Open-source Nintendo Switch 2 emulator · GPL-3.0-or-later
Guarana is a fork of Lichii for laptops and handhelds without a gaming graphics card. Intel Arc iGPUs come first, AMD Radeon iGPU handhelds next. The work goes into frame pacing, frame generation and GPU fixes, and we publish what we measure with the caveats.
Windows 11 x64 is the tested platform. Official downloads come only from GitHub Releases. No keys, firmware or games included.
One laptop, one scene, the fix off and then on. That is the whole claim.
Game fps with the global-memory routing fix
22.83
14.75 without it, same scene
Foliage draw, GPU time
5.8ms
15.7 ms without the fix
EDEN_NX2_GM=11, frame generation offWhat the fix does: shader loads from global memory used to search every bound buffer at run time. With EDEN_NX2_GM=11, buffer base addresses are computed once and each load searches only the buffers its address can come from. Game fps counts only frames the game renders; generated frames never count.
Guarana contains no encryption keys, no firmware and no games. Dump them from a Nintendo Switch 2 and games you own. We don't help anyone get them elsewhere, and issues or pull requests that ask for them or share them are closed.
Pacing is how evenly frames reach the screen. Thirty frames spaced 33.3 ms apart feel smoother than forty that arrive in uneven bursts. With frame generation on, each generated frame keeps the screen for an equal share of the time between real frames. Not finished: a presenter locked to the display's vblank, so frames change every 16.67 ms at 60 Hz, is in progress to remove the micro-stutter that remains.
After the game renders a frame, Guarana predicts the next ones by moving its pixels along the game's own motion vectors. Because this extrapolates forward instead of waiting for a future frame, it adds no latency. The HUD is kept apart from the 3D image, so text and menus don't smear. Motion data is wired up for Ocarina of Time so far.
A change ships when it shows a measured gain on a verified scene. The global-memory routing fix took the Hyrule Field foliage draw from 15.7 to 5.8 ms on Arc 140T.
Release builds are compiled with ThinLTO and profile-guided optimization (PGO).
Uneven: frames arrive in bursts
Paced: every frame keeps the screen for the same time
Tested means we measured it. Community reports means someone else did, on their build. Untested means nobody has reported yet, so your report counts.
Core Ultra 200H laptops (Arrow Lake-H)
14.75 → 22.83 game fps in Hyrule Field (GM=11, frame generation off).
TestedCore Ultra 200V laptops and handhelds (Lunar Lake)
Third-party report: 22–24 fps in gameplay, on another build.
Community reportsCore Ultra Series 1 H laptops
Xe-LPG, up to 8 Xe-cores. No reports yet.
UntestedCore Ultra Series 3 laptops
Xe3, 12 Xe3-cores. No reports yet.
UntestedRyzen 7040/8040 laptops; Z1 Extreme and Z2 handhelds
RDNA 3, 12 CUs (also in Z1 Extreme and Z2). No reports yet.
UntestedRyzen AI 300 laptops; Z2 Extreme handhelds
Third-party report: about 30 fps in Ocarina of Time on a ROG Xbox Ally X (Lichii #1433).
Community reportsRyzen AI Max+ 395 laptops and mini PCs (Strix Halo)
RDNA 3.5, 40 CUs, 256-bit memory. No reports yet.
UntestedCore Ultra 7 258V · Arc 140V
Arc 140V, 32 GB. No reports yet.
UntestedCore Ultra 7 155H or Ultra 5 135H · Meteor Lake Arc
Meteor Lake Arc, 16 GB. No reports yet.
UntestedRyzen Z1 Extreme · RDNA 3, 12 CUs
Z1 Extreme (780M class), 24 GB. No reports yet.
UntestedRyzen AI Z2 Extreme · RDNA 3.5, 16 CUs
Third-party report: about 30 fps in Ocarina of Time (Lichii #1433).
Community reportsRyzen Z2 Extreme or Ryzen Z2 · 8.8-inch OLED
Z2 Extreme or Z2, up to 32 GB. No reports yet.
UntestedValve handheld, LCD and OLED (SteamOS)
RDNA 2, 8 CUs, 4–15 W, SteamOS. No reports yet.
UntestedGet it from the GitHub releases page, the only official download.
Unpack everything into a folder you can write to.
Start the emulator and point it at keys, firmware and games dumped from a Switch 2 and games you own. None are included.
Switches are off unless set. Add EDEN_NX2_GM=11 to nx2_switches.txt next to the emulator. For frame generation, turn on Enable Frame Generation in the graphics settings, set Target Frame Rate to 60 and add EDEN_NX2_EXTRAPOLATE=1 (Ocarina of Time only).
The first visit to each area hitches while shaders compile. Play a while, then send a device report with your game fps.
Send a device report, run the benchmark harness on your machine, or pick an issue. Every pull request is built and tested for free in CI and gets a Windows test build linked on the pull request, so you don't need a fast PC to contribute code.
AGENTS.md has the rules. Issues labeled agent-ready are scoped for agents, and an opt-in debug MCP server lets an agent read status, frame times, screenshots and logs from a running game, and send controller input.