Tbh the ps3's cell processor would still hold its own today if it were developed for. In 2019 there were still articles coming out stating it still outperformed Intel's chips. Which meant AMD wasn't yet even that close.

The base model of last gen consoles suffered most from the bandwidth restraints. Ya, they were mid-tier cpu's at best even when they were announced. You'd see an improvement from slapping an ssd into one, but being sata2 meant you weren't even reaching the potential of the average consumer grade ssd at the time. On the ps4 pro at least the system was able to leverage the ssd and you saw nearly what you'd expect.

The last gen should be easier to emulate in a sense, but copyright protection and even single player games requiring a connection is going to be an issue. Then you need to factor in most games released in a near unplayable state w/o day zero patches. So emulation might be easy, but its going to take dedication to get each game up and running as intended. And that... well, we'll see.

You can run Drake's Fortune better than a PS3 via the ND collection on the PS4 too, precluding the need for an i5. Sony gave it away free to all gamers via a limited time download offer as a bit of goodwill during one of the many lockdowns that have been blighting our life for nearly a year now, the first one I think. Great choice of game to give cooped up gamers too - lush, foreign environments and a series of winsome adventures. I'm not even a big fan of the series but I was impressed with the gesture.

Quote from: Redaktion on February 14, 2021, 11:43:36
Considering that the 8th-gen consoles are built around very weak CPUs, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the community to bring out PS4 and Xbox One emulators that offer playable performance

It's not so much that they were very weak (I mean, they were, that generation didn't have very compelling tech to work with), but they - xbox one and ps4 - both used x86 cpu cores instead of PowerPC from the predecessors and the architecture is mostly similar to a regular pc which makes things easier.

Demon's Souls on RPCS3 can be run at 60 and 120fps as well, at insane resolutions with adequate hardware, it really is an amazing emulator

The best AMD CPU for RPCS3 should have 8 cores on a single CCX to reduce latency between them as much as possible. So the 5800X, 5950X, and possibly a lot of the Zen 4 lineup depending on how the chiplets are organized.