Tested: This unofficial AMD driver let me play Tears of the Kingdom on an Exynos phone

Snapdragon-powered devices are often considered the best for emulation, and that’s largely due to the rise of open-source Turnip drivers. These unofficial GPU drivers can deliver significantly better performance and compatibility in many emulators. Samsung phones and tablets with Exynos chips have mostly been left in the lurch as a result, resulting in inferior emulation. However, a new custom driver has delivered a major boost.

Developer JimVulkan released radv-xclipse on GitHub last month for Samsung phones with Exynos chips. This is a port of the open-source RADV Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs. Of course, it’s worth noting that recent Exynos processors have Xclipse GPUs based on AMD graphics technology.

The driver supports every Exynos chipset with an Xclipse GPU, ranging from the Exynos 2200 in some Galaxy S22 phones to the Exynos 2600 seen in some Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus models. It also supports the mid-range Exynos chips seen in the Galaxy A37, Galaxy A55, Galaxy A56, and Galaxy A57.

What kind of results to expect with this Exynos driver?

In any event, users online have reported significant improvements compared to the system driver. One Redditor previously noted that an unofficial Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom port ran at 30fps on their Exynos 2400 device, while adding that the game had severe graphical glitches on the system driver. Another user noted that Switch title Pokemon Legends: Z-A launched and ran (albeit very slowly) on their Galaxy A55 via the Eden emulator, whereas it previously refused to load.

It also looks like the radv-xclipse driver delivers tentatively encouraging results in PC gaming apps. One user posted a short clip showing God of War 2018 running smoothly on a Galaxy S24 Plus and the new driver. Meanwhile, another Redditor noted that the driver addressed black textures in Final Fantasy VII Remake on the S24 Plus.

We loaded up radv-xclipse on our Galaxy S26 FE review unit, along with the Eden emulator. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had plenty of stuttering and slowdown, although some of this could be chalked up to shader compilation. I also noticed a couple of minor glitches, like Yoshi’s nose being very shiny on the character select menu. Switching to the custom driver seemed to resolve those glitches, but the game still had loads of slowdown and actually locked up more often.

I also tried Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, which had notable shadow glitches and flickering on the system driver. Furthermore, it had varying performance with a frame rate between the high teens and low 30s. Unfortunately, I still saw those glitches, if not a little more flickering, after switching to the radv-xclipse driver. But the peak frame rate often reached the 40s, delivering a more playable experience.

On the upside, I’m glad to report that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom actually loaded when using the custom driver. That’s more than can be said for the system driver, which failed to load the game and merely crashed. However, my phone froze a few seconds into the intro video the first time I tried playing the game with the new driver.  Thankfully, a subsequent session revealed gameplay that maintained a near-constant 30fps, with occasional dips to 25 or 26fps and rare dips into the high teens. However, it was definitely a smooth experience for the most part.

Needless to say, radv-xclipse isn’t going to be a silver bullet for your emulation library. I’m guessing that some games will see significant improvements while others might actually be worse or see no improvements at all. Nevertheless, the performance in Tears of the Kingdom alone serves as a great demonstration of what’s possible.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first tool of its kind for Exynos-powered devices. We’ve already seen ExynosTools emerge a while back as a translation layer of sorts for Vulkan. But we’re still excited to see more solutions for emulation on non-Snapdragon devices. So you should definitely keep an eye on this latest project as it’s still in the early stages of development.