PS5 RetroArch — Alpha 3 🎮
This release adds Dolphin (GameCube) to PS5 RetroArch, with support for up to 6× internal resolution through PS5_Vulkan. It also fixes save-state loading, frame pacing and several driver issues found while bringing Dolphin to the PS5.
✨ What's new
- Dolphin at up to 6× internal resolution. Lower the resolution in Quick Menu → Core Options if a game or setting is too demanding.
- Large GameCube save states now load without crashing. RetroArch's large buffers use a separate memory pool, leaving room for Dolphin's compiled code.
- More even frame pacing in Dolphin. Dolphin supplies one frame for each frame step, including repeated frames.
- Fixed slowdown at 120 Hz. RetroArch can request five swapchain images when displaying each game frame twice. This removed a measured 4–12% speed loss in heavier settings.
- Fixed a texture leak when reloading a core or changing video settings. Each reload had left behind two textures and 13 driver memory mappings.
- FTP access to saves, states and configuration files. At launch, RetroArch sets directories under
PPSA99169to0777and files to0666, including existing files. Files that previously returned550 Permission deniedare now accessible.
🔧 Vulkan driver changes since R69
| Round | Change |
|---|---|
| R70 | Render-to-texture uses GPU barriers instead of splitting the submission. |
| R71 | Added dual-source blending for blend modes that use a second output colour. |
| R72 | Corrected texel-buffer handling for 32-bit element counts. |
| R73 | Reduced CPU overhead by reading default render-target registers once. |
| R74 | Swapchains can provide the requested number of images, up to five. |
| R75–R77 | Added multisampled image sampling, GPU resolves and linear render targets for Dolphin's MSAA. Previously, enabling MSAA stopped games at their first resolve. |
| R78 | Added 2× and 8× MSAA and corrected sample positions across each 2×2 pixel block, fixing incorrect antialiasing on odd lines with 4× MSAA. |
Graphics-pipeline destruction no longer incorrectly frees address zero or corrupts the driver's live-memory count. The driver also records CPU-side copies by kind and memory held in its profile file.
📥 Installation / updating
You need a PS5 configured to run homebrew, with FTP access and a launcher that supports folder-based titles.
- Back up
config/,savefiles/andsavestates/from/data/homebrew/PPSA99169/. - Download and extract the release ZIP.
- Copy the entire
PPSA99169folder to/data/homebrew/PPSA99169/, replacing the old files. - Confirm that
/data/homebrew/PPSA99169/eboot.binexists, then launch RetroArch through your homebrew launcher.
Important
Do not nest a second PPSA99169 folder inside the first one. Inside RetroArch, the title folder appears as /app0/.
🐛 Reporting issues
Include the core, game, steps to reproduce the issue, internal resolution, MSAA setting and display refresh rate. Save retroarch.log and trace.txt from the application folder before reopening RetroArch. Screenshots or video are especially useful for rendering and frame-pacing issues.
❤️ Credits
Developed by Mihawk, building on RetroArch, Dolphin, PS5_Vulkan, ProsperoLight and the ps5-payload-dev SDK.
Full credits and documentation are in the project README.