Also, I found that disabling audio stretching helped performance a little bit. Citra on PC supports a shader cache, and it’s quite common for users to want to download a precompiled shader cache to avoid slowly and painstakingly generating their own. This is why currently, Citra on Android can be quite stuttery when playing some 3DS games. This means that they can’t be cached, and instead must be recompiled once encountered every time. When new shaders are encountered in Citra, they are then compiled and aren’t saved to the storage. A shader cache is simply a cache of files that keeps track of compiled shaders that are shown in-game, and having one greatly reduces CPU and GPU load. For this, you will need a hacked Nintendo 3DS and a legally purchased copy of the 3DS game that you want to play.Ĭurrent performance issues with Nintendo 3DS emulation via Citra for Android (and potential fixes)īefore going into detail of the performance of the aforementioned Nintendo 3DS games on various Android smartphones, it’s worth mentioning that currently, the Citra 3DS emulator port for Android does not support a shader cache. Note: You can legally acquire 3DS ROMs for your smartphone by dumping and decrypting your own Nintendo 3DS games. Keep in mind that different GPU driver versions may also affect performance, and so one device with a particular chipset may not perform the same as another device with the same chipset.

Note that all of these tests were done with audio stretching disabled as I found that it had a pretty significant performance hit for little benefit when enabled. I tested each of these 3DS games with the unofficial Citra MMJ version as well as the official Citra 3DS emulator that was just released on the Google Play Store.

Honor 20 Pro ( our review) – HiSilicon Kirin 980.

Realme 6 Pro ( our review) – Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G.

OPPO Reno 10x Zoom ( our review) – Qualcomm Snapdragon 855.

OnePlus 8 Pro ( our review) – Qualcomm Snapdragon 865.

OPPO Find X2 Pro – Qualcomm Snapdragon 865.

Realme X50 Pro ( our review) – Qualcomm Snapdragon 865.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

I tested the following popular Nintendo 3DS games: I’m sure anybody who saw its release wondered whether they could play their favorite Nintendo 3DS games on their Android smartphone or tablet, so I’ve spent the past few days playing games on various different devices powered by multiple different SoCs to see what kind of performance you can expect to get from your device. Citra, the most popular Nintendo 3DS emulator, was officially released for Android onto the Google Play Store last week, and its performance has been at the forefront of the conversation.

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