A year after testing the waters by releasing a beta build of their Nintendo Switch emulator that used the graphics API Vulkan, the Ryujinx development team has finally merged it into the main release. Utilizing Vulkan, in the case of most emulators, allows for far better performance, and that extends to Ryujinx as well. This major change will make compiling shaders noticeably faster than with OpenGL, though when the latest release featuring Vulkan does release, it will cause your current built shader cache to stop existing.

First of all, you need to know that any shader caches you've cultivated over the years will sadly cease to exist once you update beyond version 1.1.200 and boot a game. While this does mean that you will start from scratch in every title, they should be much quicker and less painful to rebuild thanks to SPIR-V's compile speed! Should you choose to use Vulkan.

Other than this... not much. AMD and Intel users will want to immediately set Vulkan as their backend and never look back while Nvidia users have the luxury of choice. While in most cases Vulkan will likely be the better pick due to its lower shader stutter, there may be some games that render/perform better in one or the other, so the world truly is your oyster. Shaders built for one backend will rebuild into the complimentary set for the other when you switch, so nothing is lost by trying both. A good strategy may be to undergo the initial stutter with Vulkan and then switch to OpenGL if it performs a little better. Your choice.

The Ryujinx team provided a direct comparison between OpenGL and Vulkan, showcasing a large collection of graphical bugs being fixed using the latter, in cases like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 2, and the recently released Live a Live.

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Well this is quite emotional isn't it? It feels like a huge milestone, because it sure as hell is one. The fight against shader stutter is being won, the path forward for AMD and Intel GPU owners is starting to clear and our GPU developers in gdkchan and riperiperi can maybe take a well-deserved rest. Don't be shy to congratulate the dev team for this achievement and thank them for their tireless work!

Source

 

[LightBeam]

Eh, Yuzu is my default emulator because usually it just seem to run better + asynchronous caching
If Ryujinx had asynchronous caching, there wouldn't be any question (this + more ergonomic settings I would say, you can see the joysticks moving in yuzu but not ryujinx, makes it easier to setup through parsec for example)
I use Yuzu more but I want to prefer Ryujinx, sounds weird but yeah

 

[lordelan]

For playing games, yeah personally I think they're a bit behind. However for modding stuff they're far ahead of them just by supporting Skyline (although they don't support skyline-web which leaves me a bit salty.)

This. Also Ryujinx can be used with Switch-LAN-Play to play with actual real Switches. Show me yuzu doing this.
If you want to play with a Steam Deck and a real Switch, Ryujinx is your only option currently.

 

[Enlapse]

Oh yeah. Async cache. I forgot about that. It's a good plus, but nt really a decisive one in my opinion. I have probably used more time Ryujinx than Yuzu, and I would really use Yuzu over Ryujinx because of the filters. It's hard not to like them.

 

[AlineP]

Yuzu is for losers

 

[raxadian]

Cool but my computer still sucks unfortunately.

 

[WiFiStackSmash]

Awesome! Glad to see progress in Switch emulation coming along so smoothly. Seems like every emulator (except for Citra of course) now has Vulkan support.

 

[Gronbar]

I was more fan of Yuzu but ok.

 

[Ryab]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

They are completely different projects using different types of emulation. They are not really comparable.

 

[linuxares]

Imagine fanboying emulators when one might be better than the other on some games...

 

[Nincompoopdo]

By the time Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 is out, Yuzu and Ryujinx will be perfected to run it at 4K 60fps.

 

[Osha]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

Yuzu aims for speed at the cost of everything else, Ryujinx aims for accuracy even if it means the games run "worse" as a result (although I often have better results with Ryujinx anyway so whatever).

 

[Nevermore]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

Yuzu devs hate Xenoblade for some odd reason tho, so Ryujin is better for those games.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Wow, they're way behind Yuzu, lol.

And the interface is awful compared to yuzu too.

 

[urbanman2004]

2 years after YuZu? Better late than never I guess 🤦🏽‍♂🤷🏽‍♂

 

[urbanman2004]

So I downloaded the latest version of Ryujinx w/ the Vulkan backend implementation and one game that left me w/ a bad experience playing it in the past was Super Mario Odyssey using this emulator and after giving it a spin, I have a whole renewed outlook and my previous negative sentiments have changed a/b Ryujinx. It actually ran w/o much judder or frame skipping. Good job devs.

 

[cashboxz01]

how bout moltenvk?

 

[lucas millington]

does xenoblade df run better on vulkan or open gl?