Have a phone with a Mali GPU? This is the Dolphin update for you.
TL; DR
- The team behind the Dolphin emulator has released a major update for devices with Mali GPUs.
- It fixes a wide variety of bugs related to the Mali GPU driver.
- Devices with Mali GPUs include Exynos-powered Samsung phones, Huawei devices, and MediaTek phones.
Dolphin is currently one of the most popular emulators for Android that allows users to play a wide variety of Nintendo GameCube and Wii titles on smartphones and tablets. However, one of the biggest challenges for the emulator’s developers is that Arm’s Mali GPUs tend to lag behind the competition in terms of driver support.
Now, the team behind Dolphin has announced that it has fixed a variety of graphics issues on devices with Mali GPUs. The team said that while the drivers in Mali have improved, they still have big problems.
Specifically, the Dolphin developers pointed out serious errors in the so-called GLSL shader compiler, as well as in Arms drivers that implement the so-called “glCopyImageSubData” feature on the CPU (probably instead of the GPU). See the glitches in the first three images below and the resolved results in the last three images.
The team confirmed that the next Play Store update for Dolphin will deliver these fixes. So, if you have a Mali-equipped device (e.g. a Samsung phone with Exynos, a Huawei phone, or a MediaTek-equipped device) and you notice some visual issues in the emulator, then you should wait for this update.
The Dolphin team also noticed some other general improvements to the Android version of the emulator, such as:
What about arm-powered Windows laptops?
Are you playing the emulator on PC instead? Well, the team also tested the Arm version of the emulator on Microsoft’s Surface Pro X device. The Surface Pro X is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8CX Gen 2 processor and benchmarking shows that it beats the 2018 Macbook Pro in three of four tested games. Take a look at the graphic below.
However, the Windows device equipped with Snapdragon still lags behind the x64 version of the emulator, which runs on an M1 Macbook Air under Rosetta. And it lags far behind when using a native Arm version of the emulator on the Apple laptop. This definitely highlights Apple’s superiority in the arm computing space and how it can lead to big improvements in the real world as well.
Even so, we’re pleased that the Dolphin team is addressing important issues with Mali GPU support. Hopefully your Galaxy S20 or budget Xiaomi device will offer a more sophisticated emulation experience.
