clips of people playing them OK. Plus I’m not sure with the latest 3.5 software update if that helps, with the whole SMT fix.
What’s the best emulator for PS3 and what’s the best way to go about setting it up? Is there a guide specifically for PS3 emulation on the Deck?
Emudeck is just a convenient installer, you have to look at the actual emulators it runs for individual games. For PS3 there is basically only one option which is RPCS3. This is also what Emudeck installs for you.
There’s only one worth talking about and that’s RPCS3 but for anything remotely demanding the deck’s CPU is not good enough. Even modern desktop CPUs can struggle with PS3 emulation due to its relatively complicated architechture.
RPCS3 also runs pretty poorly on AMD CPUs without AVX512 like the deck’s.
What games are you ultimately interested in ? Some of the lighter ones will run fine though but if they are multiplatform like say RDR1 better off using an alternate eumlator like Yuzu for switch.
WipeoutHD ran okay iirc but even LBP1 struggled for me.
I was thinking about playing Demon’s Souls as it’s the only Soulsborne game I haven’t played
It’s totally fine for Demon’s. You can even patch and configure it to run at 60FPS (though there will be shader stutters)
Yeah this game seems to run pretty well! And make sure you set each game as per recommended settings on the RPCS3 compat list.
You’ll want to tinker with the performance settings within RPCS3 itself, and also make sure the game you are trying to play has a sufficiently high performance rating with this emulator. If it’s a game that is not currently running well even on a powerful PC, the Deck won’t be able to do much with it.
Retro Game Corps is reportedly working on a PS3 emulation video for the SD. I’m watching to see what he can get running and what he has to say about the most effective settings to tweak to improve performance.