Yuzu’s latest builds deliver huge performance gains to the Nintendo Switch emulator

The Yuzu team has achieved 50% performance gains when emulating many popular Switch games

The team behind Yuzu, the popular Nintendo Switch emulator, has been very busy over the past few weeks, releasing several new early access versions of their emulator that have delivered huge performance gains in popular titles.

Starting with early access version 3524, the Yuzu emulation’s normal GPU accuracy mode had been revamped to make many more games compatible with the mode without any graphical issues. Previously, games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Pokémon Sword/Shield, Super Mario Odyssey, Bayonetta 3, and more required Yuzu to be used in high GPU accuracy mode to run correctly, a mode which had a dramatic impact on the emulator’s performance. These fixes to normal GPU accuracy mode has effectively delivered major performance gains to most emulated Switch games, and have increased the overall accuracy of the emulator. 

With early access version 3527, Yuzu has been updated to reduced RDTC overhead by 50%, increasing the performance of CPU-limited by by up to 5%, and new changes to the emulator’s normal GPU accuracy mode has enabled performance gains of up to 50% in games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and more. This update is a transformative one for Yuzu, as 50% performance gains are colossal.

Not being content with update 3527’s 50% GPU performance gains, the Yuzu team have also delivered early access update 3531, which also deliver performance updates that should deliver across the board performance gains. Sadly, the gains that this update provides has not be specified, and apparently vary depending on the hardware that you are using to run Yuzu. Below is a video showcasing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild running on Yuzu version 3531.

Before long, Yuzu’s early access updates will be made available to all users of the emulator, delivering huge performance gains and accuracy improvements to the software. At this time it is unknown when these early access improvements will be added to the mainline version of the Yuzu emulator.

You can join the discussion on Yuzu’s latest emulation advancements on the OC3D Forums.