The latest update for the popular Nintendo Wii U emulator, Cemu, is now available to the public. This new version, 1.15.3, reduces microstuttering issues, and adds a few fixes to lower the chance of the emulator crashing. For the more experienced user, there are also a few new debug options. You can grab the latest version of Cemu down below, under the full changelog.

# Cemu detailed changelog for 1.15.3b
# Patreon release date: 2019-02-28
# Public release date: 2019-03-07

# New in 1.15.3b:

CPU/JIT: Fixed potential instability and crashes caused by recompiler optimizations
debug: Fixed WUD filesystem dump feature
debug: Frame profiler now displays 9 different stats. From bottom to top:
gray -> Idle (waiting for more commands from CPU)
pink -> Wait for async (waiting for texture readback, occlusion queries. Explicit or by GX2DrawDone)
dark red -> Texture creation, texture upload, texture cache management, sampler settings
dark green -> Attribute/vertex buffer management, attribute data upload
blue -> Shader management, shader compilation, uniform buffer management, uniform data upload
purple -> Index cache management, index data upload
green -> Render target management, FBO creation, texture creation
yellow -> OpenGL glDraw calls
light gray -> Everything else

# New in 1.15.3:

general: Display meta/bootTvTex.tga when booting a game and while compiling shaders (ref: http://bugs.cemu.info/issues/1)
general: Reworked shader cache loading screen to scale better on higher resolutions
general: Changed settings.xml to be more portable (use relative paths where possible)

CPU/JIT: JIT recompilation of functions is now multi-threaded if multi-core recompiler is enabled (slightly reduces micro-stutter caused by recompilation)

debug: Added debug option which dumps the WUD filesystem of the currently running game to dump/ folder (WUD/WUX extractor)
debug: Fixed a bug where the RAM dump feature would silently fail because it would not create the dump folder

GX2: Added frame profiler (can be toggeled via debug menu)
GX2: Optimized texture loader
GX2: Minor optimizations in various GX2 API functions
GX2: Fixed random crash due to out-of-bounds access in texture code
GX2: Fixed crash that could occur when GPU buffer cache accuracy was set to high
GX2: Increased time before restorable textures are dropped from texture cache (from 15 seconds to 2 minutes)

coreinit: Fixed incorrect timeout calculation in spinlock AcquireSpinLockWithTimeout API

padscore: WPADGetInfoAsync no longer crashes when no callback is provided

input: DirectInput rumble will only be initialized if the rumble value is set to non-zero (workaround for a crash bug in a common DirectInput driver)

Source
Download

 

[granville]

Those specs are really vague lol, but my current set up is as follows

- Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 GHz
- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 TI 6 GB GDDR6
- 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- Windows 10 64-bit Home

I think you should definitely give it a go. It depends on what your expectations are.

I have a similar CPU to yours (i5 4670k), higher overclocked speed @4ghz but no hyperthreading. Your GPU and ram are better than mine (1060 6GB and 8GB DDR3 ram).

I can run Breath of the Wild at 1080p with a lot of other mod enhancements at generally 50-60fps about 90% of the time. Regular world map exploration and smaller dungeon shrines are usually very fluid. Only generally towns with a lot of onscreen characters will drop into the 40s at times. Keep in mind that the game's original normal speed is 30fps, which i've no difficulty consistently beating by a wide margin via the FPS unlocker.

You should have zero difficult with games like Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 8 or DKC Tropical Freeze. They're a lot lighter on CPU than Zelda. Haven't tried out much else.

You might get better performance with the triple core setting in Cemu as well. I only use dual core, that's what they recommend for people with only 4 or fewer physical cores without hyperthreading. Those with 4+ cores and hyperthreading are recommended to try triple core. There are numerous other settings in the emulator as well to help improve performance.

 

[the_randomizer]

I think you should definitely give it a go. It depends on what your expectations are.

I have a similar CPU to yours (i5 4670k), higher overclocked speed @4ghz but no hyperthreading. Your GPU and ram are better than mine (1060 6GB and 8GB DDR3 ram).

I can run Breath of the Wild at 1080p with a lot of other mod enhancements at generally 50-60fps about 90% of the time. Regular world map exploration and smaller dungeon shrines are usually very fluid. Only generally towns with a lot of onscreen characters will drop into the 40s at times. Keep in mind that the game's original normal speed is 30fps, which i've no difficulty consistently beating by a wide margin via the FPS unlocker.

You should have zero difficult with games like Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 8 or DKC Tropical Freeze. They're a lot lighter on CPU than Zelda. Haven't tried out much else.

You might get better performance with the triple core setting in Cemu as well. I only use dual core, that's what they recommend for people with only 4 or fewer physical cores without hyperthreading. Those with 4+ cores and hyperthreading are recommended to try triple core. There are numerous other settings in the emulator as well to help improve performance.

Hmm, nothing too demanding, I'll skip BOTW since I own it on Switch, maybe DKCTF, not 100% sure yet

 

[xs4all]

Forgot to mention, also grab the Cemu Hook plugin as well for Cemu, do a search and you will know what this is used for. One example of this plugin is used for is Mario Kart 8, without it, you will get a black screen where videos is meant to play in the intro and what not.

 

[the_randomizer]

Forgot to mention, also grab the Cemu Hook plugin as well for Cemu, do a search and you will know what this is used for. One example of this plugin is used for is Mario Kart 8, without it, you will get a black screen where videos is meant to play in the intro and what not.

Huh, weird, but that's good to know too, thank you

 

[granville]

Hmm, nothing too demanding, I'll skip BOTW since I own it on Switch, maybe DKCTF, not 100% sure yet

Honestly you might be surprised with BOTW, if you like the idea of having a much better looking version of it at a potentially higher framerate. Here's a video of someone reportedly running it on an i7 2600 @3.4ghz.


It stands to reason that if you found a configuration similar to his, you'd be able to meet and surpass this with your superior Haswell chip (and you've got a much better GPU and ram).

 

[the_randomizer]

Honestly you might be surprised with BOTW, if you like the idea of having a much better looking version of it at a potentially higher framerate. Here's a video of someone running it on an i7 2600 @3.4ghz.


It stands to reason that if you found a configuration similar to his, you'd be able to meet and surpass this with your superior Haswell chip (and you've got a much better GPU and ram).

I'll just need to find my "backups" and/or WUD files then

 

[granville]

Actually after seeing that video, i'm kind of tempted to try lowering my own CPU back to its stock 3.4ghz just to see how well the game runs at that speed. Just out of curiosity. Our CPUs are fairly similar, so at that clock speed we should be getting comparable speeds to one another. Perhaps you might see somewhat better performance even, dunno how much the triple core setting helps when using hyperthreading.

 

[the_randomizer]

Actually after seeing that video, i'm kind of tempted to try lowering my own CPU back to its stock 3.4ghz just to see how well the game runs at that speed. Just out of curiosity. Our CPUs are fairly similar, so at that clock speed we should be getting comparable speeds to one another. Perhaps you might see somewhat better performance even, dunno how much the triple core setting helps when using hyperthreading.

It can't hurt, I use the MTVU (multi-threaded vector units) hacks on PCSX2 and it seems to help, I assume it'd be similar on this.

 

[Blue]

Those specs are really vague lol, but my current set up is as follows

- Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 GHz
- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 TI 6 GB GDDR6
- 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- Windows 10 64-bit Home

For Cemu generally a CPU with over 2000 single core passmark is recommended, yours is 2252. So should be fine.

 

[granville]

I went ahead and cranked my clock speed down to the original 3.4ghz and did some brief testing with BOTW. Turbo boost is still in effect because Task Manager was reporting 3.57ghz during play. This should also apply to you as well even without being able to overclock (yours may even turbo slightly higher). So if you set things up correctly in Cemu, you SHOULD get similar results to my own.

World Map exploration, I warped around to a few different towers and explored briefly. After letting the shader compilation settle down, framerate was in the 45-50fps range on average in these regular open world areas. Climbing high up mountains, 55fps and above was common.

I also visited Hateno Village, one of the most demanding areas in the game. I hovered in the low to mid 40s in general. Still runs better than the original 30fps.

BTW, rainy weather might cause you to lose a few FPS too, but I didn't test it.

The Triple Core option didn't help me, I actually lost a ton of performance with it. 10-15FPS less on average compared to the dual core option. Note that this is probably because I have a non-hyper threaded i5. The Cemu developers and others only recommended that you use it if you have at least 4 physical cores with hyperthreading. My CPU doesn't support HT, yours does. So you will have to try it out for yourself. Interestingly, PCSX2's MTVU option does generally improve performance for me...

I am running BOTW at a native 1080p. Also have mods on to enhance the shadow resolution (2x the original), enhance reflection effects in shrines and other surfaces, improve the smoke effects on explosions, and a mod called Clarity to improve colors and contrast.

I'd personally still prefer to play the game on my PC like this than the original Wii U or Switch version. No contest. But that's just me.

 

[ganons]

I'll just need to find my "backups" and/or WUD files then

They don't need to be wud files...

 

[NoNAND]

Some people can get away with running it on some relatively low-power hardware, though I'd recommend you have a pretty good CPU if you want to try it. I wouldn't say "top of the line", though.

it also depends on the game that you want to play and what graphics packs you use. my laptop plays botw at solid 30fps at 1080p. going higher than that and if i use the 60fps pa causes unsteady performance and framedrops. but hey its a laptop and i can't complain about it knowing its limitations
btw it has an i7 6700hq gtx 1060 and 16 gb of ddr4 RAM

 

[Necron]

Those specs are really vague lol, but my current set up is as follows

- Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 GHz
- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 TI 6 GB GDDR6
- 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- Windows 10 64-bit Home

I run an i7 3770, GTX 1050Ti and 8GB DDR3 ram, BotW runs at 30fps@1080p with minor issues (the most intensive game on the WiiU). I've ran Bayonetta 2 and DK at 60fps, so I see no issues with your setup.

 

[spotanjo3]

I don't like 60 FPS. I am fine with 30 FPS. 60FPS kinda a little too faster for me. Uncomfortable so I am stick with 30FPS perfectly fine.

 

[ZachariasBarnham]

I wish that I had the time and motivation to do this, but all these things are beyond me. I could tell you my computer specs:

Asus E402BA Signature Edition
AMD A9-9420 Radeon R5, 5 compute cores 2c+3g
3.00 GHz
8.00 GB RAM (7.45 usable)
64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

And these are specs I pulled from the Radeon menu.

Graphics Card Manufacturer
Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset
AMD Radeon(TM) R5 Graphics
Device ID
98E4
Vendor ID
1002
SubSystem ID
1680
SubSystem Vendor ID
1043
Revision ID
DA
Bus Type
PCI
Current Bus Settings
PCI
BIOS Version
<Redacted>
BIOS Part Number
SWBRT01116.001
BIOS Date
2016/12/26 04:17
Memory Size
512 MB
Memory Type
DDR3
Memory Clock
800 MHz
Core Clock
847 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth
12 GByte/s
Memory Bit Rate
1.60 Gbps


But, I have no idea if these stats are favorable for running an emulator such as this. I remember trying this a while back, but I recall that I couldn't even start Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, let alone Breath of the Wild. BotW got stuck at the 'Open your eyes' screen.

 

[the_randomizer]

I wish that I had the time and motivation to do this, but all these things are beyond me. I could tell you my computer specs:

Asus E402BA Signature Edition
AMD A9-9420 Radeon R5, 5 compute cores 2c+3g
3.00 GHz
8.00 GB RAM (7.45 usable)
64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

And these are specs I pulled from the Radeon menu.

Graphics Card Manufacturer
Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset
AMD Radeon(TM) R5 Graphics
Device ID
98E4
Vendor ID
1002
SubSystem ID
1680
SubSystem Vendor ID
1043
Revision ID
DA
Bus Type
PCI
Current Bus Settings
PCI
BIOS Version
<Redacted>
BIOS Part Number
SWBRT01116.001
BIOS Date
2016/12/26 04:17
Memory Size
512 MB
Memory Type
DDR3
Memory Clock
800 MHz
Core Clock
847 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth
12 GByte/s
Memory Bit Rate
1.60 Gbps


But, I have no idea if these stats are favorable for running an emulator such as this. I remember trying this a while back, but I recall that I couldn't even start Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, let alone Breath of the Wild. BotW got stuck at the 'Open your eyes' screen.

Emulators will almost always rely heavily on CPU more than GPU, so the kind of CPU you have will make or break your experience.

 

[granville]

I think BOTW used to have a crash in the Open Your Eyes scene, but it was fixed a very long time ago. You should at least have no trouble simply booting the games and getting them to "run" relatively stable.

That AMD A9 CPU isn't going to cut it for heavier games like BOTW. Pre-Ryzen AMD CPUs are notoriously poor performers for emulation. Even a decade old Intel Nehalem CPU will very easily beat them. You also probably won't get a speed boost from the multi core options in Cemu.

Your GPU might also cause you some trouble. OpenGL drivers for AMD GPUs are sort of "broken". And Cemu currently requires OpenGL. Things don't really look glitchy with them, but performance is abysmal. Even top of the line desktop AMD GPUs frequently struggle to reach even the original 30fps cap on BOTW.

I do hear there's a way to massively improve this using Linux. And Cemu developers are supposedly planning to implement Vulkan support at some point in the future. Vulkan should fix performance issues on AMD GPUs that support it. But you still probably won't get amazing results without a dedicated GPU anyways.

But I still imagine the CPU is the biggest bottleneck. It's really recommended that you have an Intel i-series CPU. (i3, i5, i7, or i9, or one of the newer Pentium G-series chips). The newer the better, the higher the clock speed the better. Or alternately, a Ryzen AMD CPU. Measuring Cemu performance, Ryzen is roughly comparable to Intel's 4th gen Haswell. Intel still beats it with their newer generations (especially when using the PS3 emulator RPCS3), but Ryzen was still a huge leap back into the game for AMD (and i'm curious to see what Zen 2 brings to the emulation table this year). At the moment, for anything requiring OpenGL I would recommend a dedicated Nvidia GPU. Unless you want to fiddle around with Linux and their AMD drivers (I lack any experience or knowledge on that).

 

[ZachariasBarnham]

Oh, well. It was worth a shot. I got this laptop as part of a Black Friday 2017 Deal. It can run stuff like PPSSPP just fine, but I never actually expected a Wii U emulator to work at all. This coming weekend, I'll try this again, from scratch, and let everyone know how it went.

 

[spotanjo3]

Those specs are really vague lol, but my current set up is as follows

- Intel Core i7 4770 3.4 GHz
- MSI GeForce GTX 1660 TI 6 GB GDDR6
- 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM
- Windows 10 64-bit Home

Good machine for CEMU.. I double dare you for RPCS3 -- God of War ?

 

[the_randomizer]

Good machine for CEMU.. I double dare you for RPCS3 -- God of War ?

Uuuhhhhhhh I'm good