Thursday, August 29th 2024
The Witcher 3 Now Runs on RISC-V Processors
In a notable step forward for the RISC-V architecture, the Box86 and Box64 emulator developers have successfully run The Witcher 3 on a RISC-V processor. While performance is far from optimal, even on a Milk-V Pioneer with a 64-core processor and an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card, the achievement is remarkable.
RISC-V, a free and open-source instruction set architecture, is still in its early stages compared to established platforms like ARM and x86/x64. Despite this, the Box86/Box64 team, known for creating environments to run Windows programs on Linux, has demonstrated that AAA gaming is possible on RISC-V hardware. To accomplish this feat, the developers utilized Box64 with Wine and DXVK to emulate the necessary instructions.
Performance remains a significant challenge, with The Witcher 3 running at only 15 FPS. However, this proof-of-concept demonstrates the potential of RISC-V and hints at its future possibilities. For those looking to replicate this experiment on lower-end hardware, disabling weather effects and removing vegetation in the game files may improve performance, as noted by one of the developers who previously ran the game on a 2015 Intel integrated GPU. The team documented the process on their blog so feel free to check for all the details.
The Box86 team identified x86_64 instruction emulation as a major hurdle in running The Witcher 3 on RISC-V. Significant computational resources are required to "translate" these instructions for the RISC-V architecture, highlighting areas for future optimization and development.
This achievement builds upon the team's previous success in August when they made 2D games like Stardew Valley and World of Goo fully playable on RISC-V. The Witcher 3 project required more powerful hardware, specifically a Milk-V Pioneer - a 64-core RISC-V PC with a PCIe slot to accommodate the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card.
Source:
Notebookcheck
RISC-V, a free and open-source instruction set architecture, is still in its early stages compared to established platforms like ARM and x86/x64. Despite this, the Box86/Box64 team, known for creating environments to run Windows programs on Linux, has demonstrated that AAA gaming is possible on RISC-V hardware. To accomplish this feat, the developers utilized Box64 with Wine and DXVK to emulate the necessary instructions.
The Box86 team identified x86_64 instruction emulation as a major hurdle in running The Witcher 3 on RISC-V. Significant computational resources are required to "translate" these instructions for the RISC-V architecture, highlighting areas for future optimization and development.
This achievement builds upon the team's previous success in August when they made 2D games like Stardew Valley and World of Goo fully playable on RISC-V. The Witcher 3 project required more powerful hardware, specifically a Milk-V Pioneer - a 64-core RISC-V PC with a PCIe slot to accommodate the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card.
15 Comments on The Witcher 3 Now Runs on RISC-V Processors
Also the SBC they used costs over a thousand pounds so it seems like RISC-V's promise of being cheaper is really shaping up well.
I still wonder if it's live emulation that is really heavy or if it's offline where binary would be recompiled for RISC IV. A bit like apple did with ARM.
If is emulated and not natively running, then what's the point?
You ca run Doom 2 emulated on a washing machine, now that was interesting news.
The only reason this is impressive is the fact they even approached a usable framerate shows RISC-V actually has some oomph to it.
That's a pretty advanced piece of tech then.