digital foundry Gaming on ARM Windows PCs is Lackluster so far

[UltraMega]

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Although the emulator can handle over 1,000 games so far, it doesn't support anti-cheat, which cuts off access to notable online games. Recent tests confirm that Apex Legends, Fortnite, and League of Legends are currently incompatible with Arm Windows. However, Kyriacou said that Microsoft plans to make cloud gaming as smooth as possible on the Surface and other Snapdragon PCs, providing another avenue to users with strong internet connections.

Keep your Arm Surface gaming expectations in check, Microsoft says | TechSpot

 

 

 

 

TLDR: Performance is pretty bad in any games that will actually launch so far, and many, if not most, just don't run at all. 

 

Can't say this is too surprising. I wonder if this ARM stuff will be another short-lived, one-off attempt to make a few ARM devices or if Microsoft will stick with it this time. As soon as AMD and Intel release some CPUs with embedded NPUs, will Microsoft still care about pushing ARM? Guess we'll have to wait and see. 

Edited June 24 by UltraMega

[Kaz]

ARM has a lot of support and development, mainly because it isn't constrained behind the x86 licensing agreement.  Apple has chosen it as their for runner for a while now and cellphones are mostly ARM based.  Both China and Russia have an interest in developing their own ARM chips.  The demand is there, the market just hasn't adjusted to x86 holding the throne for so long.

 

AMD also talked about using a concept similar to ARM cluster compute nodes for their graphics cards, supposedly the 7900XTX could have been a lot beefier card, but they are still trying to complete with Nvidia and hadn't quite worked out the latency between clusters.  AKA it was safer and easier to just keep the ball rolling, but they are spending R&D on it and it is a concern to Nvidia.

 

Microsoft has done a LOT to try and stay on top in the gaming market.  There's a reason DirectX is always locked behind the latest Windows operating system.  No doubt they are scrambling to maintain their choke hold on the gaming market, while accepting that hardware is opening up. 

[UltraMega]

53 minutes ago, Kaz said:

ARM has a lot of support and development, mainly because it isn't constrained behind the x86 licensing agreement.  Apple has chosen it as their for runner for a while now and cellphones are mostly ARM based.  Both China and Russia have an interest in developing their own ARM chips.  The demand is there, the market just hasn't adjusted to x86 holding the throne for so long.

 

AMD also talked about using a concept similar to ARM cluster compute nodes for their graphics cards, supposedly the 7900XTX could have been a lot beefier card, but they are still trying to complete with Nvidia and hadn't quite worked out the latency between clusters.  AKA it was safer and easier to just keep the ball rolling, but they are spending R&D on it and it is a concern to Nvidia.

 

Microsoft has done a LOT to try and stay on top in the gaming market.  There's a reason DirectX is always locked behind the latest Windows operating system.  No doubt they are scrambling to maintain their choke hold on the gaming market, while accepting that hardware is opening up. 

Windows is a small part of Microsoft's overall business today. I would argue that Microsoft hasn't done much at all to try to stay on top in the gaming market, and they are definitely not on top now and never really have been except maybe during part of the Xbox 360 era. Until a few years ago, it seemed like they barely cared about PC gaming at all, and just kept the ball rolling on Xbox. 

 

I don't think this has anything to do with what China is doing, and especially not Russia. More so, trying to compete with Apple. Apple has a lot less to worry about though, in terms of setting up a compatibility/translation layer since their ecosystem is more tightly controlled and much smaller. For gaming specifically, it's definitely no small task to make decades of x86 games able to run on arm, so credit to Microsoft for even making the attempt. I just hope it keeps progressing, because if not.. it's basically useless as it is now for any real gaming. 

[Slaughtahouse]

Really tired of Microsoft's half-baked hardware. 

 

Sometimes, very rarely, they sell bangers. My partner bought a used Surface Book years ago and it works very well. Interesting gimmick with the detachable screen, book spine hinge but ultimately,  its quiet, good thermals, performance, build quality. Their consoles are well built too (besides RRoD) but yeesh, buying a Microsoft product is almost as bad as a Google product.

• Xbox dashboard feels terrible, corporate. 
  • Just to see my achievements, what's still to be unlocked, and what is unlocked is so cumbersome.... Takes about 5 inputs. Xbox Home button, next page, next page, next page, adjust filter to see what's been unlocked (can't see both unlocked and locked at the same time for some stupid reason).
  • Accessing the storefront? No problem, super quick, 2 inputs. Xbox Home Button, Store Page.
• PC Gaming...
  • Much better than Games for Windows Live days but yikes... who buys games on the Windows Store Front?
  • I wasn't aware of how many games get the shaft until I watched this video.
  • I tried PC Game Pass and it's really not all that good. The fact my Starfield saves from Steam don't work with the PC Storefront, and consequently, the Xbox Series consoles feels like a huge miss. Speaks volumes about their priorities. 
  • No incentive to buy games on Windows when they have less features, less sales than Steam. 

16 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Windows is a small part of Microsoft's overall business today. I would argue that Microsoft hasn't done much at all to try to stay on top in the gaming market, and they are definitely not on top now and never really have been except maybe during part of the Xbox 360 era. Until a few years ago, it seemed like they barely cared about PC gaming at all, and just kept the ball rolling on Xbox. 

 

I don't think this has anything to do with what China is doing, and especially not Russia. More so, trying to compete with Apple. Apple has a lot less to worry about though, in terms of setting up a compatibility/translation layer since their ecosystem is more tightly controlled and much smaller. For gaming specifically, it's definitely no small task to make decades of x86 games able to run on arm, so credit to Microsoft for even making the attempt. I just hope it keeps progressing, because if not.. it's basically useless as it is now for any real gaming. 

 

Yup... always feels like their chasing trends when they should be setting them. There is no reason why Xbox and PC gaming shouldn't be first with MS. At least more titles are hitting Steam but there is no reason why Windows PC store front should be second to Steam. 

[Kaz]

On 26/06/2024 at 07:49, Slaughtahouse said:

 At least more titles are hitting Steam but there is no reason why Windows PC store front should be second to Steam. 

 

Windows store was more than a software deployment platform.  At the time it was released, everyone knew how to get software, so they decided to offer something extra, sandboxing.  The sandbox functions more like a Virtual Machine to keep systems from intermingling/infecting others.  At launch a lot (if not all?) of the stuff was in a 32 bit VM so the performance was very lackluster.  Microsoft Flight Simulator purchased off Steam would run heaps and bounds better than MFS purchased off the Microsoft Store. (The Irony).

 

There was an instance where the Epic Games Store would snoop on Steam files to find people's friends list and games list.  Steam should have had those files encrypted, but it's easy to see why they wouldn't think a list of games or random names would be important.  If the Epic Games Store had been sand boxed it wouldn't have been able to snoop on Steam.

 

Windows 10+ (pro versions), had a new hypervisor released with the fall creators pack update.  Having played with that hypervisor, I'm impressed, and it will probably be my go to instead of VMware.  I've got a couple people who's software only runs on old stuff, so the hypervisor is really nice.  If they haven't already reworked the Microsoft Store VM interface, they should.

 

I'll never know.  The Microsoft Store got such a bad rap when it first released that I have never touched it.

 

As for ARM gaming, most companies (including the 2022 surface), use X86 for their higher priced/performance systems.  There is still a performance gap, though it may not be as big as it feels when working with the available hardware.  Apple still sells a lot of systems to graphics designers ($$$), so the performance is there if people are willing to spend.  But they are still contending with years of backlog catalog.