The Red Dead Redemption dream on PC finally comes true: Alder Lake i9-12900K delivers close to 4K/60 FPS in RPCS3 emulator with FSR upscaling

A Youtuber recently shared a video of how the Alder Lake i9-12900K fared in the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator, running the original Red Dead Redemption. Thanks to Alder Lake's IPC gains and higher clock speeds, it appears that Red Dead Redemption is finally in a more or less playable state. 

Both RPCS3 and Xenia - an Xbox 360 emulator - have made major strides over the past few months. Despite optimization, however, PS3 and Xbox 360 emulation remain incredibly intensive operations. Previous generation parts like the Rocket Lake i9-11900K could deliver a more or less playable experience in Red Dead Redemption, but framerates often hovered in the 30 FPS range. 

Now, with Alder Lake paired with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, it appears that high-end PC gamers finally have a way of running 2010's acclaimed open world western at higher framerates. Emulators & Gameplay's video shows Red Dead Redemption running between 40-60 FPS, with enhanced visuals thanks to FSR upscaling. 

The developers of RPCS3 themselves spoke out recently about Alder Lake's emulation advantage, tweeting that "Intel 11th gen already outperforms Zen 3 on RPCS3 by quite a bit, 12th Gen makes the gap even bigger." 

With PlayStation 4 emulators like Spine currently in development, it'll be interesting to see just how well Alder Lake handles eighth-gen emulation workloads in the months to come. 

Check out the Alder Lake 12700K here on Amazon.