One of the disadvantages of the PS5 is that it is only backwards compatible with PS4 directly, but it is not compatible with PS3. This has meant that many of those who enjoyed the first HD console have had to move to the PC to ensure they can play their console games once again. This situation worsened a few months ago when SONY announced that it was going to close the PS3 online store and although they backed off, the sword of Damocles on that console had already been put on top and the path to becoming “abandonware” had begun.
A solution for many has been the use of emulators on PC, which allow us to play old systems on our computer, however the PS3 architecture has a certain level of complexity. Specifically, not from the graphical part where its GPU is a GeForce GTX 7900 from 2006 with 256 MB of VRAM, but from the processor part due to its unique architecture based on the Cell Broadband Engine, where for him the best and most advanced one of these emulators is the RPCS3 that thanks to the Intel Core 12 has reached new heights of performance.
RPSC3 breaks records on Intel Core 12
If you have an Intel Core 12 and you use RPSC3 and you want to get more performance then you have to do what the creators of the emulator say:
If you are using an Alder Lake CPU (Intel Core 12) with RPSC3, make sure you disable the small cores, otherwise you will be losing a lot of performance, since without the E-Cores you get AVX-512 and a better communication ratio in the ring. ADL performance is by far the best of any CPU architecture.
Comparing a i9-11900K and a i9-12900K, both at 5.2 GHz, with the AVX-512 turned on and with the HyperThreading disabled translates the God of War: Ascension starting area into a 10 FPS rise, 78 FPS vs 68 FPS compared to Intel Gen 11, which already gets more performance than Zen3. Generation 12 further increases the difference.
The reason why disabling the E-Cores gives much more performance here has a very simple explanation, Intel has long used a ring interconnection as the topology of its CPUs, which is curiously the same as that of the PS3 CBEA, for so the fact that there are more elements increases the intercommunication latency between them. Under the same principle they ask to deactivate multithreading, since this means having, for practical purposes, 16 cores in the communication infrastructure.
We must clarify that this is related to the fact that the management of communication between cores is one of the key elements of PS3 performance, hence it is necessary to reduce the number of active cores in the processor to 8. What is clear is that the Intel Core 12 is now the best CPU for RPSC3.
Intel does not recommend enabling the AVX-512 on Gen 12
As we have already mentioned from time to time, the key to emulating the SPE cores of the PS3 CPU, the Cell Broadband Engine, is the use of AVX-512 instructions. Unfortunately Pat Gelsinger’s company does not recommend activating them under the “supposed” threat of loss of warranty. What do we believe? Since it is necessary to deactivate the E-Cores to activate the AVX-512 this makes them a kind of miniature version of the future Xeon Workstations, which would explain Intel’s policy, since this makes competition to its processors.
Let’s not forget that AVX-512 instructions by their nature have a much higher energy cost than the rest, so if you are going to use them make sure you have good cooling with your Intel Core 12. Finally, remember that RPSC3 reached recently full compatibility with all console games.
