RPCS3 Inside Look: A Deep-Dive into Hardware and Performance Scaling

Certainly by sales volume.

> For some applications that’s all that matters.

Is this one of them?

> Unlike other software, RPCS3’s PPU & SPU threads need to communicate constantly which results in a major bottleneck if these threads are split across multiple CCXes / chiplets. That ends up with the CPU hitting this bottleneck constantly with all the data moving around. This is why we do not recommend Ryzen CPUs unless they have a 3 or 4 core CCX design (6-8 core Ryzen CPUs, or a 4 core Ryzen APU). A 4 core CCX design is ideal as RPCS3 can fit all the PPU & SPU threads onto a single CCX, allowing users to bypass inter-CCX latency bottleneck entirely, provided the PPU & SPU threads are being scheduled properly to be placed on a single CCX.

> While later Ryzen generations have greatly improved latency, it’s still a major bottleneck for RPCS3 if all the PPU & SPU threads cannot be placed on a single CCX. Another thing to note is that Ryzen users should definitely update to Windows 10 1903 or later, as Microsoft improved their scheduler which helps to avoid this bottleneck as well.

> The Intel CPUs on the other hand are quite the opposite. They do not suffer from the latency issues explained above due to its monolithic design and when you combine all that with a faster single core, you will notice that they do often perform better than their AMD equivalent.

That's a nearly 2:1 ratio for performance/price scaling.