Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

PS3 emulator for mac?

U

-Ussu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2007
27
0
Tallinn, Estonia
Is there a thing like that out there yet?
Because there are lots of cool games coming out for the PS3 and i cant understand the price of ps3.
Maybe there is one for pc already :D But is there one for a mac?
 
U

-Ussu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 12, 2007
27
0
Tallinn, Estonia
So, there will be no emulator for a long time :/
Baad. I guess i haveto buy a Wii then, because the same games (almost all) come to wii aswell, and thats much cheaper :)
 
sammich

sammich

macrumors 601
Sep 26, 2006
4,305
268
Sarcasmville.
That's almost like trying to emulate a supercomputer on a mac mini.

Apart from that, where the heck are you supposed to get the ROM's from???
 
0098386

0098386

Suspended
Jan 18, 2005
21,574
2,908
BluRay dumps. They're all over the P2P and torrent sites.

To the OP- PS2 emulation isn't too hot either. So you should probably wait for a good decade or so for PS3 emulation.
 
fishkorp

fishkorp

macrumors 68030
Apr 10, 2006
2,536
650
Ellicott City, MD
i highly doubt it's possible to emulate to emulat a 6 or 8 core Cell CPU (whichever it is, i don't remember) on a 2 core Intel CPU. i'm guessing you'll never see it happen in the current or next gen CPU lifetime.
 
Manic Mouse

Manic Mouse

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2006
943
0
Considering the PS3's GPU is more powerful than any Macs I doubt it would run all that well...
 
0098386

0098386

Suspended
Jan 18, 2005
21,574
2,908
Manic Mouse said:
Considering the PS3's GPU is more powerful than any Macs I doubt it would run all that well...
Click to expand...

Not entirely. The PS3's cell is 3.2ghz, and they're not exactly "cores" either, they're SPE's. It can execute 9 threads at once but they're not as good as seperate cores.

That said you're probably going to need a 6ghz 8 core Mac Pro to compare. Since an actual computer runs an OS and a slew of other applications at once. My 266mhz PC can barely run a NES emulator. You're going to need a CPU of at least double the power. And even then - you also need to translate the PS3's PowerPC to an x86 chip. Which will hit computers for massive damage for sure.

Though funnily enough even the oldest machine in my house has more RAM than a PS3 :D ... just not as fast RAM.
 
zap2

zap2

macrumors 604
Mar 8, 2005
7,252
8
Washington D.C
sammich said:
That's almost like trying to emulate a supercomputer on a mac mini.
Click to expand...



Hardly...the OP wants to emulate PS3, and u said that be like a Mac Mini emulating a supercomputer, since the Mac Mini is a Mac, your saying a PS3 is a super computer.



Its NOT! :eek:
 
GFLPraxis

GFLPraxis

macrumors 604
Mar 17, 2004
7,152
460
I was SURE this thread was a typo and he meant PS2.

LOL!

Look, it's not happening soon. Honestly, the PS3's "incredible power" is a bit exaggurated...but there's no way anyone's emulating it anytime soon. Certainly not before a working 360 emulator comes out.

Generally, you need systems to be 10x more powerful than what you're emulating, and current computers are not 10x more powerful; especially when the PS3 is REALLY good at certain types of calculations. Actually, a Mac Pro is probably way more than 10x better than the PS3 at integer calculations, while the PS3 is probably better at non-branching floating point calculations.

Regardless; I don't think it'll EVER happen. The Sega Saturn also used a very weird multi-core setup with different processors at different speeds, it had like a dozen different processors (one for the CD drive, two for the CPU, two for the GPU, one for the audio, etc, etc, IIRC) and to this day nobody has written an emulator because it's just too much of a hassle.

So in five years when we're all using 16-core iMacs with dual-core Radeon X3600s, we'll probably have an XBox 360 emulator, and still no PS3 emulator.
 
SamIchi

SamIchi

macrumors 68030
Aug 1, 2004
2,716
137
They haven't even perfected the PS2 emulation yet, I don't think. PS3 won't be emulated on a computer til next gen. So that makes about 7-10 years I'd say. I think you could muster up 600 by then.
 
Sdashiki

Sdashiki

macrumors 68040
Aug 11, 2005
3,529
11
Behind the lens
Emulation is always, typically, 5 years off.

And no matter what, since the N64/PSX days, emulation has been spotty at best.

Nothing can emulate hardware 100% anymore because the hardware is so complicated. Its not that the PS3 is a "super-computer" its that its chips are complex little devices that each must be emulated in software. The few chips found inside the NES or SNES, compared to todays consoles, was easy to emulate.

Another thing is to imagine that you need a computer that is "at-least 10x as powerful" as the machine its emulating. Its a hardware/software thing.


A PS3 emulator is at least 5 years away, and since I havent seen an XBOX or PS2 emulator that is even worth mentioning, I doubt it will ever come.

And to resonate whats been said already:

LoL
 
Watabou

Watabou

macrumors 68040
Feb 10, 2008
3,425
755
United States
Amnesiac7 said:
He's not back, but I am. Is there an emulator available yet?
Click to expand...

I remember someone telling me that to emulate a console, you typically need something more than twice the power of the console you are trying to emulate. So yeah, you're not going to get anything until after about 5-10 years or so. Unless you have a 7Ghz+ multicore supercomputer laying around. But then again, if you had that sort of money just buy the real thing. ;)
 
R

Ravich

macrumors 6502a
Oct 20, 2009
773
0
Portland, OR
Emulators are fun when you can make an older game run in high def or something. Xenoblade, for the Wii, looks like utter garbage on its native console, but with mid level settings on an emulator, it looks better than most PS3 games I've played.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom