The Ryujinx Nintendo Switch emulator for PC has received a major memory management overhaul, as revealed in a blog post that went up yesterday. Nicknamed POWER (Performance Optimizations With Extensive Ramifications), this update greatly increases performance with improvements that range between 20% and 100% depending on the PC used.
The developers of Ryujinx have also posted some comparison benchmarks, showcasing the great performance strides made with this update.
Locations tested:
- Super Mario Odyssey: Seaside Kingdom. Abnormally low FPS on this kingdom was a common complaint from users, so we made sure to get this one tested.
- Animal Crossing New Horizons: Heavily loaded island with a lot of buildings and NPCs, among other things. Kindly provided by user Leischii|Yannick. A simpler or empty island should have much better performance.
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate: Fountain of Dreams with 8 players, level 9. This has the highest load on the CPU. Matches with less players will have even better performance.
- Splatoon 2: Tested on Inkopolis Square. This has the highest number of NPCs and normally the lowest FPS anywhere in the game. Note that this specific area is locked to 30 FPS on the Switch; we had to uncap it for testing purposes as it was already hitting 30 with those changes on all PCs tested.
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Baby Park track with CPU racers on. This track seems to get the lowest FPS compared to other tracks.
This new Ryujinx update didn't just benefit raw performance, though. Even boot times were greatly improved in most games tested, as you can see for yourself in the comparison video below.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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