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

[jlc1978]

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.

It's not a question of cult, but of buyer expectations. They see Windows on the box and assume it will run all Windows apps like the x86 does, only to find out it doesn't; just as a Mac buyer buys MacOS and expects th new box to run teh old box's software.

 

[Ethosik]

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.

Yet on the flipside Apple gets MASSIVE HATE towards "LOL They get Death Stranding that is a few years old They can't get new games LOL"

 

[vantelimus]

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.

I’m running the .1 betas. Apple definitely hasn’t missed the boat. Their integration of AI is far better than using OpenAI, Claude, or Llama. Apple Intelligence is directed at specific tasks you want to perform, not a general LLM that can answer questions and hallucinate at you. We haven’t seen everything yet, but the writing tools, image editing in the Photos app, mail summaries, etc., are all pretty impressive so far and ultimately usable without having to copy and paste to/from another client. And all done without sending data off the Mac/Phone/Pad.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I’m running the .1 betas. Apple definitely hasn’t missed the boat. Their integration of AI is far better than using OpenAI, Claude, or Llama. Apple Intelligence is directed at specific tasks you want to perform, not a general LLM that can answer questions and hallucinate at you. We haven’t seen everything yet, but the writing tools, image editing in the Photos app, mail summaries, etc., are all pretty impressive so far and ultimately usable without having to copy and paste to/from another client. And all done without sending data off the Mac/Phone/Pad.

Me with Apple AI, or copilot, or ChatGPT:

 

[GMShadow]

The translation layer just isn't as good as Rosetta - there's more than games that don't work.

 

[Chuckeee]

On the flip side,

Perhaps this will motivate publishers and developers to optimize more game for ARM?

 

[vantelimus]

Me with Apple AI:

View attachment 2412466

You’ll be missing the boat if you do that with the AI features. They are seriously beneficial for general productivity.

Of course, people who’ve created simple AI-based image-editing apps are going to feel Sherlocked, but they should have known it would happen. Grammarly will complain mightily — both about Apple and about Ukraine not being in the EU since they won’t be able to get Vestager to carry water for them.

 

[Droobiemus]

The Macrumors bot has been whack lately. I bet they’re using AI under the hood or an API to write some articles.

 

[JPack]

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.

I agree, but the report says out of the 1,300 games tested, about half work fine. That's a pretty good ratio given the large library of games available for Windows.

The competition for Snapdragon X Elite is Apple Silicon, which has a library of almost zero games.

 

[seaquestamd]

I own one of the new SnapDragon Surface Pro's and I went in fully knowing its limitations, in my workflow there are a couple of apps that don't work and I am totally ok with this, however the expectation that I was going to do any AAA gaming on this machine is totally unrealistic. Poor article.

 

[PowerButton]

Let’s be real here, gamers won’t buy this, and serious games won’t buy laptops.
It’s all about different tools for the job.

 

[JPack]

It's not a question of cult, but of buyer expectations. They see Windows on the box and assume it will run all Windows apps like the x86 does, only to find out it doesn't; just as a Mac buyer buys MacOS and expects th new box to run teh old box's software.

PC gamers of all kinds are very familiar with two words: System Requirements.

Nobody out there is looking at a Windows logo on their $399 Dell notebook with 8GB RAM thinking, "yeah, let me play The Last of Us or Cyberpunk 2077."

 

[Acidsplat]

Microsoft's own games failing to work is cringe lol

 

[PrivateAppleFan]

This has been the Parallels on ARM problem for years. Fortunately the more of the world that runs on ARM, the greater the reason for devs to care about the architecture. And thus gaming on Parallels might get better.

 

[klasma]

This is an interesting timing, as Intel just announced their new mobile processors with similar performance and efficiency, but full x86 compatibility and better GPU: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-unveils-core-ultra-200v-lunar-lake-series-launching-september-24th
The laptops are expected to be more expensive than the Qualcomm ones though.

 

[DestructoTim]

To be honest if you just install CrossOver, your Apple Silicon Mac can play more Windows games than these ARM Windows devices. Your game library size will be almost on par with Steam Deck. And despite your Mac having to translate x86 to ARM and Windows to MacOS, you can run those games at higher settings on most Apple ARM chips than Steam Deck’s chip or Qualcomm’s chips.

This is because Apple’s M series Mac chips have crazy good APUs when it comes to the GPU side of things. For example, the base M4 in the current iPad Pro with no cooling system and sipping a tiny amount of watts, graphically outperforms the highest end full fat desktop Ryzen 8700G with a baseball sized cooler. Apple is a dead serious decade ahead of AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm in APU graphics. If the base M series lead is shocking, stay away from looking into the graphical gap Pro, Max, and Ultra series APUs provide.

I was benching some games on my Steam Deck and then comparing them to my 3 year old M1 Pro 14, and I wasn’t comprehending why my M1 Pro could run these x86 games at much higher settings when Steam Deck is x86 native. A lot of tech sites and YouTube channels constantly make statements that AMD has the most powerful APU graphics available. So I went around looking at what other people were experiencing in the real world, checking various YouTube video that show FPS, resolution, and in game menu graphics settings. Sure enough it wasn’t a glitch on my end, everyone else is benching the same. Thats when I got curious and looked up 8700G performance, because it is the best of the best from AMD. Desktop 8700G gets smoked by most Apple laptop APUs. It is insane!

 

[v0lume4]

Sounds like a Mac! The problem is that Qualcomm specifically talked about games and showed some benchmarks in their presentations prior to release. What those exact games and benchmarks were, I don't know. Nonetheless, the fatal flaw was building up an expectation around gaming only for it to fall flat.

Apple slowly lost me as a customer, their switch to ARM being one reason. Compatibility is king. x86 for me.

 

[antiprotest]

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

But I think your talking about mods policies/actions might also cause this to be taken down. It has happened to me multiple times. And now my talking about your talking about mods will also cause this to be taken down.

(Mods: I agree with you and love you 100% don't hurt me pls thank you)

 

[AppleTO]

Do ARM based PCs even support dGPUs at all? I know there aren’t any desktop chips yet, but what about an external NVidia GPU? I’m guessing there are no drivers…?

 

[ttyRazor]

There likely isn’t the same narrative around Rosetta since nearly everything that was at risk of breaking got cut off when they dropped 32 bit support. Not just the 32 bit code itself but all the APIs that didn’t make it beyond there. That gave them a much narrower and newer set of stuff to target Rosetta at.

Windows never had that sharp cutoff moment, so Microsoft has a much wider range of dependencies. Not just for old software, but even new software that uses older and harder to translate APIs that have been around far longer

 

[AltecX]

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.

Copilot is based on OpenAI's models. Microsoft adds OpenAI's models the same day or the same week that OAI announces them.

 

[HMI]

Wait! Are you saying that spying on everyone’s personal computers 24/7 is bad for their personal productivity?

 

[TechnoMonk]

I’m running the .1 betas. Apple definitely hasn’t missed the boat. Their integration of AI is far better than using OpenAI, Claude, or Llama. Apple Intelligence is directed at specific tasks you want to perform, not a general LLM that can answer questions and hallucinate at you. We haven’t seen everything yet, but the writing tools, image editing in the Photos app, mail summaries, etc., are all pretty impressive so far and ultimately usable without having to copy and paste to/from another client. And all done without sending data off the Mac/Phone/Pad.

I have been running the developer beta on my m1 iPad, I like the priority mails feature, writing tools, and haven’t really used image editing tools much. I am more excited for on device AI models linked to OS functions, that can make y life easy.

 

[TechnoMonk]

Copilot is based on OpenAI's models. Microsoft adds OpenAI's models the same day or the same week that OAI announces them.

Microsoft layers open AI models, Bing chat, and others with their own Prometheus AI model . It also has its own RAG and other search information it uses. Sure you can select a model in copilot browser, but copilot+windows is not one to one Open AI implementation. Last year Microsoft heavily used open AI, now they view it as competitor/partner. And has added additional layers, and Microsoft also has a tiny device model Phi.

 

[jlc1978]

PC gamers of all kinds are very familiar with two words: System Requirements.

Nobody out there is looking at a Windows logo on their $399 Dell notebook with 8GB RAM thinking, "yeah, let me play The Last of Us or Cyberpunk 2077."

Sure, a serious gamer would, but it appears it’s mot just the high end games; and casual gamers are more likely to simply buy a Windows box.