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The Last of Us, God of War 3, LittleBigPlanet 3 and more run significantly faster now on the PC via RPCS3


A few days ago, we shared a video in which the RPCS3 showcased a number of games running on the PC via the Playstation 3 emulator, RPCS3. And today, we are happy to report that this PS3 emulator can run various games faster than before.

Whatcookie, one of the RPCS3 contributors, has managed to significantly improve performance in a lot of games that use Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA). This Anti-Aliasing method made use of the PS3’s CELL SPU cores to take load off the weak PS3 GPU to give it more time to push impressive visuals and was first used in God of War 3 back in 2010.

Whatcookie’s recent changes allow the RPCS3 team to patch SPU ELF’s directly. This allows them to patch multiple games, various game regions and versions without having to do them separately on a game-by-game basis. Sadly, the patch doesn’t work with every game that uses MLAA as some games load it in a way that cannot be patched yet.

For instance, the patch for The Last of Us, is actually one of those titles which cannot be patched with the new SPU Elf method. However, Whatcookie went ahead and patched the game specifically as well.

The following video showcases most of the PS3 games known to use MLAA that work with the patch. Some of the missed games include Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, which did see SPU usage decrease, however frame-rates didn’t change much. Motorstorm Apocalypse also saw a small performance improvement and probably a few more we missed.

All in all, RPCS3 is progressing nicely and we can’t wait to see what the team will be able to accomplish in 2020.

Enjoy!

RPCS3 - Major Performance Improvements in TLoU, GoW 3 + Ascension, LBP 2-3, and more! (MLAA Patch)