AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Tops PS3 Emulation Rankings, Thanks to AVX-512

News
By
published

AVX-512 support drives AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X to top spot in RPCS3.

RPCS3
(Image credit: RPCS3)

AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X has grabbed a top spot in RPCS3, a multi-platform open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator. The CPU outperforms all of its predecessors as well as rivals from Intel. RPCS3 gained AVX-512 support earlier this year, and AMD's latest CPUs based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture fully support AVX-512 instructions. 

AVX-512 support brings a 30% performance improvement to RPCS3, which is enough to make AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X the most powerful CPU to emulate PS3 using this emulator. Evidently, increased single-thread performance of AMD's Zen 4 plays a big role here as well since the CPU outperforms AVX-512-enabled Intel's 11th Generation Core 'Rocket Lake' processors (via Reddit). 

(Image credit: RPCS3)

Intel's AVX-512 instructions are perfect for emulating Sony's PlayStation 3. This console is based on the Cell CPU featuring one general-purpose Power core and eight synergistic processing elements (SPEs) featuring a proprietary instruction set architecture with in order execution and 128-bit SIMD organization. The Cell processor offered explicit parallelism and large file registers, a combination that AVX-512-supporting multi-core CPUs fully support. Meanwhile, the popular LLVM compiler can automatically choose the best code path that can be executed and in case of AVX-512-enabled hardware it brings a 30% performance uplift. 

Truth to be told, contemporary gaming PCs are powerful enough to emulate Sony's PlayStation 3 game console from 2006, and most of them should be good enough to play some old games and relieve experience from 15 years ago. Meanwhile, RPCS3 can add some eye candy using AMD's FSR technology as well as some additional framerates courtesy of modern hardware to get a more 2022 experience. 

It remains to be seen how AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X processor stacks up against Intel's Core i9-13900K, but we are pretty sure that the former CPU will continue to lead  — at least in applications that take advantage of AVX-512 instructions. A 30% performance bump is hard to offset with high clocks and large caches alone. 

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • adamve
    I find this product to be very powerful, performing better than others. Love AMD, I am using AMD Chip on computer to use LDPLAYER emulator
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    So it tops the chart in STOCK only and ONLY compared to the 12thgen, hmm get and tune a 12700k or pay through your nose for an 7950x??? Tough choice...

    Reply
  • Ogotai
    TerryLaze said:
    hmm get and tune a 12700k
    yea IF you know how to do that, out of abut 50 people i work with, only 3, maybe 4 would know how to do that. using this as way to make intel look better ( which you have done a few times already ) then amd, shows extreme bias, and favoritism. some there would get a ryzen cpu, because of the fact they are sick and tired of intels BS the last few years.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Ogotai said:
    yea IF you know how to do that, out of abut 50 people i work with, only 3, maybe 4 would know how to do that. using this as way to make intel look better ( which you have done a few times already ) then amd, shows extreme bias, and favoritism. some there would get a ryzen cpu, because of the fact they are sick and tired of intels BS the last few years.
    But according to everybody in this forum all of the intel CPUs already come overclocked.
    So the people that did provide the numbers for the chart are knowledgeable people that did return the settings to stock to do this tests.
    If you just randomly buy one of these CPUs in a system you won't have to do anything.

    The only hard thing is to tell an 12700k with avx from one without avx.
    But then again even the 12700k without avx is already s-tier, so much faster than a real PS3 already, so why even care if you are a little bit more faster.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Ogotai said:
    yea IF you know how to do that, out of abut 50 people i work with, only 3, maybe 4 would know how to do that. using this as way to make intel look better ( which you have done a few times already ) then amd, shows extreme bias, and favoritism. some there would get a ryzen cpu, because of the fact they are sick and tired of intels BS the last few years.
    How many of those 50 people are using a $600+ CPU in their home system, and of those that don't, how many would spend that much to emulate PS3 games?
    Reply
  • Ogotai
    TerryLaze said:
    But according to everybody in this forum all of the intel CPUs already come overclocked.
    and some have called that intel doing what it can to make their chips compete with amd, at all costs. as it is obvious that intel NEEDS the higher clocks to complete, this was evident with 12th gen and zen 3.

    overclocked and tuned, IMO are 2 different things. OC = setting the multiplier, " bus speed " and voltage to get the cpu to run faster, and leave it at that. tuned = getting the cpu to run faster the best way it can, the best bus speed, lowest voltage, and best multiplier.
    the point i am trying to make, that you obviously always seem to overlook when you make such posts, not every one knows how to get all the performance they can out of their chips, most will just buy set up and use at what ever the cpu and board allow for, but you seem to think that every one will do what you reference to, but that should clearly not be the case.

    spongiemaster said:
    How many of those 50 people are using a $600+ CPU in their home system, and of those that don't, how many would spend that much to emulate PS3 games?
    that is irrelevant, and again, not the point i was trying to make to terry. a guy i work with just spend about $5200 on a new desktop, so yes there ARE some of those 50 people that would spend $600+ on a cpu, which i am pretty sure he put the 13900k in it. i guarantee this guy will not do anything to this comp other then plug it in, connect the cables to it, and continue to play which ever games he plays. FIAK, they have a PS3 to play the games on if they were to play PS3 games, and once again, this was in response to terry claiming about people tuning their comps, which you obviously overlooked
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Ogotai said:
    that is irrelevant, and again, not the point i was trying to make to terry. a guy i work with just spend about $5200 on a new desktop, so yes there ARE some of those 50 people that would spend $600+ on a cpu, which i am pretty sure he put the 13900k in it. i guarantee this guy will not do anything to this comp other then plug it in, connect the cables to it, and continue to play which ever games he plays. FIAK, they have a PS3 to play the games on if they were to play PS3 games, and once again, this was in response to terry claiming about people tuning their comps, which you obviously overlooked
    No, I did see it, but you missed my point. You chose to focus on how few people you know that are willing to overclock. That number is likely about the same as the number of people you know that are going to spend over $600 on a CPU. And the further you go up the cost tree, the more likely that user is going to be to overclock so you're going to get overlap.
    Reply
  • Ogotai
    spongiemaster said:
    but you missed my point.
    no, you missed my point. terry seems to think that any one that buys a comp, will overclock it, tune it, adjust power limits, etc. when in fact that is false.

    spongiemaster said:
    You chose to focus on how few people you know that are willing to overclock. That number is likely about the same as the number of people you know that are going to spend over $600 on a CPU. And the further you go up the cost tree, the more likely that user is going to be to overclock so you're going to get overlap.
    you chose to focus on that not me, see my reply above about missing the point.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Ogotai said:
    overclocked and tuned, IMO are 2 different things. OC = setting the multiplier, " bus speed " and voltage to get the cpu to run faster, and leave it at that. tuned = getting the cpu to run faster the best way it can, the best bus speed, lowest voltage, and best multiplier.
    So in this case, in the chart they show what do you think stock and tuned are in this chart?! You think it is OC and tuned?! Since that's what you are explaining here.
    If it is OC and tuned then you are saying that intel is hurting their performance while you also say that they push it because they need the clocks...both can't be correct at the same time.
    Reply
  • Ogotai
    TerryLaze said:
    So in this case, in the chart they show what do you think stock and tuned are in this chart?! You think it is OC and tuned?! Since that's what you are explaining here.
    If it is OC and tuned then you are saying that intel is hurting their performance while you also say that they push it because they need the clocks...both can't be correct at the same time.
    i never said that. you sure love twisting things around, then shoving words down peoples throats, dont you ?

    YOU 1st said tune, then in another post, said overclock so which one is it? , i originally commented on what you said " hmm get and tune a 12700k " which i said, IF you know how to do that. most would just get the 7950x cause they wouldnt know how to tune a 12700k, like you suggest.

    let me say it again... YOU seem to think that anyone that buys any cpu, all know how to overclock, tune, and change power limits etc. but that is not the case. but you sure think it is.

    just as i thought, even you missed my point. figures.
    Reply