Microsoft's New AI Computers Struggle With Hundreds of Popular PC Games

[MacRumors]

Microsoft's new Copilot+ PCs that offer super fast performance for AI tasks, all-day battery life, and other perks, struggle when it comes to gaming, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The Copilot+ PCs are equipped with Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon chips that merge the CPU, GPU, and a Neural Processing Unit. Using an Arm chip means Microsoft's PCs now face the some of the same problems as Apple's Macs, such as an inability to run popular PC games designed for x86 chip architecture. Approximately 15 percent of PC laptop users are gamers, and Microsoft users aren't accustomed to having to deal with incompatibilities.

To get around the Arm issue, Microsoft designed Prism, which is basically the equivalent of Rosetta 2 on Apple Macs. It makes it so x86 apps can run on Arm-based Windows machines, but it turns out it's not working well. In a test of 1,300 PC games, only half of them ran without bugs, glitches, or launch issues.

In some cases, anti-cheating software in games like Fortnite and League of Legends can't be translated to run on Arm, preventing even games without significant graphics requirements from running. There is no quick fix for the problem.

Reviews of the Copilot+ PCs highlighted problems with Prism way back in June. The Verge, for example, said that Premiere Pro was "practically unusable" and that rendering projects in Blender was "terrible." Shadows of the Tomb Raider crashed continually, and other titles like Destiny 2, Starfield, Halo Infinite, and Fall Guys would not launch.

Microsoft told The Wall Street Journal that titles with demanding graphics requirements may not play on Copilot+ PCs, and that while it is aiming to make a "quality gaming experience" on the new devices, players who want a high-performance experience should choose an alternate PC.

Article Link: Microsoft's New AI Computers Struggle With Hundreds of Popular PC Games

 

[TechnoMonk]

I thought Apple missed the AI boat and lost the battle./s. Copilot and Gemini are both trash compared to other AI models of Open AI, Claude and Llama.

 

[HelmetFire]

These are made for AI, they should use the tagline “Hardcore AI, we aren’t playing games…..”. Problem solved.

 

[Gaprofitt]

Fake news.

 

[JCCL]

Well, laptops without a dedicated graphics cards have been crap at playing games. Why would anyone expect different from these, especially if emulated? If developers see potential, they’ll port to ARM.

 

[Keymaster]

People continually bitch about Apple, but then an article like this comes along and makes it clear that Apple can really do things right compared to how other tech companies throw things together. This stuff isn't easy, so a lot of companies just try to cobble together whatever they can stick buzzwords on to make sales. Apple still tries to make the best products it can, quality things that are high on usability...they don't always pull it off of course, but more often than not they do. The seamless conversion from Intel to Apple Silicon is just one more example of how Apple really can do great things.

 

[ethanwa79]

I got one of these for my son for his freshman year of college. After 10 days of use he wanted to return it an got a standard x86 HP laptop instead, which can run his games and Blender just fine.

Microsoft is seeing the pain of switching to ARM first hand.

 

[Seoras]

Maybe the game developers should be the ones to accomodate rather than the platforms.
My eldest son has a PS5 but has spent the last week trying to finish Zelda on my old Wii which is 16 years old now.
It's amazing to watch, so much thought and imagination in that game.
Nintendo really know how to write games without focusing too much on visual eye candy.
I'm sure Zelda would look amazing, compared to the Wii, on any ARM laptop.

 

[JPack]

Nobody is buying a productivity notebook PC to run games, come on.

 

[haunebu]

This is conveniently timed to coincide with Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips. I smell FUD being planted by Intel to smear their competitor to bolster their own product launch. MacRumors should know better.

 

[Nermal]

Nobody is buying a productivity notebook PC to run games, come on.

But they might buy one for productivity with the hope to run some games as well. It's a bit like how I didn't buy a Mac for gaming, but I still enjoy the odd game.

 

[Larabee119]

Windows PC are getting more and more like Mac. Struggling with Games

 

[FineWoven]

Fake news.

What exactly is not real in this news? It's clearly been proven multiple times that Microsoft's machines struggle graphics-heavy applications and games.

 

[stiligFox]

Maybe the game developers should be the ones to accomodate rather than the platforms.
My eldest son has a PS5 but has spent the last week trying to finish Zelda on my old Wii which is 16 years old now.
It's amazing to watch, so much thought and imagination in that game.
Nintendo really know how to write games without focusing too much on visual eye candy.
I'm sure Zelda would look amazing, compared to the Wii, on any ARM laptop.

Fun fact, the Wii has two processors - one that is basically a GameCube chip which is a PowerPC processor, and a second chip dedicated for the new Wii features, which is an ARM chip!

https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wii_architecture_overview - look at the Processors tab.

So I bet a modern ARM device would be able to emulate Wii games rather efficiently, as long as the emulator is set up to take advantage of it. Haven’t looked to see if Dolphin is doing anything about that yet.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Maybe the game developers should be the ones to accomodate rather than the platforms.

Ideally, yes, but it's not always a realistic expectation. It's financially impractical for most small or mid-size studios to do anything other than release and test for x86, when the expected return for porting to other platforms is often barely breaking even or even negative. For platforms with smaller user share, the platform owners have to do most of the heavy lifting.

 

[now i see it]

They can play with ChatGPT instead

 

[krell100]

At least there are games available for PCs.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

What exactly is not real in this news? It's clearly been proven multiple times that Microsoft's machines struggle graphics-heavy applications and games.

What is a "Microsoft's machine"?

The "fake news" is, people don't buy the Snapdragon laptops to play games. They have a purpose, which hopefully by now you know what that is.
It's also fake news that a Phillips screwdriver isn't good at removing flat slot screws. Get the right tool for the job.

 

[derekamoss]

Sick of seeing articles like this. If you want a gaming laptop buy one. These are for totally different use cases. No one expected them be a play games right off the bat. Give it a while and I'm sure they will eventually when games are optimized for arm. It's not arm's fault for this.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Nobody is buying a productivity notebook PC to run games, come on.

Nobody is buying these as a dedicated gaming machine, sure, but there are plenty of casual gamers who play a few older titles on the side.

 

[surfzen21]

But can it play doom at 60fps like my Texas Instruments TI-84 can?

 

[Chuckeee]

This is conveniently timed to coincide with Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips. I smell FUD being planted by Intel to smear their competitor to bolster their own product launch. MacRumors should know better.

The timing is suspicious but this limitation is a valid [although not surprising] revelation. I concur Intel has probably been sitting on this story, just waiting for the right time to release it.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Tbh I've never seen macrumors writing good stuff about windows. It's sad . Journalism should be objective, not self-approval oriented

 

[Ethosik]

Windows PC are getting more and more like Mac. Struggling with Games

I know! I am hearing NVIDIA botched one of their latest updates that makes nearly every Unreal Engine game crash. And since most games use Unreal its not a good situation.

 

[MacLawyer]

I was going to attach a gif of Nelson yelling "ha ha" but I think the mods would take it down. Sad.