FelipePrado0/gow3_pc windows-v2.1.8

God of War III Remastered for PC 2.1.8

on GitHub

Processors

• The game runs on CPUs without MOVBE, BMI1 and LZCNT: Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge, AMD FX (#33, #66, #90, #102, #136). The game's code (eboot.bin, libc.prx, libSceFios2.prx) was compiled for the PS4's Jaguar and uses those instructions directly on the CPU, so those processors crashed with exception 0xc000001d (illegal instruction). The loader now finds every MOVBE, LZCNT, TZCNT, ANDN, BEXTR, BLSI, BLSMSK and BLSR in the game image (1416 sites on CUSA01623, scripts/isa_rewrite.py) and replaces each one with a jump to a stub that emulates the instruction with the exact flags (src/isa_rewrite.c, src/isa_emulate.c). On a CPU that has the instructions nothing is touched. The log says ISA: CPU lacks MOVBE, BMI1, LZCNT: N sites rewritten and lists the most executed sites when the game exits.
• The requirement is now a 64-bit CPU with AVX: Intel Sandy Bridge (2011) or newer, AMD FX or newer. A CPU without SSE4.2, POPCNT or AVX stops at start with STOP: this CPU lacks ... in the log instead of crashing. gow3-probe --cpu-features prints what the CPU lacks; GOW3_ISA_REWRITE=1 forces the rewrite on a full CPU (test mode) and =0 turns it off.
• Game speeding up on CPUs whose TSC differs per core (#42): sceKernelReadTsc follows the process clock (1 GHz, QueryPerformanceCounter on Windows) instead of the raw rdtsc. On a Xeon E5-2680 v4 the game jumped 3.9 s in time whenever a thread changed core.

Graphics

• Black lines on the Radeon RX 6600 family and other RDNA2 cards, and the corrupted scene on Intel Arc (AMD: #65, #27, #43, #61, #70, #97, #91, #128; Intel: #28, #39, #96, #99, #140). Cause found by @kalil03 with a dump of each pass's images: the game draws with a 2-sample depth buffer and 1-sample colour, and the linear-depth pass reads that depth with texelFetch on a sampler2DMS. AMD's and Intel's Windows drivers return 0 for half of each 8x8 tile there, so lighting, fog and bloom inherit the bands. The game's multisampled images are now created with a single sample on those two drivers (VK_DRIVER_ID_AMD_PROPRIETARY, VK_DRIVER_ID_INTEL_PROPRIETARY_WINDOWS), integrated GPUs included; the log line is GPU: guest multisampling off. NVIDIA, RADV (Linux, Steam Deck), AMDVLK, ANV and MoltenVK are unchanged. GOW3_NO_MSAA=0 turns it off and =1 forces it on any card.
• Performance → GPU data → Game multisampling in the launcher: Automatic names the card the game will run on and the decision, for example "Automatic (Intel(R) Arc(TM) A750 Graphics: off)" or "Automatic (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650: on)", and follows the Graphics card choice; Off and On force it. gow3-gpu-capabilities --list prints the default per GPU.
• Mouse cursor hidden over the game window; the port's menu draws its own (#71).
• Diagnostics, all off by default: the frame capture (Insert → Diagnostics → Capture frame) prints a state line per pass; GOW3_DIAG_IMAGES=1 (with GOW3_DRAW_PIPE=0) dumps each pass's images; GOW3_LIGHTING_TEST=shading,msdepth,dref,bias, GOW3_AMD_PATHS_OFF=mixed,shaderext, GOW3_WAVE_STATS=1 and GOW3_FULL_BARRIERS=1 for the next investigations.

Launcher

• Add to Steam on Windows: Pillow is bundled with the launcher, so the shortcut artwork no longer fails with No module named 'PIL' (#100, #145). Its license notices are included.
• Dumps extracted from a PKG (Sc0 beside Image0): when sce_sys/param.sfo is missing, the launcher checks Sc0/param.sfo and offers to copy the system files into sce_sys, keeping the files already there (#86). Play stays disabled while it copies, and a failed copy can be retried.
• Incomplete dumps: missing, empty, invalid or unreadable required files are named before preparation starts, instead of prepare failed: out of bounds (#93).
• PLAY writes last_run.log to the saves folder, as Play God of War III.exe does, and keeps reading the game's output when that file cannot be written (the button stayed on RUNNING) (#65).
• Preparation no longer fails with 'gbk' codec can't encode character '\xae' on Windows with a non-Latin system code page (#95).
• Issue templates for bug reports, feature requests and launch problems.
• README: importing shadPS4 saves (RPCS3 saves are from the PS3 game and do not work), RTSS, Afterburner and ReShade on Vulkan (#54), the CPU requirement and Game multisampling.

Known issues

• CPUs without MOVBE, BMI1 and LZCNT: performance has not been measured. Drops to 30-40 FPS were reported on an Ivy Bridge Xeon. If you play on one, post the CPU: and ISA: lines of user\last_run.log in #102.
• Steam Deck and other RADV systems (#143): the block corruption persists; the multisampling change does not help there (GOW3_NO_MSAA=1 was tried). Under investigation.
• Intel HD 630 (#35): 3D renders black or blue only; a different cause, still open.
• RX 6600 with a shrunken image (#121): not fixed by this release.
• Black screen at the opening on some systems (#125) and the black screen after guest thread 'TrophyUtil::TrophyUnlock' created (#21): still under investigation.
• Runtime: cannot create 8128 MiB of guest memory (error 1450): the port commits 8 GiB at start; with 16 GB of RAM and no page file Windows refuses. Enable the page file (#104).
• From 2.1.7: Update folder on Windows without Developer Mode leaves out\game-update-* folders behind when the game exits; turning the experimental upscaler on and off leaves Screen sharpening (RCAS) off in gow3.ini; the two renamed sharpening labels appear in English in languages other than Portuguese and Russian.

Validation

• AMD and Intel: test builds windows-v2.1.7-amd-teste1 and windows-v2.1.7-teste3 confirmed in #65 (RX 6600: lines in 10 of 11 launches before, 0 of 5 after; RX 6650 XT control with GOW3_NO_MSAA=0 brought the lines back; RX 6600 and RX 6800 XT in #128) and in #28 (Arc A750, A580, B580, 140V, MSI Claw 8 AI+). Nobody reported worse edges or lower FPS.
• CPUs: test build windows-v2.1.7-isa-test1 on a Xeon E3-1230 v2 (#102) and by the reporters of #33 (one played through Hades at 720p, 60 FPS most of the time). On a full CPU with GOW3_ISA_REWRITE=1 the 1416 sites were rewritten, 0 skipped, and the game reached the level load; without it nothing changes.
• Unit tests: isa-emulate-test runs every emulated instruction and width on the host CPU and compares it with the emulation (edge cases plus 20 000 random inputs per case); isa-stub-test rewrites real code in an RWX page (red zone, XMM registers, adjacent sites, relocation, int3 fallback); no-msaa-test covers the driver table; tsc-clock-test and cpu-check-test.
• Windows build from main (bb74e41) with MSYS2 CLANG64 (clang 23): 37 C/C++ test programs passed (actor-hook, aliasing, amd-paths, async-compiler, async-fetch-snapshot, async-pipeline-cache, audio-downmix, blend-rewrite, cheat-hook, cpu-check, depth-stencil-state, graphics-settings, isa-emulate, isa-stub, lighting-test-knob, motion-history, mp3, no-msaa, orb-multiplier, pad-map, page-state, pass-census, perf-overlay, pipeline-binary-cache, pipeline-binary-initialization, png-decode, readback-queue, readback-sources, services, signatures, stat-multipliers, tsc-clock, ui-composition, videodec, wait-diagnostics, warmup-inbox, wave-stats). cheat-hooks-test crashes in the test itself (test_cheat_hooks.cpp:70: its table of player offsets has 5 entries but is indexed by every hook id); it and src/cheat_hook.h are unchanged since 2.1.7, and the live hooks are covered by cheat-hook-test. Five test programs that use POSIX-only calls do not build on Windows. 211 Python tests: 174 passed, 32 skipped, and the same 5 pre-existing problems as before (4 in test_packaged_vulkan, Linux-only, 1 in test_mods with a short TEMP path). The frozen launcher imports Pillow 12.3.0 and iced-x86.
• Linux build on Ubuntu 24.04 (gcc 14, bash build.sh --test): pad, runtime, file mods, semaphores, AppContent, mp3, videodec, services, isa-emulate and isa-stub tests passed; the AppImage was built from the same tree. It was not run on Linux hardware for this release.

Thanks to @kalil03 for finding the cause of the black lines and writing the GOW3_NO_MSAA and GOW3_DIAG_IMAGES patches; to @FilipiEPTeixeira, @Gabrielsln, @MarcosAlexandre30, @jleandrocampos, @wyz-ez, @Momexdxd, @uviiitor, @eduhhh10zx-hue, @Tempus3214 and @rafaelsilvaiasd-lang (AMD); @ZeroTwoMiu, @Hussein798o, @silvajeangomes2026-spec, @skinnersweet24, @Elden-wq and @yisus230291 (Intel); @ta955995-cmd, @WladmirFE and @NatanSolaire (CPU test build); KrachDev/shadPS4_GOW3 for the 2-sample depth lead; and everyone who tested the test builds.

You still need your own God of War III Remastered game files. No game files are included.