RPCS3: A PS3 Emulation Tutorial Guide

RPCS3: A Tutorial Guide for PS3 Emulation

RPCS3 Tutorial:

RPCS3 is now good enough to emulate some games at full speed, therefore this guide. This is what you need to start playing PS3 Games on your PC now.

Hardware Requirements:

All hardware requirements are mandatory. If you don’t have one of the the requirements do not continue with the guide, the emulator will not work for you.

x64 Bits OS, RPCS3 doesn’t work on 32 bit systems.
A CPU that supports SSSE3 (AMD: Bobcat, Bulldozer, Piledriver. Intel: Xeon 5100/5300/3000 Series, Core 2 Duo/Extreme/ Quad, Core i7/i5/i3, Pentium Dual Core, Celeron 4xx Sequence Conroe-L, Celeron Dual Core E1200, Celeron M 500 series, Atom).
A dedicated Graphic Card that supports OpenGL 4.3 ( Nvidia GeForce 400 Series and newer, ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series and newer, Intel HD Graphics in Intel Haswell processors and newer).

Software Requirements to Works :

Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2015.
RPCS3 Latest Build.
LLE Modules/Libraries: MEGA | GDrive | Mirrors

How To Install

Update Directx and install Visual C++ Redistributable.
Download RPCS3 Latest build extract it to a folder.
Download LLE Modules, extract inside RPCS3 folder, combining with existing dev_flash folder.

How to Usage:

Launch RPCS3 with rpcs3.exe
To add games you can either install .PKG files from Boot -> Install PKG OR by copying the game PS3_GAME folder to \dev_hdd0\game\
(Where *game ID* is the exact ID without any dash or spaces)
For some games you also need a .RAP file they must be placed on:
\dev_hdd0\home\00000001\exdata\
Then you can launch the games by double clicking on right click Boot.

Settings:

At this stage there aren’t really many settings to tweak. I’ll explain the most important settings here to start go too Config -> Setting.

CORE:

PPU/SPU Decoders: We are given 3 options for each here:

Interpreter (Precise): Slowest but the most accurate emulation, use this if the game crashes.
Interpreter (Fast): The default setting, games should run faster on it at the expense of compatibility.
Recompiler (LLVM/ASMJIT): Fastest mode. Can achieve full speed on games where interpreter cannot. Also it takes a lot longer to start the game. It might not work for some games.

Load Libraries:
Some games require libraries (LLE Modules) to run (these are included on “Software requirements” 4.) By default all should be disabled. You will only enable them when specific games need it. Though most games might need libsre, libresc, librtc and libspurs_jq. (thanks Annie).

GRAPHICS:

Render:
Null: Nothing, no video, you don’t want this.
OpelGL: The most compatible of all.
DRD12: DirectX12 mode it’s faster but requires windows 10 and compatible card (AMD / NVIDIA).
Vulkan: Fast but requires a vulkan compatible card.
Aspect Ratio: Leave default 16×9.
Resolution: You should always try to run the games at the resolution they run on a real PS3. If unsure use 1280×720.
Frame Limit: Set on Auto.
All other options should be disabled, you can enable Vsync but for me it makes no difference since we are already limiting frames.

AUDIO:

Doesn’t matter. Leave default XAudio2 or OpenAL. If sound is bad it’s most likely because emulation is slow, this isn’t fault of the sound plugin at all.

INPUT/OUTPUT:

It enables/Disables peripheral support, since emulation is not good yet most of this are irrelevant now. Pad handler should be set to Keyboard. It might seem like using XInput would allow you to use a gamepad but i was never able to get it to recognize mine. Stick to “Keyboard” or use Xpadder to map the keys to your gamepad buttons.

MISC:

Select always start after boot, everything else disabled.

NETWORKING:

Set to disconnected.

SYSTEM:

I like to set it to English else the games might show up in Japanese. Some Japanese games might need this setting set to “Japanese” to work (thanks Annie).