How many cores and threads do you need for RPCS3 emulator? CPU thread scaling test.
0Without recording add up ~2-5% of performance when gpu is at 95-100% usage.
Timestamps
00:00 Pc specs
00:04 God of War: ascension
02:42 God of War 3
04:42 Infamous
09:12 Motorstorm: Apocalypse
11:11 Red Dead Redemption
12:41 The Last of Us
17:11 Uncharted
19:53 Uncharted 2
24:16 Uncharted 3
27:26 Skate 3
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
1. To find each game settings go to this playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVhu7aCMT_tMyZcFAxS-iwR7PFRw8wKD9
Same settings were used in this video, except render resolution, in all these tests it was set to 150% render resolution aka 1080p.
2. 4 core 8 thread configuration is indeed bare minimal for these games, which is also official minimum system requirement in RPCS3 emulator. 4c/8t has okay performance, however, it has difficulties compiling shaders at the same time, using this configuration you will often see missing textures and reduced resolution because of it. System stability is bearable as well, however crashes will still occur often.
3. Don't be fooled by "good" performance of 6 core 6 thread configuration, it had worst experience out of them all. In games like infamous and skate 3 i had crackling sound issue which is known for these games. Red dead redemption was shocker for me, because it performed so badly that the game literally ran in slow motion. It also had the worst stability out of them all, games like the last of us and uncharted 2 and 3 were crashing so often it was impossible to even make benchmark runs. Game like uncharted 1 had very bad stuttering issue, when i was testing it felt like it was at the brink of crashing with many complete stops, you can see them in the video. This emulator clearly need at least 8 cpu threads to perform at minimum level, so 6c/6t performed the worst.
4. 6 core 12 thread is when it starts to be comfortable experience, however there is quite a bit of performance left on the table without using more cores, it had much better stability and frame consistency and not to mention performance than 6/6t configuration so this would be minimum for actual "playable" experience in these demanding games, though keep in mind those games especially uncharted 2 and 3 and the last of us are still unstable regardless of cpu configuration. This is a good sweetspot if you are more oriented for bang for buck, like 10400 or 11400 or 5600x.
5. 8 core 8 thread seems like have the bulk of possible performance of cpu core/thread configuration, i have heard that rpcs3 don't utilize more than 8 threads, but it's not entirely true. It will depend on the game, but in most extreme cases 8c/16t performed slightly better, overall very good configuration and a step better game stability than 6c/12t config.
6. Lastly 8 core 16 thread is when diminishing returns kicks in hard, however it's not useless. I believe it is ideal config for RPCS3 at this time as it not only delivers best stability, but also headroom for shader compilation of unexplored areas. Disabling HT/SMT is not recommended in majority of games.
For recording i used Nvidia Shadowplay.
Shadowplay settings:
3840x2160 resolution;
Framerate: 60;
Bitrate: 70mbps.
PC info:
cpu: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X;
gpu:GeForce RTX™ 3090 GAMING OC;
ram: G Skill TridentZ 64gb DDR4 3200 MHz cl14(4 sticks, dual channel);
mobo: ROG Crosshair VIII Hero X570 (WI-FI);
soundcard: Creative Sound BlasterX Ae-5 ;
cpu cooler: NH-D15 chromax.black;
pc case: Corsair 780T;
psu: Corsair HX1200 Platinum 1200W;
All 5950x settings were set on AUTO.
All 5950X settings were set on AUTO (in other words completely stock), amd virtualization feature has been enabled in the bios, nvidia resizeable BAR is enabled.
My motherboard's AUTO disables PBO by default. Power limits set to its defaults
PPT - 142W;
TDC - 95A;
EDC - 140.
"Process VRAM usage" - shows how much vram current running process (in this case this game) requires.
"Total allocated VRAM" - shows how much of VRAM is allocated from all programs in windows, windows itself, if opened - web browsers, spotify, discord, etc. Also allocation increases from multiple monitors as well, so the more monitors and with higher resolution are connected the higher allocation will be.
(This value is the same as in windows task manager, under GPU tab "Dedicated GPU memory usage")
Regarding the whole VRAM usage debate, none of these two values shows true game VRAM requirements and when it will start to starve of VRAM deficiency. And there are no ways to truly know it unless you test with less VRAM, but usually its impossible to test with same GPU as there are no ways to artificially limit VRAM usage. These values are more suited as guidelines rather than definitive proof, but usually performance starts to drop, when game has saturated 100% of "Total allocated VRAM" and it will have issues when "Process VRAM usage" will be at 100% of total GPU VRAM buffer.
The monitoring program used in the top left corner is MSI Afterburner On Screen Display + Rivatuner Statistic Server.