GoKawiilHadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR A new version of ARMSX2 Refresh fixes a major Vulkan-related crash on devices with Mali GPUs.
This means MediaTek-powered devices and older Pixel phones should see a speed boost when running PS2 games.
Another update also offers new resolution-scaling options for low-end Android devices.
ARMSX2 Refresh was released roughly two weeks ago, and the PS2 emulator has seen a steady stream of updates since then. A recent update also brings great news if you’ve got a device with Arm’s Mali graphics.
ARMSX2 Refresh version 2.3.5 was released on GitHub yesterday, and it fixes a major crash on Mali GPUs. More specifically, the emulator would crash on Mali-powered devices when you tried booting a game with the Vulkan renderer enabled.
“This should improve performance for Mali users!” reads an excerpt of the changelog.
Do you use a controller when emulating games on an Android phone? 4 votes Yes, all the time 100 % It depends on the emulator/console generation 0 % No, I don't 0 %
I tried an earlier version of ARMSX2 Refresh on the Pixel 9 Pro XL and found that the app would indeed crash when you selected the Vulkan renderer and tried launching a game. However, these same games booted up just fine with the latest update.
This fix is great news if you’ve got a MediaTek-powered device or an older Pixel phone. Vulkan is often (but not always) the preferred graphics renderer when running more demanding emulators on non-Snapdragon devices. In fact, it usually brings a speed boost to Snapdragon-powered devices too.
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