PC emulation is gathering steam within the Android ecosystem and has finally reached mainstream viability for many Android gamers. We recently covered a PC emulation piece in which a YouTuber ran a full-blown PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 on a flagship Android smartphone. ETA Prime has since published another video showing off several Android devices running several PC games, besides Cyberpunk 2077, using emulation. The video shows that PC emulation on Android is now viable for a wide variety of PC games, including some AAA titles (if your Android device has the performance chops to tackle it).
The YouTuber tested several PC games on various Android devices, including GTA V, Left 4 Dead 2, The Witcher 3, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Marvel Cosmic Invasion, and Cyberpunk 2077 (again). For PC emulation, ETA Prime used GameHub and Game Native. The former can be found on the Google Play Store, but Game Native is an open-source app only available from the Game Native website or GitHub page.
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On an AYN Odin 3, featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC and 16GB of RAM, the YouTuber tested Left 4 Dead 2 and Marvel Cosmic Invasion. Both games ran smoothly at 60 FPS with no noticeable dips. On a Lenovo Y700 Gen 4 Android tablet with the same SoC and 12GB of RAM, the YouTuber tested GTA V at 720p normal settings, and the game ran at just above 40 FPS.
Last but not least, the YouTuber tested three more games on the liquid-cooled Red Magic 11 Pro, which sports Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC and 16GB of RAM. In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the Android phone achieved a near-steady 30 FPS with a frame rate lock at 720p on low settings, and FSR 3 upscaling set to Balanced. The DX9 version of Witcher 3 ran at 60 FPS with a frame rate cap at 720p low settings.
Finally, the YouTuber tested Cyberpunk 2077 again on the same phone, this time with better-tuned graphics settings. This time, the phone achieved over 60 FPS with frame generation enabled in the game. Previously, the phone could barely achieve 45-50 FPS with frame generation.
PC emulation on Android is nowhere near perfect, but it is now viable at least on high-end Android devices thanks to advancements in translation tech such as Valve‘s Proton compatibility layer. GameHub, for instance, uses a combination of Proton and FEX to translate x86 and Windows code into code that Android phones with ARM SoCs can execute.
Getting PC games to work on Android has also never been easier, as apps such as GameHub are available directly from the Google Play Store. GameHub requires no serious tinkering behind the scenes and comes with all the emulators needed to run PC games on Android. GameHub also has built-in Steam integration, making installing Steam games on Android devices a near-frictionless experience.
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