A year after testing the waters by releasing a beta build of their Nintendo Switch emulator that used the graphics API Vulkan, the Ryujinx development team has finally merged it into the main release. Utilizing Vulkan, in the case of most emulators, allows for far better performance, and that extends to Ryujinx as well. This major change will make compiling shaders noticeably faster than with OpenGL, though when the latest release featuring Vulkan does release, it will cause your current built shader cache to stop existing.

First of all, you need to know that any shader caches you've cultivated over the years will sadly cease to exist once you update beyond version 1.1.200 and boot a game. While this does mean that you will start from scratch in every title, they should be much quicker and less painful to rebuild thanks to SPIR-V's compile speed! Should you choose to use Vulkan.

Other than this... not much. AMD and Intel users will want to immediately set Vulkan as their backend and never look back while Nvidia users have the luxury of choice. While in most cases Vulkan will likely be the better pick due to its lower shader stutter, there may be some games that render/perform better in one or the other, so the world truly is your oyster. Shaders built for one backend will rebuild into the complimentary set for the other when you switch, so nothing is lost by trying both. A good strategy may be to undergo the initial stutter with Vulkan and then switch to OpenGL if it performs a little better. Your choice.

The Ryujinx team provided a direct comparison between OpenGL and Vulkan, showcasing a large collection of graphical bugs being fixed using the latter, in cases like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 2, and the recently released Live a Live.

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Well this is quite emotional isn't it? It feels like a huge milestone, because it sure as hell is one. The fight against shader stutter is being won, the path forward for AMD and Intel GPU owners is starting to clear and our GPU developers in gdkchan and riperiperi can maybe take a well-deserved rest. Don't be shy to congratulate the dev team for this achievement and thank them for their tireless work!

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[MasterJ360]

Welp time to test Xeno3 again

 

[Ryab]

Welp time to test Xeno3 again

It ran perfectly on the old graphics engine.

 

[Jayro]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

 

[LeyendaV]

Finally.

 

[kevin corms]

It ran perfectly on the old graphics engine.

That surely depends on hardware used. I’m out of the loop on min recommendation for a cpu though.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

I wonder why mario odyssey benefits that much from vulkan, from 15 to 77, it's quite a jump

 

[GamerzHell9137]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

Are they? Yuzu Vulkan was broken for like 2 years or something and it still is hmm..

 

[DKAngel]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

they are different emus with diff development teams each, emu will have different things that are better or worse than each toher

 

[tofino]

 

[ZeroFX]

Best and most accurate sw emulator just got better!

 

[linuxares]

Can't wait for all whining "emughrd Xenoblade 3 isn't still wurking" comments.

 

[x65943]

These emulators have advanced at such quick speed, makes me wonder if/when switch 2 launches whether we will effectively have day 1 emulation (assuming similar hardware and that we can dump games)

 

[pustal]

These emulators have advanced at such quick speed, makes me wonder if/when switch 2 launches whether we will effectively have day 1 emulation (assuming similar hardware and that we can dump games)

Even if it does have a similar arch, security will be improved, and until the time we can dump and decrypt games, any necessary changes, as minor they may be, will be stalled until such is possible.

 

[alucard_xs]

Tried on Steamdeck, the vulkan option crashes the app ...

 

[Coolsonickirby]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

For playing games, yeah personally I think they're a bit behind. However for modding stuff they're far ahead of them just by supporting Skyline (although they don't support skyline-web which leaves me a bit salty.)

 

[GamerzHell9137]

These emulators have advanced at such quick speed, makes me wonder if/when switch 2 launches whether we will effectively have day 1 emulation (assuming similar hardware and that we can dump games)

Most definitely not, Switch emulation is in this state only because Tegra was prior documented a lot. Switch 2 will be using something that's not been seen, would bet an Nvidia chip again but who knows, maybe AMD.

 

[LainaGabranth]

You know, the last I remember, Yuzu was the big emulator everyone was talking about, but that was a solid year or so ago. Can I get a quick rundown on what the emulation scene is like now, in terms of performance and the like?

 

[MetoMeto]

Volcano power!

 

[Enlapse]

You know, the last I remember, Yuzu was the big emulator everyone was talking about, but that was a solid year or so ago. Can I get a quick rundown on what the emulation scene is like now, in terms of performance and the like?

This is just based on my opinion and various friends opinions prior this update (Ryujinx 1.1.200):
- Yuzu for performance and filters (Scaleforce and AMD, mostly) if the game was playable
- Ryujinx for accuracy and stable framerate (most of the time, obviously, this wasn't always the case)

That was because most games that didn't work with Yuzu because any reasons, tended to work properly in Ryujinx (perhaps with some inaccurracies, but the games were playable in the end), but the performance in Ryujinx tended to be 'worse'.

I haven't tried this new Ryujinx build, but probably (if the accuracy keeps its level) the only reason for using Yuzu (at least for me, and the only reason I would recommend any of my friends to use Yuzu) would be because of the filters. Keeping out reasons like a game works in Yuzu and not Ryujinx and viceversa, and all of that.

So (without testing the new Ryujinx build), I would resume my opinions (when a game is on par in playability in both emulators, of course):
- Yuzu for the filters
- Ryujinx for anything else

Perhaps my opinion changes after some tests, but that's what I expect.