RPCS3 Emulator Refreshes GPU Recommendations, Phasing Out Older Generations

The RPCS3 team has officially refreshed its recommended GPU list, and it’s a change that reflects both technological progress and industry realities. The developers of the popular PlayStation 3 emulator have dropped AMD’s Polaris-based RX 400 and RX 500 graphics cards, along with NVIDIA’s Maxwell and Pascal series (GTX 900 and GTX 1000), from their recommended hardware list.

Instead, the emulator now advises users to opt for GPUs starting from AMD’s RDNA (Radeon RX 5000) and NVIDIA’s Turing (GeForce RTX 2000) generations onward.

To clarify, this does not mean these older GPUs have been rendered obsolete or that RPCS3 will stop functioning on them. The developers specifically stated that this update merely reflects modern support realities: AMD and NVIDIA themselves have ceased driver updates for these older series, making it difficult to guarantee optimal performance or compatibility going forward. Users running older GPUs can still play games as usual, but without the long-term assurance of future support or fixes.

Interestingly, RPCS3’s minimum GPU requirement hasn’t changed at all – it still officially supports NVIDIA’s Fermi generation (the ancient GTX 400 series). The emulator’s performance, as many users know, is primarily CPU-bound rather than GPU-intensive. A strong processor often makes a far greater difference than a top-tier graphics card. As long as your GPU supports Vulkan 1.2, you’re in safe territory for smooth gameplay.

Some enthusiasts have noted that RPCS3 performs exceptionally well under Linux, where its Vulkan performance tends to outshine Windows builds. This could be related to how Linux handles resource scheduling and lower-level API optimization, giving the emulator a noticeable performance edge. Ironically, Sony’s own console operating systems are based on a BSD derivative rather than Linux, but RPCS3’s efficiency on Linux shows how open-source collaboration continues to benefit the emulator scene.

The timing of this update is also logical. AMD officially ended support for Polaris GPUs in late 2023, and NVIDIA followed suit by retiring both Maxwell and Pascal driver updates earlier this year. Without continued vendor maintenance, these cards risk missing critical optimizations that modern emulation workloads might depend on. Thus, RPCS3’s recommendation change isn’t arbitrary – it’s a practical reflection of evolving hardware ecosystems.

In short, if you’re using an RX 480 or GTX 1060, RPCS3 will still run perfectly fine, but it’s now clear that the emulator’s developers are aligning their future focus toward newer architectures. And if you’re serious about running PS3 titles with the smoothest experience possible, your best bet is pairing a modern Vulkan-compatible GPU with a powerful CPU. The emulator continues to improve with each update, proving that software innovation often outpaces the hardware it was built for.