[W.I.P.]Best Playstation emulators list for PC + more will be added

kozarovv

kozarovv

Developer
WIP!

Sometime we are in situation when our Playstation is not with us, but we have access to PC or even to some modern laptop. In situation like this we can play some PC games, but also we don't need to forfeit PS series gaming. Emulators are well known part of Playstation scene, we are emulating everything on everything. Now lets make one more step and emulate Playstation this time.

0. Table of Content
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0. Table of Content
1. PS1 - Playstation
2. Pocketstation
3. PS2 - Playstation 2
4. PSP - Playstation Portable
5. PS3 - Playstation 3
6. PSV - Playstation Vita/TV
7. PS4 - Playstation 4
8. To do

1. PS1 - Playstation
375px-PSX-Console-wController.jpg
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First Playstation console made by Sony company, based on MIPS architecture R3000 compatible procesor, LSI CoreWare CW33300 based core. CPU that included itself more components like: Geometry Transformation Engine, Motion Decoder, System Control Coprocessor. Current emulation status is very good. There are 2 most knows emulators, both very good. ADD MORE

ePSXe (enhanced PSX emulator) - Current Stable Version: v2.0.5

Homepage: http://www.epsxe.com/
Download: http://www.epsxe.com/download.php

Minimum system requirements (unofficial):
  • 800Mhz 32-bit CPU
  • 256 MB of RAM
  • DirectX 8 capable graphic card
  • x16 CD-ROM (optional)
  • Windows XP SP3
  • DirectX 8 or OpenGL 1.0
  • Bios file (optional)

Recommended system configuration (unofficial):
  • Fast dual-core CPU
  • 512 MB of RAM
  • OpenGL 2.0 + GLSL shaders video card
  • Fast CD-ROM (optional)
  • Windows Vista+
  • DirectX 8 or higher or OpenGL 2.0 or higher
  • Bios file (optional)

Like you can see ePSXe requirements are very low. Of course faster PC can improve framerate, and compatibility. But ePSXe can run on any modern PC or Laptop/Notebook.

PCSX Reloaded - Current Stable Version: v1.9.93

Homepage: http://pcsxr.codeplex.com/
Download: http://pcsxr.codeplex.com/releases/view/111309

Minimum system requirements (unofficial):
Recommended system configuration (unofficial):


2. PocketStation
pocketstation1.png

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PocketStation released only on Japanese market is Memory Card with embed LCD, very similar product released later by Sega for Dreamcast console was known as VMU. PocketStation is easy to emulate, but due to rarity in EU and NA it wasn't popular. Emulated hardware in this case is not specially complicated. ARM7TDMI processor core used in PocketStation (and GBA) implements ARM architecture v4T. The processor supports both 32-bit and 16-bit instructions via the ARM and Thumb instruction sets. And emulation it's emulation on PC is 100% compatible with every released game and homebrew.

PK201
PKEmu
No$GBA
​
3. PS2 - Playstation 2
20150305233452.jpg

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Second gaming console released by Sony. Firstly was much harder to get good emulation status, but now most of games are fully playable. This time we are emulating more advanced setup than in PS1 case, four uncommon components. R5900 used in PS2, known as Emotion Engine is a modified version of R5000 cpu with a customized instruction/data cache arrangement and Sony's propiertary 107 vector SIMD Multimedia Extensions (MMI). Second component is well known R3000 form PS1 used here as a Input Output Processor (IOP). Sony complicated things even more by replacing R3000 with PowerPC-based "Deckard" IOP with 4 MB SDRAM starting with SCPH-7500x. Third component is Graphics Synthesizer used as GPU, and last but not least, uncommon then Direct Rambus DRAM.
​
PCSX 2 - Current Stable Version: v1.4.0

Homepage: http://pcsx2.net/
Download: https://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/index.php

Minimum system requirements:

  • OS: Windows 7 or GNU/Linux
  • CPU: Any that supports SSE2 @ 1600 STR
  • GPU: DirectX 10 support
  • RAM: 2GB


Recommended system configuration:

  • OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) or GNU/Linux (64-bit)
  • CPU: Any that supports AVX2 (Core series Haswell or Ryzen and newer) @ 2000 STR or better
  • GPU: DirectX 11 support or better
  • RAM: 4GB or more


4. PSP - Playstation Portable
480px-Psp-1000.jpg

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Excluding PocketStation this is first Playstation series handheld console made by Sony. Console had great power in release time, still is not bad in daily handheld gaming. This is also silent goodbye to MIPS architecture for Playstation series. On PC, PSP emulators main task is to translate instructions of two MIPS R4000 32bit/64bit based cores to x86, and x64 architecture used by most PC computers. Luckily for emulator developers Sony this time used standard DDR memory so there is one task less for them.

PPSSPP - Current Stable Version: v1.8
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Homepage: http://ppsspp.org/
Download: http://ppsspp.org/downloads.html

Minimum system requirements:
  • Any reasonably modern CPU will be just fine, and any GPU that can handle OpenGL 2.0 should have no issues.
  • You should make sure to install the latest graphics drivers available though.
  • Windows XP or later is required, Windows 7 or 8 is recommended.
  • On some older computers, you may need to use the DirectX backend.

5. PS3 - Playstation 3
160909165849960.jpg

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Yes, Playstation 3 is slowly reaching status of console that can be emulated on PC. This is first time when Sony decided to use PowerPC architecture in Playstation family. Hardware that we are trying emulate is looking powerful even today. Fast Cell Broadband Engine CPU clocked at 3.2 GHz. RSX (Reality Synthesizer) GPU based on the Nvidia 7800GTX, but using FLEX I/O instead of PCI-E, and was able to use also system memory resources. XDR RAM used in PS3 is also not helping emulators developers. Also software layer of Playstation 3 incl. complicated encryption making things much harder.

RPCS3 - Current Stable Version: none

Homepage: https://rpcs3.net/
Download: https://rpcs3.net/download

Minimum System Requirements

  • CPU: Any x64 capable processor
  • GPU: OpenGL 4.3 compatible or greater
  • RAM: 2GB minimum
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit / Linux 64-bit / BSD 64-bit

Recommended System Requirements

  • CPU: Intel Quad-core and above with TSX-NI (Haswell and above)
  • CPU: AMD Hexa-core and above (Ryzen)
  • GPU: Vulkan compatible AMD or NVIDIA card
  • RAM: 8GB or greater
  • OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit / Linux 64-bit / BSD 64-bit
Windows Requirements
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable
  • Microsoft DirectX End-User Runtime
For Windows users, download the latest build and drag and drop all files into your RPCS3 root directory, replacing all files when prompted.
For Linux users, download the latest AppImage and make it executable with the command chmod a+x ./rpcs3-*_linux64.AppImage && ./rpcs3-*_linux64.AppImage

PS4 - Almost Not playable
PS Vita - Vita3K (will be added to list)

To do:

Setup
Plugins
formatting
base...
etc.
 
Last edited:
I try all the emulators that are posted here for playing PS1 games except the first one that is really good the other ones are a bit shit, they have too much much lag and not so good graphic. Here are the other ones that are good like PSXXeven, VGS XP, pSX, Mednafen, and the best one RetroArch.
 
odibeajde said:
I try all the emulators that are posted here for playing PS1 games except the first one that is really good the other ones are a bit shit, they have too much much lag and not so good graphic. Here are the other ones that are good like PSXXeven, VGS XP, pSX, Mednafen, and the best one RetroArch.
Click to expand...


RetroArch isn't an emulator it is a front end for other emulator's. It uses the cores the emulators you just called shit to achieve being "the best" as you just stated.
 
"Cores" are emulators without graphic user interface. When RA launching game, in reality it launching chosen emulator and give him some parrams. ReatroArch is bugged as hell on every environment which I tested and personally strongly not recommending to use it on anything (if You have choice of course, because on some platforms only RA is available).
 
For PSVITA you have VITA3K although its still in its infancy, the Project shows great signs of progress, but of course, we can't include a Emulator that boots just 0.1% of the PSVITA Library.

Another mention for the PlayStation, is PSXFin 1.13 ,lightweight and spec friendly Emulator, runs even in older Pentium III based machines, retains mostly of the Original PlayStation Graphical settings being more truly to the Native Hardware, targeted mostly for purist.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk
 
Naked_Snake1995 said:
For PSVITA you have VITA3K although its still in its infancy, the Project shows great signs of progress, but of course, we can't include a Emulator that boots just 0.1% of the PSVITA Library.

Another mention for the PlayStation, is PSXFin 1.13 ,lightweight and spec friendly Emulator, runs even in older Pentium III based machines, retains mostly of the Original PlayStation Graphical settings being more truly to the Native Hardware, targeted mostly for purist.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Last edited: Feb 26, 2017 :)
I updated thread little bit. Still missing a lot.
 
For me, PCSX is the best PS1 Emulator that you can find at this moment. I played PS1 Games with this emulator and I was very satisfied with the performance, graphic, sound and for beginners, I recommend that emulator.
 
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