Things I got wrong; - A GitHub repo with relevant documentation is available here, which I didn't run into until after making the video; github.com/mothenjoyer69/bc250-documentation - Segfault (in the aforementioned GitHub repo) was the guy that made the Mesa patch possible. He is the one to thank for all of this. I wholeheartedly apologize for the misattribution, this was a glaring error on my part, the information I used was posted without attribution and I incorrectly assumed who was responsible for the Mesa patch and all the other effort put in to these blades. - Probably don't need the kernel patch? Test amdgpu.sg_display=0 in kernel cmdline args in newer kernel? - You can change the 8/8GB RAM split using modified firmware. Some versions of the original firmware even change the RAM split! - RAM frequency was likely being reported in a misleading format by Linux. It's still slow tho. And of course, a massive thanks to everyone who has been involved in documenting and experimenting with this hardware, unfortunately I don't know who a lot of them are since we all took different routes to get here, but as a community effort I'm excited to see what people do with these things.
I guess they have enough power for a full distributed Docker Swarm, since you got the power of the CPU and GPU I would have them running Tdarr to encode all of those videos on my home NAS, as a youtuber yourself that might come in handy
Nah, I feel it's leaning toward the fact they can provide more incentives to their PS Premium services to stream PS3 games. Why emulate when they can incentivize people to pay for a premium service. Or it could be both. I almost debating on upgrading to Premium just to play those older PS3 games they offer for streaming. I like buying my games, so I hate streaming and game rental services hence I just keep PS+ base. But then I used my brain, hooked up my PS3, and just replayed a few games that way.
I hereby grant you the authority and permission to claim that you turned your PS5 into a Steam Deck. You earned it for all the messing around in linux you had to do to get there
I figure Sony will have to decide on their plan for PS3 games sooner rather than later, because they can't just keep running their Cloud Gaming service on physical PS3 boards forever (as long as PS3 boards are still out of production). This video definitely shows that a PS3 emulator with the ability to access original Sony code would absolutely be able to perform amazingly on this generation of consoles.
The problem they will cost them time and money and people only care backwards compatibility in the begnning of the console gen because people mostly buy new consoles for new games thats why Sony wont do it for now It also prove from a Xbox study its just a small demographics that only uses BC but any modern PCs can RPCS3 decently
I live in Australia and Sony just sidestepped this problem by not offering PS3 cloud streaming to us and many other countries. There's always options...
They could probably easily optimize it better too considering they have internal knowledge and engineering teams that not only know about the PS3 hardware but also the software. They have access to the PlayStation operating system source code for the PS5 and therefore all of the low level stuff related to it's hardware and stuff making it even easier for them to make all these optimizations in comparison to these largely volunteer open source teams making these emulators.
Thank you for testing that out. The real PS5 should be much, much faster in theory, since it can take advantage of the actual unified memory instead of doing copies and locks all over the place. I doubt that RPCS is taking advantage of it right now? Also precompiled shaders can be shipped as the hardware doesnt change.
And if they wanted to, Sony still has access to the original PS3 firmware, meaning there's none of the inherent overhead that comes from the guesswork and reverse-engineering behind emulators. Not that RPCS3 isn't an amazing feat, behold the scale of human endeavor, etc - just that, if they wanted to, Sony could bring PS3 "emulation" much closer to "simulation"
as a certified PC shill i hate to break it to you, but the ps5 "unified memory" is pure marketing babble. the underlying AMD hardware is designed exactly the same way on every modern AMD APU. The steam deck has exactly the same hardware technology and Valve has already done pretty much everything to optimize Linux for it. there is nothing technically superior about the PS5 compared to PCs that were new when it launched, the marketing compared the PS5 to gaming PCs from 5 to 10 years before the PS5 launched which is what console marketing always does.
😅what makes you think it doesn't have unified memory on those boards? I don't think he chips even support nonunified memory and the programs sure dont.
@@tacokoneko It's not that different to APUs, but most PCs don't run APUs, let alone a wide memory bus. So it makes sense that games/emulators would treat CPU and GPU memory as separate
"unless you can find a rational use case for this hardware" It's a (potentially) fully functional entry level gaming PC made out of e-waste. With proper software support, this could be BIG in emerging countries where a 3060 alone often cost 2 to 3 times the minimum wage. Also, its getting e-waste back into service, this is almost always a good thing!
The graphical issues can be fixed by a change in the steam launch configuration, I've been using these as modern gaming PCs for a few weeks now; in particular as cloud gaming machines for my friends who don't have full computers using sunshine to stream. They definitely have a lot of quirks but modern games run fine enough
You can use a command to overclock the gpu core by the way; by default it only runs at 1500mhz, but you can use echo vc 0 2000 1100 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:01:00.0/pp_od_clk_voltage then echo c > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:01:00.0/pp_od_clk_voltage to get a sizeable performance increase.
Forced incompatibility. If Sony makes it an option for people to play PS1-4 discs on a PS5 those same people more than likely won’t subscribe to PlayStation Plus. This is the same reason why the PS5 Pro doesn’t come with a disc drive. They are training their customers to see discs as being “old school”, “not cool”, and “not pro grade”. Heck they even priced the PS5 pro and made the disc drive far too expensive for what it should be. Disc drives are very inexpensive to manufacture. Being the market leader is definitely causing Sony to misstep in a lot of areas related to how they treat their customers. It will come back to bite them. It always does.
Lol I like how you called conditioning "training," that's so true. Console makers are like Apple, where they have non-thinking fanboys who defend getting a very inferior service/experience and getting absolutely ripped off for it.
I don't see any point in console gaming anymore. In the PS1 and PS2 days, you would turn on the TV, turn on the Playstation, pop in a disc and start playing, while you were still busy booting Windows, installing the game, installing patches, installing graphic card drivers, installing sound card drivers, rebooting, installing another patch, rebooting, tweak the config, etc. on PC. That was the great thing on consoles. Put in the disc or cartridge and play! Now, I have to download the game, it comes unfinished, I have to wait for the patch to download and install, I'm forced to be permanently online and my games from 10 years ago wont work anymore. No, thanks. I prefer Steam on PC now.
PS1 and some PS2 discs can NEVER run on PS5 because of the laser class used in the drive. It is completely incompatible with regular CD discs at a hardware level
Try getting your hands on Ryzen 4800S kit, it has an Xbox Series X silicon. The CPU is pretty much identical to PS5's 8-cores Zen 2 CPU aside from FP unit and clk speed differences.
@thegeforce6625 The GPU is what's disabled or partially disabled due to defect. Thankfully, it can take a full sized graphics card directly as it's a mATX form factor board, but is limited to x4 PCIe 4.0, IIRC, The CPU is fully intact though. All 8 cores and 16 threads function!
It's not really a lie though, the title of the video is a bit sensationalist, making it seem like emulating PS3 is easy. The games showcased are relatively easy to run and don't seem to make use of the Cell's SPEs that much. At least I know LBP2 and WD1 don't, not sure about GT5 but that game is relatively easy to run regardless. These SPEs is what makes the Cell processor so special. A normal processor core takes data from RAM, has a bunch of instructions or calculations (which instructions determine the architecture like ARM or x86) in an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), then processes that data using those instructions and eventually puts it back in RAM. Disregarding hyperthreading for a moment since that makes things too confusing, this only works in series and thus a single CPU core can only work on one set of data at the same time. The SPEs are what is known as SIMD processors, a GPU is another example. It stands for Single Instruction, Multiple Data and it allows for parallel processing of data. It takes multiple ALUs, puts them in a logical unit (SMs for Nvida, CUs on AMD) which then are only able to work on the same instruction, but from multiple sources of data. This allows for very fast and parallel processing. However each of those logical units can only work on one instructions, so that can be very limiting depending on what you want to do. When people say "CUDA cores are not cores" this is what they mean, because the massive 16,384 ALUs in a 4090 are unable to operate independently. In that sense, a 4090 has 128 cores since it has that many SMs. A lot of the important first party system titles like Uncharted, Resistance, Killzone, Motorstorm, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Infamous, MGS IV do and these titles are a lot harder to emulate. Sure, LBP and GT5 could possibly work, but most titles Sony cares about wouldn't run at all. Most of these games run very badly, even today. Zen 2 simply cannot keep up with the demands of these titles, mostly because a normal CPU is not suited for the SIMD processing of the Cell. I would know because I specifically, for RPCS3, got a 12900k that doesn't have the AVX512 block fused-off, manually disabling the E-cores and flashing the BIOS with microcode to enable it. Even today, this is the best possible CPU for RPCS3 and most of these titles still struggle if they run at all, especially if they use the Cell for any sort of graphics work. Not here to defend Sony, they have really dropped the ball in recent years with their focus on live service garbage, neutering their workforce with massive layoffs whilst making huge profit margins. The only reason I even have some of their consoles is to hack them. But you just can't explain the BC situation on PS5 without explaining this and looking at it's rather slow CPU. When the PS5 came out I already said Zen2 is a mistake, with the PS5 Pro release them not upgrading the CPU is another mistake. Zen 2 is the reason we see so little 120fps support as well. Keeping everything else I just explained in mind, you won't be seeing PS3 emulation until the PS6.
It simply isn't capable because Sony do not have a working in-house PS3 emulator. Heck, Sony uses PCSX ReARMed for their PlayStation Classic instead of any in-house PS1 emulator they have on hand.
The funny part is the RPCS3 team released a build for the RPI5 today LOL On one hand you have Sony "herp derp the PS5 can't handle the PS3" and on the other hand you have madman's saying "hold my beer! Here! It's running on the RPI5 now!" LOL
Guess it can some 2D indie games, but that is pretty much it. RPi5 CPU is very weak, a Zen 2 core in the PS5 is way bigger and more capable than a A76 core, wich is on the level of a 2011 x86 core.
That demo involves obvious stutters issues and sub-native resolution target resulting in very obvious aliasing issues.. and isn't exactly showcasing the most difficult to emulate titles. Doing it the way someone Paying Money would expect it to work does require AVX-512, and even then... if you had the equivalent of DF running analytics you would still probably have people fussing about +/-10% fps cap deviation like they've done with games enhanced by the PS5 Pro.. Sony is correct that people would not be happy with paying for a Tier B to D CPU RPCS3 experience.
6:42 Nothing related to the video but watchdogs 1 on the ps3 is insanely impressive because they got it on 512MB ram which is INSANE due to the minimum ram requirement of 6gb
@@iaqh360 has a stronger, more accessible GPU... PS3s CPU is 'faster' than 360s but harder to program for. The PS3 was supposed to have two Cell processors (CPU + 'GPU')... But they opted for nVidia at the last minute.
It's about money. People underestimate the sheer number of hours people can put into hobby projects like these over many, many years. Making an emulator as capable as RPCS3 would cost a lot of money, take several years, and they can't just take RPCS3 due to license restrictions. All of that for people to play games they already own or purchase at heavy discounts.
For Sony, it definitely would not be easy or even financially a good idea (except for building goodwill with customers)... but it still would be easier for them to build a PS3 emulator compared to hobbyists building one. After all Sony made the PS3 so they have access to all the technical info how the PS3 works with software. In comparison, hobbyists had to deconstruct all the innerworkings by themselves.
@thebasketballhistorian3291 yes, but insider access is not a silver bullet, specially when the hardware isn't straightforward: Nintendo, for example, is still behind hobbyist N64 emulation even after all these years.
yeap, seeing what they did with the ps5 pro, wich just has 1 proprietary upscaler that works half the time for 700$, they have no excuses other then, other companies like nintendo that promised to never do remake, now just printing remakes from all their console catalogs because they entered the disney era of their non creativity, kissing goodbye game innovation.
thats false its way more than just money. Sony could make these easily they just chose not to. They literally remastered the same games how many times over but they cant make this backward compatible? they listered use games from 1997 on the ps5 just released this year lmfao they are just cheap and lazy and they haven't found a way to make money off it so they won't do it.
Also this doesn't take years and hours to do. It took years and hours to create because of limited resources but this is a guy doing it at home now a multibillion dollar company they don't have the same limitations. You act like sony as large as they are will have just one guy working on this. They have entire teams to do things like this easily thats how they created every single one of their systems.
Easy explanation: His device has the same chip as a Stock PS5. Which he tested how realistic PS3 is on that. Apparently, it's doable on current versions. So Sony is withholding it for money reasons.
Sony’s intentional inability to make PS5 fully compatible PS emulation machine is inexcusable and shows true face of their company philosophy! Profit, profit, profit!👎
@eli-o5x The problem is much bigger than capitalism itself. There's a widespread decline in QA and fear of investing in new industry unique ideas with long term returns all in favor of making quick and more profit! In the past things weren't as "obscene" putting profit above all as today and QA had always last word representing final customer. It wouldn't hurt Sony to make TRUE Pro console which would offer 99.999% HW & SW emulation compatibility for previous gen titles, especially if it would make PS brand even more popular and profitable. Instead they released "Pro" console for 800 EUR even without optical drive and charging extra for stupid stand. That's what's called obscene drop in customer value in comparison to the past, but I bet corporate oligarchy is more than pleased!👎Since Sony's PS market share dropped after the PS3 it became just another "playing safe" profit hungry corporation more and more ignoring its customers. Times when gamers voiced their opinions directly at expos like E3 r long gone and data what's being collected from the distance do not show real picture. Same thing when Apple stopped doing true live shows introducing their products with real people in the audience and turned into replacing them with paid shouting/clapping trolls and ultimately turning into prerecorded sterile vids. Maybe one day they will even replace it with the AI generated vids and we won't even notice... Too much of product value and humanity is being lost in the name of making profit above everything else, so it's more of a problem having capitalism on "crack" than just classic "normal" capitalism.
Actually yeah. The PS3 was released at the perfect time in gaming history, and with the right kind of ideas. It was an amazing console generation, with great innovation in gaming in general, and many of those best games were Playstation exclusives. But well, I'm not going to crap on PS2 and PS1 either, they (especially PS2) were amazing for their time. But during PS4 era (which IMO was the worst gen), I wouldn't be super tempted to play PS2 games (although I did a few times on my PS2), allthewhile during the PS5 era, I've played several PS3 games and there is nothing really big discouraging me from playing PS3 games.
I would say PS3 was pretty rough, not a lot of great games, getting spanked by the Wii due to lacking experiences like Mario Galaxy which somehow looked better than all of the Xbox 360 and PS3 offerings despite running on a suped up Gamecube, Sony still not being able to admit their controller design is bad, yet cucking out of giving us the boomerang controller which actually looked cool. Many, many mistakes were made.
@@IceBlueLugia Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the fan over the PS4. Ehem.. Well, there were some good games during the PS4 era, mostly at the start. But then everything just became the same boring open world game with the same stale missions and structure, with few exceptions. PS5 is pretty bad too, but at least the hardware is nice, and there are some "alternative" games available. I'm not a fan of woke gaming, but that's not a PS5 exclusive, it started during the PS4 era.
Honestly, Sony should 100% make a dual-boot type of console where you can either boot into the current gen or the on-board PS1-2-3 emulation software and all the games are accessible via either PS Plus classics or buying the games as ISOs but for a lower price. Maybe 1-5€ for PS1 games, 3-10€ for PS2 and 8-15€ for PS3.
I think due to logistics (licensing, royalties and rights to claim etc) its more effort than its worth. All in all the cost benefit analysis hasn't worked in our favor.
the dumbest part about sony not emulating their old systems is that they could sell the emulator for $20 and have their system play everything and make money that way. players would eat that shit up.
Any time "useless hardware nobody cares about anymore nor should they" gets a new life no matter how niche/limited is a GIANT FAT WIN, and warrants extra kudos to you for doing so. As a fellow roommate [read: inhabitant] with you on this planet we call Earth, BIG HUGS AND THANK YOU! :) ..... oh yeah, and the techy-nerd side of me definitely appreciates what you accomplished here with that hardware. That is WAY COOL! :)
Now do it with FreeBSD... The biggest issue is Sony's OS, which is heavily modified BSD (not Linux); and thus lacks a lot of the GNU open-source libraries due to BSD being a _copy-left_ license; not to mention Sony's lack of BSD engineers... While FreeBSD shares a lot of libraries with Linux (and vice-versa, such as the NetBSD network stack for Linux, MacOS, and Windows), _graphics_ linraries are **not** shared. The PS4/PS5 uses an entirely proprietary hybrid dual-API, one being a low-level (GNM), and the other a high-level API (GNMx); and these are analogous to DirectX 12 and DirectX 11, respectively. Uniquely, is how these APIs handle _shaders._ This is done entirely by Sony's PSSL (PlayStation Shader Language), which is very similar to HLSL used with DirectX 12. TL;DR: The issue isn't the silicon - _it's the operating system itself._
They are not analogues to Directx. Directx is a high level API, inherently inefficient. And the OS is not the problem, it is an excellent OS, and I would take it any day over anything Microsoft delivers. Sony's version of BSD is most likely 100% a gaming OS and inherently efficient at its job, while Microsoft is known for it's bloatware, and has adapted their general purpose OS to a gaming platform. The operating system is actually the solution. And coming from GNU/Linux, you and I should appreciate that as a solution. Imagine the great efficiency increases there could be if PC gamers moved to GNU/Linux. They could play on a gaming specific distro tailored to their every need with no overhead, no bloatware. Imagine if the GPU drivers had official and wide support, they would provide superior performance and efficiencies on such a system, as we have seen time again happens when proper efforts are put into similar hardware on GNU/Linux, even if only half hearted. Albeit, alot of Linux Kernel drivers and so on have no official support and are reverse engineered, but still perform at a very high level. Now, imagine a little bit of co-operation between Valve/Steam and Sony, and some willingness from Sony to promote gaming on GNU/Linux and BSD on PC.. It's still a piece of cake to port those games from BSD to GNU/Linux compared to porting them to Windows.
beyond what everyone else has already said about reasons this is incorrect, the BSD accelerated graphics stacks largely are taken from Linux, since Mesa and most of the DRM code in the kernel (including AMD's) is permissively licensed. Even if it were absolutely critical that Sony be able to use OpenGL and GLSL for PS3 emulation (and it's not), it's not like Sony doesn't have the resources to create / port the already existing OpenGL interface for their GPU. I do think there are valid reasons for them to not do PS3 emulation on PS5, but using BSD simply isn't one of them
Oh my fucking god im so tired of hearing this, PlayStation OS are not remotely BSD, they just copied network stack from there that’s why it shows up in the IP notices page Trust me, I’ve developed homebrew for PS consoles for nearly 5+ years and looked heavily into how the kernel works .. that shit ain’t BSD
You could 3d print a case for this system and install a far more quiet cooling fan, maybe a VESA mount on it? Shove it on the back of a TV for a quiet media center/ gaming build
Even if you thought that the performance was bad, its mostly on the emulators part. RPCS3 is known to be very laggy and non-reliable as I have had issues with a somewhat powerful PC and only running sonic unleashed at 15-20 fps with frame drops and crashes
It doesn't matter if PS5 can run some emulated PS3 games, it needs to be able to play most of Sony first party games to be worth it, but a lot of Sony first party titles are the hardest to emulate. Take a look at the RPCS3 compatibility list and look up some key PS3 exclusives that haven't been remastered like Killzone 2 & 3, infamous, Ratchet & Clanks, MGS4. They're all listed as having severe issues, still. Some of these games have poor performance even with considerably more powerful hardware than PS5. Some games require a dozen custom patches be applied to avoid various issues.
Even for those games sony is capable of per game hackery far easier than the more generalized rpcs3. Their back compat would function like ps2 classics most likely so it's just select titles anyways.
RPCS3 developers do not have access to the same information that Sony has internally. Sony has a much better chance to update the games for the PS5. It is just that financially it did not make too much sense for them this gen to do so.
6:25 “Most levels” Speaking as someone with approx 300 hours in LBP2 Emulated, the issue you were experiencing was emitters / destroyers. RSPC3 HATES emitters. Worst level for it is full metal rabbit’s flamethrower cap meanies, since they spawn like 10 fire particles a second. Something about the spawn/destroy effects emitters can be given obliterates anything that isn’t a top-line CPU. I got 5fps on the aforementioned full metal rabbit with an i8700k and 2070, would love to see what you get with this doohickey machine!
I almost never comment on any video but I just wanted to say this was some of the highest quality content on RUclips I have seen in recent memory. Thanks for the upload and I look forward to seeing more content in the future from your channel
Well since the GPU is working on this board unlike that other board confirms getting Linux on the PS5 with GPU drivers is likely to be fairly easy once a exploit comes out
My friend and I recently had an idea that these things might be perfect for; LAN party in a box. Put four of them in a "suitcase", link them up, plug in some controllers, and find four cheap TVs from craigslist.
All of this serves to prove that practically PS5 hardware could just be turned to using any OS and run games well on it if it weren't for the proprietary lockdown of the system. That and being able to play games from older consoles, but then again it would cost Sony money that wouldn't be made back so they Don't care. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to sell digital copies of very old PS games? People would have access to way more games for cheap, many of which are still relevant today. That's a ton of gained value.
@notNajimi oh yea i heard the story of some government/millitary force buying multiple PS3's to build a supercomputer with them, then they were F'ed over by sony disabling allowing other OS.
Every gaming console is turing complete - it can do everything a computer can. If word processors, web browsers, and other apps were available on console, I'd buy one. For now, a PC is a better deal, because it lets you do pretty much anything (like, literally, except for halting problem analogues)
Oooh, I would be interested in working with one of these! I am experienced in Linux development regarding mesa and gamescope so I am curious what I can do if I had this hardware in my hands. Thanks for sharing your packages in the AUR for a baseline if and/or when I can get one of these.
Figured I do a write up for Arch in the current state: - Flashed modified bios - Downloaded latest ISO at the moment was archlinux-2024.12.01-x86_64 - Wrote ISO via DD to usb flash drive - On installer boot screen hit E to edit the command-line args, had to add: acpi=noirq usbcore.autosuspend=-1 amdgpu.sg_display=0 (Then pressed enter) - It should boot to the CLI, I did have to unplug my keyboard and plug it into another USB port closest one to the Rj45, not sure why but then the keyboard worked again - Ran archinstall and installed a base desktop plasma system (zen kernel) - After install rebooted with no kernel flags and it went to bash just fine - Enabled multilib in /etc/pacman.conf - Installed yay - From yay installed: mesa-amd-bc250 vulkan-radeon-amd-bc250 lib32-mesa-amd-bc250 lib32-vulkan-radeon-amd-bc250 - Installed sddm via pacman - Started sddm via systemctl - Installed Steam - Played a game === Profit... but honestly YMMV but this was a fun little project.
This is definitely some cool stuff, appreciate the effort put into this. I've always been curious why Sony Fan boys acted like the PS3, a nearly 20 year old system, had some magical CPU that couldn't be supported on current hardware, it's always been that the current people at Sony just don't care to work on it.
The main hurdle was SPU emulation. Now that we have basic consumer CPUs with lots of cores and decently sized caches, SPU JIT isn't such a big hurdle anymore.
Per RPCS CPU chart the PS5's CPU is somewhere between B and D Tier, which does cover the threshold for it to be able to run _some_ games for a given definition of run. There is however a reason they've pursued AVX-512, and CPUs with that have their own separate tier on the Chart. Sony's intent with the statement is correct.
But this is a partially disabled PS5 CPU with only 6c,12t enabled with multicore performance like a R52600X , it should be a D tier CPU. With all 8c,16t enabled and more shaders from a fully enabled iGPU, the performance level is very different, probably between B and C-tier of that chart.
At some point the whiners are going to have to acknowledge that a LOT of engineering has gone into the PS3 emulator, and that Sony would be starting from scratch were they to make one for PS5/6. And what would they gain by making it? Pretty much nothing. Thankfully we can run PS3 games on PS3s and modern PCs, so no biggie.
What would they gain. Possibly a small increase in sales. What would they lose. Possibly a lot. And another thing is can the PS5 run enough games at good enough quality that Sony would risk their reputation on. If performance is not great or games are broken, most petwont be so forgiving if it's an official advertised feature.
@@Infinity-pv5nd Ahh yea, that was a thing wasn't it. But not in Europe. But there was a US version of the PS3 that had official backwards support, but it contained an extra chip of some sort, and was more expensive. Or do I remember that incorrectly?
Great video and props to everyone who worked hard to make MESA run properly on this thing. Maybe that patch could be even upstreamed? Either way, nice one!
You should try to emulate the most cell procesor demanding games like the last of us or uncharted 3. The argument isn't that the ps5 can't emulate ps3 completely. it's that x86 can't emulate the cell processors SPEs. You have an interesting opening to the argument, but a proper stress test is necessary.
Good to see that progress is being made on making these blades usable, I was amazed when I first learned of them and that they were basically worthless despite some obviously valuable silicon. Maybe in time there will be a nice and easy way of turning these into very capable computers.
Steam Deck could run some games on RPCS3 and that's an even more cut down SoC. But the issue is that there are still tons of games that are still unplayable. RPCS3 is only 70% compatible sadly
It seems a bit weird to start out saying that Sony’s claim that it’s too complicated to emulate and that the real reason is they want you to buy things, and then immediately start showing games with various glitches depending how they leveraged PS3 architecture. That a dedicated multi year effort still has lots of unplayable PS3 games seems to suggest it being extremely complex is actually true.
You realize this is a project by hobbyists and sony has access to the entire ps3 spec which we dont have. I find it strange that in the tech world people just expect companies ti work the same or worse as unpaid hobbyists working off of reverse engineering. Sony made the ps3 they have the entire documentation needed to address these bugs.
@@FemboyCatGaming Yes I understand but Zen 2 cannot be fully compatible because it's messing alot vector operations. Which is why when AVX-512 was added in Zen 4, RPCS3 compatibility and performance improved alot. AMD only added AVX-512 to improve AI. There are still aspects where Zen would still have a hard time dealing with SPU code since it's missing TSX, which is only in some Intel CPUs. There are many things missing in modern hardware that is not compatible with the Cell. It was such a unique design that emulating it is very hard unless Sony was willing to pay AMD more money to customize Zen cores just for emulation.
The mention of bad cpu cores that can lock up when running code applies to the refurbished desktop pc my boss bought over a year ago. I could just be using the pc normally and all of a sudden it'll lock up for several seconds and i can't do anything other than move the mouse and then it'll start working again. It happens randomly. Sometimes it'll not do it that day, sometimes multiple times a day, or even once at the beginning of the work day.
Wow. I had no idea RPCS3 had been so heavily optimised on the last couple of years. The performance boost is impressive. I expect a homebrew solution will be needed to get certain PS3 games on the PS5 due to licensing issues though. For example getting Burnout 3 running on PS4 requires you to build it yourself, too much licensed music to re-release.
I always prefer native or hybrid between native hardware and emulation over full on emulation which is reliant on digital rereleases and constant tweaks. I think Sony should remake and replicate the CPU's, like the Cell CPU and then emulate everything else, like the GPU, Ram etc. Not only will this greatly improve the accuracy of running PS3 games from discs and digitally. But it will give you emulation benefits aswell, like running games at higher framerates and at higher resolutions since the GPU is being emulated. It's easy for Sony to run their legacy hardware this way. Since they have all of classified documents like the source codes and the schematics for their hardware. And they can easily make like another fully backwards compatible console that not only plays older games digitally and from discs, but also can render them at higher resolutions with trophy support with higher framerates without any glitches.
I remember going over the specs of the PS5 when it first came out. The comparison we were making then was somewhere around an rx5700 or 5700xt. If you assume the rx5700 and adjust the performance based on the CU ration (66%), you comeout in the rx590-ish range. So this seems perfectly reasonable. It's on par with a PS4 Pro with a much stronger CPU. Which if it was cheap enough ain't bad.
I don't know what impresses me the most, if seeing the hardware that runs the PS5 running PS3 emulators, or seeing RPCS3 running GT5 so well when it wasn't working before (even though it's Prologue and not the base game).
6 and 24 cores honestly sounds pretty good? If they could find a way to make these GPUs work with reliable drivers and windows kernels these could be a legitimate product for sale as a mini-prebuilt PC. It’s small, seemingly efficient and powerful enough for a lot of users, despite being waste. I think it would have a market, kinda like those 3-core CPUs from the 2000s.
This is misleading. ARM is just a more efficient CPU architecture, so it's not saying RPCS3 doesn't need computation power, it was the most demanding mainstream emulator for a long while, computers just got a lot better now that Ryzen made Intel actually try somewhat
Exactly, no different then the old 3 core AMD cpus from back in the day. Just a quad core with one defective core that could sometimes successfully be unlocked.
The ps3 can be played on current hardware. Just like game companies they do not keep records of old code and tech. Like how most old games have not been remade because they actually no longer have the original code. Just like what happened to crash bandicoot. It should not be impossible to remake any previous hardware and making something old should be 100 times easier then making something new espically if you already have all the data.
Would it be possible to swap the CPU for one from a defective PS5?? To get a more accurate comparison. Of course you need to know about BGA for that. And the question is whether the BIOS would limit the new CPU but it would definitely be an interesting experiment🤷🏻♂️
This is not my first rodeo, it's almost always been a lie that "X" last gen system cannot be emulated on 'X" current gen system. Companies either just don't wana put in the work or they don't respect you're previous purchases and resell / stop you from playing you're old games to facilitate buying new games.
Damn, I was wondering when a youtuber would find this thing. I've been gaming on it for a hot minute and have one deployed for a friend as a cloud gaming machine using sunshine.
For the GPU being comparable to an RX480, you could always try using an RX6700 with an external GPU enclosure via HDMI. It might be slightly limited using HDMI especially when compared to USB-C or Thunderbolt, but I'm sure it'd yield better results than what's already on the thing.
for the bios think people could technically get the firmware using a bios programmer and edit it to make the clock higher, but I honestly don't know much about bios editing I just know it's possible
There are some weird AMD GPU memory clock bugs in the Linux kernel. However, I think the rate you read from the kernel is half the real rate because the memory bus is double data rate. Meaning it's effectively doing double access on every clock cycle. You can read the possible rates and manually set it to the highest value via sysfs.
The big problem is licensing issues coming up especially in context of rereleases, remasters, remakes, and anything with song materials from the PS3 generation There wouldn’t just be a “lack of money being made because buy new stuff” its that it would turn into an active money sink. This especially matters with the context of Microsoft with Xbox having emulation on their consoles. I remember seeing a stat (pre Xbox series consoles) that said something like only 18% of people on Xbox were playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox one While it’s easy to drop in PS3 game software from a copy of said game (or from online) onto an emulator with the appropriate software from the console (or from online) key thing is, is that can be considered illegal (especially if you got it from online)
Emulation is not illegal, Sony could add pre-proxwssing software to check if the game copy is legit, just like they do with PS4 games. (Wich also run under emulation, since the PS4 Operating system is different)
Things I got wrong;
- A GitHub repo with relevant documentation is available here, which I didn't run into until after making the video; github.com/mothenjoyer69/bc250-documentation
- Segfault (in the aforementioned GitHub repo) was the guy that made the Mesa patch possible. He is the one to thank for all of this. I wholeheartedly apologize for the misattribution, this was a glaring error on my part, the information I used was posted without attribution and I incorrectly assumed who was responsible for the Mesa patch and all the other effort put in to these blades.
- Probably don't need the kernel patch? Test amdgpu.sg_display=0 in kernel cmdline args in newer kernel?
- You can change the 8/8GB RAM split using modified firmware. Some versions of the original firmware even change the RAM split!
- RAM frequency was likely being reported in a misleading format by Linux. It's still slow tho.
And of course, a massive thanks to everyone who has been involved in documenting and experimenting with this hardware, unfortunately I don't know who a lot of them are since we all took different routes to get here, but as a community effort I'm excited to see what people do with these things.
Is there a BIOS dump floating around? If not, could you dump it? I'd like to take a look-see at a few things.
Hey the discord link just takes me to discord not the server , plan of getting one of these and would love the extra help
Uses? Possibly for an LLM or low cost rendering system.
DM me we can get the right drivers running to get that running more like a 6600.
I guess they have enough power for a full distributed Docker Swarm, since you got the power of the CPU and GPU I would have them running Tdarr to encode all of those videos on my home NAS, as a youtuber yourself that might come in handy
This just proves something we already knew. The only reason Sony doesn't want to make PS3 emulation is cause they don't see it making much money.
And it would be a very expensive thing to do as well. For a company that just wasted $400M on Concord.
@@Great-Documentaries you mean just steal RCPS3 and put on PS5? Yeah...2 tacos and 1 coffee.
Nah, I feel it's leaning toward the fact they can provide more incentives to their PS Premium services to stream PS3 games.
Why emulate when they can incentivize people to pay for a premium service. Or it could be both.
I almost debating on upgrading to Premium just to play those older PS3 games they offer for streaming. I like buying my games, so I hate streaming and game rental services hence I just keep PS+ base.
But then I used my brain, hooked up my PS3, and just replayed a few games that way.
@@Deep_wolf That was sarcasm
@@HellzAssassn
The ps3 streaming isn't worth it until they move it all to the ps5 server blades. The ps3 streaming is still the outdated blades.
I hereby grant you the authority and permission to claim that you turned your PS5 into a Steam Deck. You earned it for all the messing around in linux you had to do to get there
hi
I'll turn it into an Xbox 360 next
man bringus really is in the trenches of hardware fuckery huh
Holy crap it's BringusStudios!!! Love your videos dude! Keep up the good work!
You've heard it here folks, the PS5 blade now has Bringus' seal of approval!!!
"The PS5 isn't capable of running PS3 games" = "We don't want to spend the time, money and effort to program an emulator"
@@DioTheGreatOne we’d rather waste $400M on Concord
@mopioline65 LMAO serves them right. Companies losing billions of dollars trying to cater to the "modern audience" will never, ever, get old.
@@mopioline65they wouldn't have known at the start that concord would be cancelled. There is no reason that it won't be relaunched at a future date
@@DioTheGreatOneThat's not the reason Concord failed or true for other games anyway.
@LeoGarwood Then, enlighten me.
I figure Sony will have to decide on their plan for PS3 games sooner rather than later, because they can't just keep running their Cloud Gaming service on physical PS3 boards forever (as long as PS3 boards are still out of production).
This video definitely shows that a PS3 emulator with the ability to access original Sony code would absolutely be able to perform amazingly on this generation of consoles.
Nah man, need to put an extra $400 million dollars into Concord 2.
The problem they will cost them time and money and people only care backwards compatibility in the begnning of the console gen because people mostly buy new consoles for new games thats why Sony wont do it for now
It also prove from a Xbox study its just a small demographics that only uses BC but any modern PCs can RPCS3 decently
I live in Australia and Sony just sidestepped this problem by not offering PS3 cloud streaming to us and many other countries. There's always options...
They could probably easily optimize it better too considering they have internal knowledge and engineering teams that not only know about the PS3 hardware but also the software. They have access to the PlayStation operating system source code for the PS5 and therefore all of the low level stuff related to it's hardware and stuff making it even easier for them to make all these optimizations in comparison to these largely volunteer open source teams making these emulators.
@@ShockinglyBlehso, is everything Sony now about Concord made up budgets?
Thank you for testing that out. The real PS5 should be much, much faster in theory, since it can take advantage of the actual unified memory instead of doing copies and locks all over the place. I doubt that RPCS is taking advantage of it right now? Also precompiled shaders can be shipped as the hardware doesnt change.
Very interesting.😊
And if they wanted to, Sony still has access to the original PS3 firmware, meaning there's none of the inherent overhead that comes from the guesswork and reverse-engineering behind emulators.
Not that RPCS3 isn't an amazing feat, behold the scale of human endeavor, etc - just that, if they wanted to, Sony could bring PS3 "emulation" much closer to "simulation"
as a certified PC shill i hate to break it to you, but the ps5 "unified memory" is pure marketing babble. the underlying AMD hardware is designed exactly the same way on every modern AMD APU. The steam deck has exactly the same hardware technology and Valve has already done pretty much everything to optimize Linux for it. there is nothing technically superior about the PS5 compared to PCs that were new when it launched, the marketing compared the PS5 to gaming PCs from 5 to 10 years before the PS5 launched which is what console marketing always does.
😅what makes you think it doesn't have unified memory on those boards? I don't think he chips even support nonunified memory and the programs sure dont.
@@tacokoneko It's not that different to APUs, but most PCs don't run APUs, let alone a wide memory bus. So it makes sense that games/emulators would treat CPU and GPU memory as separate
"unless you can find a rational use case for this hardware" It's a (potentially) fully functional entry level gaming PC made out of e-waste. With proper software support, this could be BIG in emerging countries where a 3060 alone often cost 2 to 3 times the minimum wage. Also, its getting e-waste back into service, this is almost always a good thing!
It's insane what people can call waste these days.
@@ClixonTheOne it's insane what companies will do for profit, crippling software support for perfectly good hardware like this.
It is, but you need someone smart enough to get it running.
The graphical issues can be fixed by a change in the steam launch configuration, I've been using these as modern gaming PCs for a few weeks now; in particular as cloud gaming machines for my friends who don't have full computers using sunshine to stream. They definitely have a lot of quirks but modern games run fine enough
True, but I wouldn't say fully functioning in the slightest 😅
You can use a command to overclock the gpu core by the way; by default it only runs at 1500mhz, but you can use
echo vc 0 2000 1100 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:01:00.0/pp_od_clk_voltage
then
echo c > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.1/0000:01:00.0/pp_od_clk_voltage
to get a sizeable performance increase.
With these it performs more like an Rx 6600 in superposition; and in real world games
Yeah between 6.1 and 6.6 or so there have been WEIRD AMDGPU clocking issues
@@icyjiub2228 This is needed even on the newest kernel, Mine is using 6.10 at the moment since i haven't updated it in a hot minute
He should try LACT to change the clock speeds
I hope he tries this and does an update video
Forced incompatibility. If Sony makes it an option for people to play PS1-4 discs on a PS5 those same people more than likely won’t subscribe to PlayStation Plus. This is the same reason why the PS5 Pro doesn’t come with a disc drive. They are training their customers to see discs as being “old school”, “not cool”, and “not pro grade”. Heck they even priced the PS5 pro and made the disc drive far too expensive for what it should be. Disc drives are very inexpensive to manufacture. Being the market leader is definitely causing Sony to misstep in a lot of areas related to how they treat their customers. It will come back to bite them. It always does.
How many lawsuits have they had currently? Ik its basically 1 per generation so far
Lol I like how you called conditioning "training," that's so true. Console makers are like Apple, where they have non-thinking fanboys who defend getting a very inferior service/experience and getting absolutely ripped off for it.
I don't see any point in console gaming anymore. In the PS1 and PS2 days, you would turn on the TV, turn on the Playstation, pop in a disc and start playing, while you were still busy booting Windows, installing the game, installing patches, installing graphic card drivers, installing sound card drivers, rebooting, installing another patch, rebooting, tweak the config, etc. on PC. That was the great thing on consoles. Put in the disc or cartridge and play!
Now, I have to download the game, it comes unfinished, I have to wait for the patch to download and install, I'm forced to be permanently online and my games from 10 years ago wont work anymore. No, thanks. I prefer Steam on PC now.
PS1 and some PS2 discs can NEVER run on PS5 because of the laser class used in the drive.
It is completely incompatible with regular CD discs at a hardware level
@@dodgykebaab Yeah, only because they designed it that way. Whereas PCs can run PS1/PS2/PS3/PS4 discs with a 4K disc drive.
Try getting your hands on Ryzen 4800S kit, it has an Xbox Series X silicon. The CPU is pretty much identical to PS5's 8-cores Zen 2 CPU aside from FP unit and clk speed differences.
Does it have the GPU enabled too?
@thegeforce6625 The GPU is what's disabled or partially disabled due to defect. Thankfully, it can take a full sized graphics card directly as it's a mATX form factor board, but is limited to x4 PCIe 4.0, IIRC, The CPU is fully intact though. All 8 cores and 16 threads function!
Long story short, only the GPU is binned so add your own.
What is the point😩 pc needs more to run better, we don’t have dedicated processors to run decompile shader on the fly like consoles can,
Just buy an Xbox at that point you goof
Sony: "The PS5 simply isn't capable of running PS3 games"
Us, the Community: "So that was a F***ing Lie."
I mean it's almost 20 year old technology, who would believe them on that?
It's not really a lie though, the title of the video is a bit sensationalist, making it seem like emulating PS3 is easy. The games showcased are relatively easy to run and don't seem to make use of the Cell's SPEs that much. At least I know LBP2 and WD1 don't, not sure about GT5 but that game is relatively easy to run regardless.
These SPEs is what makes the Cell processor so special. A normal processor core takes data from RAM, has a bunch of instructions or calculations (which instructions determine the architecture like ARM or x86) in an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), then processes that data using those instructions and eventually puts it back in RAM. Disregarding hyperthreading for a moment since that makes things too confusing, this only works in series and thus a single CPU core can only work on one set of data at the same time.
The SPEs are what is known as SIMD processors, a GPU is another example. It stands for Single Instruction, Multiple Data and it allows for parallel processing of data. It takes multiple ALUs, puts them in a logical unit (SMs for Nvida, CUs on AMD) which then are only able to work on the same instruction, but from multiple sources of data. This allows for very fast and parallel processing. However each of those logical units can only work on one instructions, so that can be very limiting depending on what you want to do.
When people say "CUDA cores are not cores" this is what they mean, because the massive 16,384 ALUs in a 4090 are unable to operate independently. In that sense, a 4090 has 128 cores since it has that many SMs.
A lot of the important first party system titles like Uncharted, Resistance, Killzone, Motorstorm, The Last of Us, God of War 3, Infamous, MGS IV do and these titles are a lot harder to emulate. Sure, LBP and GT5 could possibly work, but most titles Sony cares about wouldn't run at all. Most of these games run very badly, even today. Zen 2 simply cannot keep up with the demands of these titles, mostly because a normal CPU is not suited for the SIMD processing of the Cell.
I would know because I specifically, for RPCS3, got a 12900k that doesn't have the AVX512 block fused-off, manually disabling the E-cores and flashing the BIOS with microcode to enable it. Even today, this is the best possible CPU for RPCS3 and most of these titles still struggle if they run at all, especially if they use the Cell for any sort of graphics work.
Not here to defend Sony, they have really dropped the ball in recent years with their focus on live service garbage, neutering their workforce with massive layoffs whilst making huge profit margins. The only reason I even have some of their consoles is to hack them. But you just can't explain the BC situation on PS5 without explaining this and looking at it's rather slow CPU. When the PS5 came out I already said Zen2 is a mistake, with the PS5 Pro release them not upgrading the CPU is another mistake. Zen 2 is the reason we see so little 120fps support as well. Keeping everything else I just explained in mind, you won't be seeing PS3 emulation until the PS6.
It simply isn't capable because Sony do not have a working in-house PS3 emulator.
Heck, Sony uses PCSX ReARMed for their PlayStation Classic instead of any in-house PS1 emulator they have on hand.
@@hugevibezthank you that was a very good technical explanation written in a way even I understood! 👍
Technically it isn't able to run PS3 games. No computer can natively run software from a different CPU architecture.
The funny part is the RPCS3 team released a build for the RPI5 today LOL
On one hand you have Sony "herp derp the PS5 can't handle the PS3" and on the other hand you have madman's saying "hold my beer! Here! It's running on the RPI5 now!" LOL
Guess it can some 2D indie games, but that is pretty much it.
RPi5 CPU is very weak, a Zen 2 core in the PS5 is way bigger and more capable than a A76 core, wich is on the level of a 2011 x86 core.
That demo involves obvious stutters issues and sub-native resolution target resulting in very obvious aliasing issues.. and isn't exactly showcasing the most difficult to emulate titles.
Doing it the way someone Paying Money would expect it to work does require AVX-512, and even then... if you had the equivalent of DF running analytics you would still probably have people fussing about +/-10% fps cap deviation like they've done with games enhanced by the PS5 Pro..
Sony is correct that people would not be happy with paying for a Tier B to D CPU RPCS3 experience.
@@rj7250aWhy guess wrongly when you can go to their yt channel and look for yourself.
I wonder how well would Trash Panic run on anything, especially low-end hardware?
That game was one of the most unique games ever and was only on PS3
@@rj7250a They showed it running some 3D games. Not the most graphically intensive ones, but 3D nonetheless.
8:57 i did not expect this at all as an outro
Hahahahaha
Mystical wizard ass outeo
"you'll never catch me" lookin outro
6:42 Nothing related to the video but watchdogs 1 on the ps3 is insanely impressive because they got it on 512MB ram which is INSANE due to the minimum ram requirement of 6gb
256+256 more precisely, one for CPU and one for GPU
Metal gear solid 5 is also insane for running on 256 CPU ram and 256 GPU ram like that
Didn't watchdogs 1 aIso release for xbox 360? And isn't the 360 weaker than the ps3?
@@iaqh360 has a stronger, more accessible GPU... PS3s CPU is 'faster' than 360s but harder to program for.
The PS3 was supposed to have two Cell processors (CPU + 'GPU')... But they opted for nVidia at the last minute.
I'm still really impressed by the og xbox and halo 2!!! 64mb. Wow.
It's about money. People underestimate the sheer number of hours people can put into hobby projects like these over many, many years. Making an emulator as capable as RPCS3 would cost a lot of money, take several years, and they can't just take RPCS3 due to license restrictions. All of that for people to play games they already own or purchase at heavy discounts.
For Sony, it definitely would not be easy or even financially a good idea (except for building goodwill with customers)... but it still would be easier for them to build a PS3 emulator compared to hobbyists building one.
After all Sony made the PS3 so they have access to all the technical info how the PS3 works with software. In comparison, hobbyists had to deconstruct all the innerworkings by themselves.
@thebasketballhistorian3291 yes, but insider access is not a silver bullet, specially when the hardware isn't straightforward: Nintendo, for example, is still behind hobbyist N64 emulation even after all these years.
yeap, seeing what they did with the ps5 pro, wich just has 1 proprietary upscaler that works half the time for 700$, they have no excuses other then, other companies like nintendo that promised to never do remake, now just printing remakes from all their console catalogs because they entered the disney era of their non creativity, kissing goodbye game innovation.
thats false its way more than just money. Sony could make these easily they just chose not to. They literally remastered the same games how many times over but they cant make this backward compatible? they listered use games from 1997 on the ps5 just released this year lmfao they are just cheap and lazy and they haven't found a way to make money off it so they won't do it.
Also this doesn't take years and hours to do. It took years and hours to create because of limited resources but this is a guy doing it at home now a multibillion dollar company they don't have the same limitations. You act like sony as large as they are will have just one guy working on this. They have entire teams to do things like this easily thats how they created every single one of their systems.
Self-hosted cloud gaming server? Maybe a super cool kubernetes cluster? The possibilities are endless, super cool
Cloud gaming would be an awesome approach, I'd have to see what kinds of options exist on Linux for that!
@@LowestLogan I've had one running sunshine for a friend streaming for a couple of weeks now; it works quite well
Oh my gosh, I'm just imagining one of those AsRock servers fully populated with these PS5 blades running ProxMox, the potential is endless...
@@realderyn sunshine is amazing, i have even used it to play elden ring through 5g on my phone remotely from my desktop.
@@realderynsure dude
i didn't understand any of it. BUT I bow down to all who understood this and the video creator
Easy explanation:
His device has the same chip as a Stock PS5. Which he tested how realistic PS3 is on that.
Apparently, it's doable on current versions. So Sony is withholding it for money reasons.
I'm glad my ps3 still works.
Me too
I unlocked it sadly so take that sony
I would Buy old games and run them on the Powerful PS3 CFW
3:33 "At the risk of sounding like click bait... I guess turned my PS5 into a Steam Deck..." 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Sony’s intentional inability to make PS5 fully compatible PS emulation machine is inexcusable and shows true face of their company philosophy! Profit, profit, profit!👎
Boycott Sony and playstation for ripping of players since 1994
It's not just Sony, it's every other company. We live in capitalism
@eli-o5x The problem is much bigger than capitalism itself. There's a widespread decline in QA and fear of investing in new industry unique ideas with long term returns all in favor of making quick and more profit! In the past things weren't as "obscene" putting profit above all as today and QA had always last word representing final customer. It wouldn't hurt Sony to make TRUE Pro console which would offer 99.999% HW & SW emulation compatibility for previous gen titles, especially if it would make PS brand even more popular and profitable. Instead they released "Pro" console for 800 EUR even without optical drive and charging extra for stupid stand. That's what's called obscene drop in customer value in comparison to the past, but I bet corporate oligarchy is more than pleased!👎Since Sony's PS market share dropped after the PS3 it became just another "playing safe" profit hungry corporation more and more ignoring its customers. Times when gamers voiced their opinions directly at expos like E3 r long gone and data what's being collected from the distance do not show real picture. Same thing when Apple stopped doing true live shows introducing their products with real people in the audience and turned into replacing them with paid shouting/clapping trolls and ultimately turning into prerecorded sterile vids. Maybe one day they will even replace it with the AI generated vids and we won't even notice... Too much of product value and humanity is being lost in the name of making profit above everything else, so it's more of a problem having capitalism on "crack" than just classic "normal" capitalism.
@eli-o5x and capatalism should be gone with
@eli-o5xliterally everything out there is going to extreme lengths to get our money, we need to change that the services aren't even that good
The display glitching in the background at 1:13 was very on point 😂
I think it was done on purpose lol, the moment he said broken gpu it went mmm yes matrix
Good shit, always excited for PS3 content. One of the best consoles ever
Actually yeah. The PS3 was released at the perfect time in gaming history, and with the right kind of ideas. It was an amazing console generation, with great innovation in gaming in general, and many of those best games were Playstation exclusives.
But well, I'm not going to crap on PS2 and PS1 either, they (especially PS2) were amazing for their time. But during PS4 era (which IMO was the worst gen), I wouldn't be super tempted to play PS2 games (although I did a few times on my PS2), allthewhile during the PS5 era, I've played several PS3 games and there is nothing really big discouraging me from playing PS3 games.
@@johnwayne-kd1pnCalling PS4 the worst gen when PS5 exists is insanity
I would say PS3 was pretty rough, not a lot of great games, getting spanked by the Wii due to lacking experiences like Mario Galaxy which somehow looked better than all of the Xbox 360 and PS3 offerings despite running on a suped up Gamecube, Sony still not being able to admit their controller design is bad, yet cucking out of giving us the boomerang controller which actually looked cool. Many, many mistakes were made.
@@IceBlueLugia Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the fan over the PS4.
Ehem.. Well, there were some good games during the PS4 era, mostly at the start. But then everything just became the same boring open world game with the same stale missions and structure, with few exceptions.
PS5 is pretty bad too, but at least the hardware is nice, and there are some "alternative" games available.
I'm not a fan of woke gaming, but that's not a PS5 exclusive, it started during the PS4 era.
@@johnwayne-kd1pnyou're a trolling and shouldn't be taken seriously
i loved your editing and everything is really well produced, congratulations and nice video :) subscribed
haha thanks so much!
5:15 huh, the swift is red but then in the rear view mirror it's black
also while mentioning GPU bugs..
Once it goes black it never comes back...
Honestly, Sony should 100% make a dual-boot type of console where you can either boot into the current gen or the on-board PS1-2-3 emulation software and all the games are accessible via either PS Plus classics or buying the games as ISOs but for a lower price. Maybe 1-5€ for PS1 games, 3-10€ for PS2 and 8-15€ for PS3.
I think due to logistics (licensing, royalties and rights to claim etc) its more effort than its worth. All in all the cost benefit analysis hasn't worked in our favor.
I can't see current sony doing that since they took out other os supprt out of the ps3 due to homebrew concerns.
from either Xbox or PS i would have bought one if i could have booted linux on it.
isnt this how the wii u handled it
lol iirc they just threw in the whole wii os
Just jailbreak a PS3 and then you don't need to pay to play any PS1 to PS3 games
1:06 i audibly gasped
the dumbest part about sony not emulating their old systems is that they could sell the emulator for $20 and have their system play everything and make money that way.
players would eat that shit up.
Any time "useless hardware nobody cares about anymore nor should they" gets a new life no matter how niche/limited is a GIANT FAT WIN, and warrants extra kudos to you for doing so. As a fellow roommate [read: inhabitant] with you on this planet we call Earth, BIG HUGS AND THANK YOU! :) ..... oh yeah, and the techy-nerd side of me definitely appreciates what you accomplished here with that hardware. That is WAY COOL! :)
Now do it with FreeBSD... The biggest issue is Sony's OS, which is heavily modified BSD (not Linux); and thus lacks a lot of the GNU open-source libraries due to BSD being a _copy-left_ license; not to mention Sony's lack of BSD engineers...
While FreeBSD shares a lot of libraries with Linux (and vice-versa, such as the NetBSD network stack for Linux, MacOS, and Windows), _graphics_ linraries are **not** shared. The PS4/PS5 uses an entirely proprietary hybrid dual-API, one being a low-level (GNM), and the other a high-level API (GNMx); and these are analogous to DirectX 12 and DirectX 11, respectively.
Uniquely, is how these APIs handle _shaders._ This is done entirely by Sony's PSSL (PlayStation Shader Language), which is very similar to HLSL used with DirectX 12.
TL;DR: The issue isn't the silicon - _it's the operating system itself._
They are not analogues to Directx. Directx is a high level API, inherently inefficient. And the OS is not the problem, it is an excellent OS, and I would take it any day over anything Microsoft delivers. Sony's version of BSD is most likely 100% a gaming OS and inherently efficient at its job, while Microsoft is known for it's bloatware, and has adapted their general purpose OS to a gaming platform.
The operating system is actually the solution. And coming from GNU/Linux, you and I should appreciate that as a solution. Imagine the great efficiency increases there could be if PC gamers moved to GNU/Linux. They could play on a gaming specific distro tailored to their every need with no overhead, no bloatware. Imagine if the GPU drivers had official and wide support, they would provide superior performance and efficiencies on such a system, as we have seen time again happens when proper efforts are put into similar hardware on GNU/Linux, even if only half hearted. Albeit, alot of Linux Kernel drivers and so on have no official support and are reverse engineered, but still perform at a very high level.
Now, imagine a little bit of co-operation between Valve/Steam and Sony, and some willingness from Sony to promote gaming on GNU/Linux and BSD on PC.. It's still a piece of cake to port those games from BSD to GNU/Linux compared to porting them to Windows.
> such as the NetBSD network stack for Linux
Wha?
A clarifying point: the BSD license is not copyleft, it’s a permissive free software license. The GNU GPL however *is* a copyleft license
beyond what everyone else has already said about reasons this is incorrect, the BSD accelerated graphics stacks largely are taken from Linux, since Mesa and most of the DRM code in the kernel (including AMD's) is permissively licensed. Even if it were absolutely critical that Sony be able to use OpenGL and GLSL for PS3 emulation (and it's not), it's not like Sony doesn't have the resources to create / port the already existing OpenGL interface for their GPU. I do think there are valid reasons for them to not do PS3 emulation on PS5, but using BSD simply isn't one of them
Oh my fucking god im so tired of hearing this, PlayStation OS are not remotely BSD, they just copied network stack from there that’s why it shows up in the IP notices page
Trust me, I’ve developed homebrew for PS consoles for nearly 5+ years and looked heavily into how the kernel works .. that shit ain’t BSD
You could 3d print a case for this system and install a far more quiet cooling fan, maybe a VESA mount on it? Shove it on the back of a TV for a quiet media center/ gaming build
I'm in the middle of designing a case for it to turn it into a mini pc; no vesa mount though
@@realderyn sounds good. Hopefully someone will modify the firmware to enable more cores and gpu cores. Surely a few of them are functional
@@MLGPRO-dx8fg That's almost definitely not possible. They fuse it off on the hardware level using lasers during manufacturing
@@MLGPRO-dx8fg The chip is what it is, and there is no modifying it via firmware.
tbh if they really wanted to the PS4 would’ve had at least a couple of backwards compatible games
ps4 cpu was trash, would be way too much work
Even if you thought that the performance was bad, its mostly on the emulators part. RPCS3 is known to be very laggy and non-reliable as I have had issues with a somewhat powerful PC and only running sonic unleashed at 15-20 fps with frame drops and crashes
It doesn't matter if PS5 can run some emulated PS3 games, it needs to be able to play most of Sony first party games to be worth it, but a lot of Sony first party titles are the hardest to emulate. Take a look at the RPCS3 compatibility list and look up some key PS3 exclusives that haven't been remastered like Killzone 2 & 3, infamous, Ratchet & Clanks, MGS4. They're all listed as having severe issues, still. Some of these games have poor performance even with considerably more powerful hardware than PS5. Some games require a dozen custom patches be applied to avoid various issues.
One easy solution to this... money.
Sony has enough money to get people on a project that other people do for free.
Even for those games sony is capable of per game hackery far easier than the more generalized rpcs3. Their back compat would function like ps2 classics most likely so it's just select titles anyways.
RPCS3 developers do not have access to the same information that Sony has internally. Sony has a much better chance to update the games for the PS5. It is just that financially it did not make too much sense for them this gen to do so.
@@BerosCerberus Money is also the problem. Sony makes money by selling remasters not by emulators
Just play on ps3
Algorithm recommend this to me. I saw the views were low and figured it wasn’t going to be good quality. I was wrong.
6:25
“Most levels”
Speaking as someone with approx 300 hours in LBP2 Emulated, the issue you were experiencing was emitters / destroyers.
RSPC3 HATES emitters.
Worst level for it is full metal rabbit’s flamethrower cap meanies, since they spawn like 10 fire particles a second.
Something about the spawn/destroy effects emitters can be given obliterates anything that isn’t a top-line CPU.
I got 5fps on the aforementioned full metal rabbit with an i8700k and 2070, would love to see what you get with this doohickey machine!
I almost never comment on any video but I just wanted to say this was some of the highest quality content on RUclips I have seen in recent memory. Thanks for the upload and I look forward to seeing more content in the future from your channel
thank you so much for taking the time to comment then! I really appreciate it :)
Well since the GPU is working on this board unlike that other board confirms getting Linux on the PS5 with GPU drivers is likely to be fairly easy once a exploit comes out
Sony would never do this because then they can’t dangle remasters and rereleases in front of their customers
IDK why the RUclips algo recommended this but it was good. I subbed
I didn’t look at the subscriber count and assumed you’re a big tech RUclipsr, but wow! Very interesting and high quality content.
My friend and I recently had an idea that these things might be perfect for; LAN party in a box. Put four of them in a "suitcase", link them up, plug in some controllers, and find four cheap TVs from craigslist.
Why does Lowest Logan prefer the "big demo" GT5 Prologue over the "full game" GT5?
1:07 this will be ingrained into my memory.
This is a rare occurance indeed. Congrats! You're back on RUclips recommendation algorithm, considering you're a rare uploader
Very cool video, glad YT sometimes recommends good stuffe.
1:06 I can't believe you've done this
I literally gasped.
What better way to demonstrate broken cores!!!😂😂😂😂😂 I hope the board was already dead.
All of this serves to prove that practically PS5 hardware could just be turned to using any OS and run games well on it if it weren't for the proprietary lockdown of the system. That and being able to play games from older consoles, but then again it would cost Sony money that wouldn't be made back so they Don't care. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to sell digital copies of very old PS games? People would have access to way more games for cheap, many of which are still relevant today. That's a ton of gained value.
Hell, you used to be able to run Linux on the PS3 but they removed the Other OS feature in an update
@notNajimi oh yea i heard the story of some government/millitary force buying multiple PS3's to build a supercomputer with them, then they were F'ed over by sony disabling allowing other OS.
At this point, Sony not just using Linux but some obscure proprietary BSD fork is just one big sunken cost fallacy
Every gaming console is turing complete - it can do everything a computer can.
If word processors, web browsers, and other apps were available on console, I'd buy one. For now, a PC is a better deal, because it lets you do pretty much anything (like, literally, except for halting problem analogues)
Love to see someone actually run the full computer with stable diffusion, like all 12 blades at the same time rendering a big 4k or higher image
All this effort to play ps3 games on a ps5 proves again that ps5 has no games
I have a ps5 and i rarely use it. But i play on my ps3 everyday
@@CyroMercthen why did you buy it?
@S-1_24-25 i didnt know the games would be mid
@S-1_24-25 some are good but others are bad and overpriced
Oooh, I would be interested in working with one of these! I am experienced in Linux development regarding mesa and gamescope so I am curious what I can do if I had this hardware in my hands. Thanks for sharing your packages in the AUR for a baseline if and/or when I can get one of these.
I love what you did when you emulated ps3 on a ps5. Please try ps5 Pro next
Glad to see our hard work paying off. My friends and I have been working on getting BC250 gaming ready for nearly a year.
Figured I do a write up for Arch in the current state:
- Flashed modified bios
- Downloaded latest ISO at the moment was archlinux-2024.12.01-x86_64
- Wrote ISO via DD to usb flash drive
- On installer boot screen hit E to edit the command-line args, had to add: acpi=noirq usbcore.autosuspend=-1 amdgpu.sg_display=0 (Then pressed enter)
- It should boot to the CLI, I did have to unplug my keyboard and plug it into another USB port closest one to the Rj45, not sure why but then the keyboard worked again
- Ran archinstall and installed a base desktop plasma system (zen kernel)
- After install rebooted with no kernel flags and it went to bash just fine
- Enabled multilib in /etc/pacman.conf
- Installed yay
- From yay installed: mesa-amd-bc250 vulkan-radeon-amd-bc250 lib32-mesa-amd-bc250 lib32-vulkan-radeon-amd-bc250
- Installed sddm via pacman
- Started sddm via systemctl
- Installed Steam
- Played a game
=== Profit... but honestly YMMV but this was a fun little project.
Wow this is super helpful TY!!!!!!
Don't let NASA know about those, they might try some other shenanigans with this like they tried to do before with a truck load of PS3's
This is definitely some cool stuff, appreciate the effort put into this. I've always been curious why Sony Fan boys acted like the PS3, a nearly 20 year old system, had some magical CPU that couldn't be supported on current hardware, it's always been that the current people at Sony just don't care to work on it.
The main hurdle was SPU emulation. Now that we have basic consumer CPUs with lots of cores and decently sized caches, SPU JIT isn't such a big hurdle anymore.
Per RPCS CPU chart the PS5's CPU is somewhere between B and D Tier, which does cover the threshold for it to be able to run _some_ games for a given definition of run. There is however a reason they've pursued AVX-512, and CPUs with that have their own separate tier on the Chart.
Sony's intent with the statement is correct.
The RPCS3 devs themselves have said the CPU is not ideal for PS3 emulation.
But this is a partially disabled PS5 CPU with only 6c,12t enabled with multicore performance like a R52600X , it should be a D tier CPU. With all 8c,16t enabled and more shaders from a fully enabled iGPU, the performance level is very different, probably between B and C-tier of that chart.
Funnily enough, the RPCS3 emulator runs fine on AMD handheld consoles, keep supporting Sony's laziness
Just search for ROG Ally Uncharted 3 gameplay
@@fleurdewin7958Single core performance is more important, than these 2 cores.... Also GPU power is going to boost only resolution, not stability.
@@fleurdewin7958the ps5 cpu is not fully reserved for games though. To my knowledge, 4 threads are reserved for ui and such.
Epic video m8 great job, I love that you used arch for this, great distro choice
The type of shit I like to see, good job.
The lighting glitches due to AMD drivers dropping support ought to tell you the kind of effort and validation necessary to emulate PS3.
Sell one to Digital Foundry! They will go crazy!😀
My thoughts exactly
Yes, yes, YES, Y E S ! ! !
They don't know how to use Linux so they won't go crazy with it.
No tell them to fix their teeth
@@cokelife5831 😂
At some point the whiners are going to have to acknowledge that a LOT of engineering has gone into the PS3 emulator, and that Sony would be starting from scratch were they to make one for PS5/6. And what would they gain by making it? Pretty much nothing.
Thankfully we can run PS3 games on PS3s and modern PCs, so no biggie.
What would they gain. Possibly a small increase in sales.
What would they lose. Possibly a lot. And another thing is can the PS5 run enough games at good enough quality that Sony would risk their reputation on.
If performance is not great or games are broken, most petwont be so forgiving if it's an official advertised feature.
Sony's being stupid and greedy not letting us access our Digital Ps3 games. Our Ps3s are already broken.
Mine still works thankfully
Buy new one
I still have mine actually. Considering doing a run of Assassins Creed series on it, because at the time, those games were actually still good.
I have 2 PS3 slims been wanting an old PS3 that plays PS1 PS2 PS3 games, their expensive though
@@Infinity-pv5nd Ahh yea, that was a thing wasn't it. But not in Europe. But there was a US version of the PS3 that had official backwards support, but it contained an extra chip of some sort, and was more expensive.
Or do I remember that incorrectly?
Great video and props to everyone who worked hard to make MESA run properly on this thing. Maybe that patch could be even upstreamed?
Either way, nice one!
This is the kind of video we would see on LTT. Great Video as always Logan!
No you wouldn't. He would make 10 500$ PC videos
imagine watching such trash channel...🤢
@@gta4haterhq He does console related videos too, like PS3, Wii and 3DS devkits, and using silicon from consoles, like the Xbox One's GPU afair
the outro tripped me out the background was fake the whole time?????????? i love that subscribed great video
You should try to emulate the most cell procesor demanding games like the last of us or uncharted 3. The argument isn't that the ps5 can't emulate ps3 completely. it's that x86 can't emulate the cell processors SPEs.
You have an interesting opening to the argument, but a proper stress test is necessary.
Good to see that progress is being made on making these blades usable, I was amazed when I first learned of them and that they were basically worthless despite some obviously valuable silicon.
Maybe in time there will be a nice and easy way of turning these into very capable computers.
Steam Deck could run some games on RPCS3 and that's an even more cut down SoC. But the issue is that there are still tons of games that are still unplayable. RPCS3 is only 70% compatible sadly
It seems a bit weird to start out saying that Sony’s claim that it’s too complicated to emulate and that the real reason is they want you to buy things, and then immediately start showing games with various glitches depending how they leveraged PS3 architecture.
That a dedicated multi year effort still has lots of unplayable PS3 games seems to suggest it being extremely complex is actually true.
You realize this is a project by hobbyists and sony has access to the entire ps3 spec which we dont have. I find it strange that in the tech world people just expect companies ti work the same or worse as unpaid hobbyists working off of reverse engineering. Sony made the ps3 they have the entire documentation needed to address these bugs.
@@FemboyCatGaming Yes I understand but Zen 2 cannot be fully compatible because it's messing alot vector operations. Which is why when AVX-512 was added in Zen 4, RPCS3 compatibility and performance improved alot. AMD only added AVX-512 to improve AI. There are still aspects where Zen would still have a hard time dealing with SPU code since it's missing TSX, which is only in some Intel CPUs.
There are many things missing in modern hardware that is not compatible with the Cell. It was such a unique design that emulating it is very hard unless Sony was willing to pay AMD more money to customize Zen cores just for emulation.
Love the commitment to test something so weird and interesting, I have subscribed :)
loved that detail at 1:15 😉
The mention of bad cpu cores that can lock up when running code applies to the refurbished desktop pc my boss bought over a year ago. I could just be using the pc normally and all of a sudden it'll lock up for several seconds and i can't do anything other than move the mouse and then it'll start working again. It happens randomly. Sometimes it'll not do it that day, sometimes multiple times a day, or even once at the beginning of the work day.
Wow. I had no idea RPCS3 had been so heavily optimised on the last couple of years. The performance boost is impressive.
I expect a homebrew solution will be needed to get certain PS3 games on the PS5 due to licensing issues though. For example getting Burnout 3 running on PS4 requires you to build it yourself, too much licensed music to re-release.
I always prefer native or hybrid between native hardware and emulation over full on emulation which is reliant on digital rereleases and constant tweaks. I think Sony should remake and replicate the CPU's, like the Cell CPU and then emulate everything else, like the GPU, Ram etc. Not only will this greatly improve the accuracy of running PS3 games from discs and digitally. But it will give you emulation benefits aswell, like running games at higher framerates and at higher resolutions since the GPU is being emulated. It's easy for Sony to run their legacy hardware this way. Since they have all of classified documents like the source codes and the schematics for their hardware. And they can easily make like another fully backwards compatible console that not only plays older games digitally and from discs, but also can render them at higher resolutions with trophy support with higher framerates without any glitches.
switch emulation.
so you can tell your buddies you really got your playstation to play nintendo games.
I remember going over the specs of the PS5 when it first came out. The comparison we were making then was somewhere around an rx5700 or 5700xt. If you assume the rx5700 and adjust the performance based on the CU ration (66%), you comeout in the rx590-ish range. So this seems perfectly reasonable. It's on par with a PS4 Pro with a much stronger CPU. Which if it was cheap enough ain't bad.
What’s the fan you have attached to it?! Also how powerful is the PSU you’re using?
I don't know what impresses me the most, if seeing the hardware that runs the PS5 running PS3 emulators, or seeing RPCS3 running GT5 so well when it wasn't working before (even though it's Prologue and not the base game).
It's a PS5 Lite
6 and 24 cores honestly sounds pretty good? If they could find a way to make these GPUs work with reliable drivers and windows kernels these could be a legitimate product for sale as a mini-prebuilt PC. It’s small, seemingly efficient and powerful enough for a lot of users, despite being waste. I think it would have a market, kinda like those 3-core CPUs from the 2000s.
Rpcs3 is gonna get better, it has been tested on a raspberry pi.
We dont need sony
This is misleading. ARM is just a more efficient CPU architecture, so it's not saying RPCS3 doesn't need computation power, it was the most demanding mainstream emulator for a long while, computers just got a lot better now that Ryzen made Intel actually try somewhat
Its not about whether it can run it, it about the experience. The amount of bugs that are present in your short video is proof enough
Isnt the ps5 a 8 core 16thread? What locked the extra 2 core?
That's why these things are on the boards to begin with, one or two of the cores are defective on a hardware level and are fused off
Exactly, no different then the old 3 core AMD cpus from back in the day. Just a quad core with one defective core that could sometimes successfully be unlocked.
The ps3 can be played on current hardware. Just like game companies they do not keep records of old code and tech. Like how most old games have not been remade because they actually no longer have the original code. Just like what happened to crash bandicoot.
It should not be impossible to remake any previous hardware and making something old should be 100 times easier then making something new espically if you already have all the data.
HE REMEMBERED THE PASSWORD TO HIS YT ACCOUNT 😭❤️
FINALLY
>The PS5 isn't capable of running PS3 games
>RPCS3 exists
Corpos always lie.
I'm not going to lie, a lot of this went over my head. You're basically a wizard 😅
There is usually a kernel parameter you need to activate on boot to get amd overclocking to work.
Would it be possible to swap the CPU for one from a defective PS5?? To get a more accurate comparison. Of course you need to know about BGA for that. And the question is whether the BIOS would limit the new CPU but it would definitely be an interesting experiment🤷🏻♂️
Difficult, but theoretically possible
As far as I know it wouldn't be possible, there are efuses that prevent something like that from working
This is not my first rodeo, it's almost always been a lie that "X" last gen system cannot be emulated on 'X" current gen system.
Companies either just don't wana put in the work or they don't respect you're previous purchases and resell / stop you from playing you're old games to facilitate buying new games.
PS3 backwards-compatibility wouldn't be compatible with Sony exec's wallets.
Would be if it were subscription service top of PS Plus.
Sony ceo just like all the rest have zero care about the customer
I was thoroughly impressed with the work that went into making this work... i'm wondering if the GPU clock tables can be hex edited in the firmware
Damn, I was wondering when a youtuber would find this thing. I've been gaming on it for a hot minute and have one deployed for a friend as a cloud gaming machine using sunshine.
hey where can i contact you, planning to buy one of these for cheap gaming/emulation so some help would be nice.
For the GPU being comparable to an RX480, you could always try using an RX6700 with an external GPU enclosure via HDMI. It might be slightly limited using HDMI especially when compared to USB-C or Thunderbolt, but I'm sure it'd yield better results than what's already on the thing.
Very cool system to play with!
Seeing jvyden being apart of this was something I did not expect to see lol
Continues to be the GOAT 🙏
The hidden details ❤
for the bios think people could technically get the firmware using a bios programmer and edit it to make the clock higher, but I honestly don't know much about bios editing I just know it's possible
please someone make a steam deck with it
There are some weird AMD GPU memory clock bugs in the Linux kernel. However, I think the rate you read from the kernel is half the real rate because the memory bus is double data rate. Meaning it's effectively doing double access on every clock cycle.
You can read the possible rates and manually set it to the highest value via sysfs.
The big problem is licensing issues coming up especially in context of rereleases, remasters, remakes, and anything with song materials from the PS3 generation
There wouldn’t just be a “lack of money being made because buy new stuff” its that it would turn into an active money sink. This especially matters with the context of Microsoft with Xbox having emulation on their consoles. I remember seeing a stat (pre Xbox series consoles) that said something like only 18% of people on Xbox were playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox one
While it’s easy to drop in PS3 game software from a copy of said game (or from online) onto an emulator with the appropriate software from the console (or from online) key thing is, is that can be considered illegal (especially if you got it from online)
I’m not saying this because I’m against emulation from PC or backwards compatibility (for it actually) just that like it’s ugh
Good thing Idgaf about legality while emulaating and pirating stuff
Emulation is not illegal, Sony could add pre-proxwssing software to check if the game copy is legit, just like they do with PS4 games. (Wich also run under emulation, since the PS4 Operating system is different)
@ no, emulation isn’t illegal but piracy is as emphasized by the “from online” part