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I’m primarily a Mac user but these criticisms are silly. “My x86 apps run like crap on this ARM PC!!!” ya no **** why would anyone find this surprising. It’s not a failure of the device itself, it’s just the unavoidable consequence of making a leap from an old platform to a newer and better one.
 
What we need is the software creators to get a kick up the ass and make their software compatible as fast as possible.

Until enough ARM machines are sold and developers convinced it's a viable market, developing ARM games won't be of much interest.

You can't take games made for windows on arm and install them on an apple silicon mac.

The OP was referring to running them in a VM; which works with various amounts of success in terms of playability.
 
I feel like games are this albatross whenever assessing new PC hardware. Running high-end games which need a 4090 or better seem to take up like 80% of the tech-talk toob channels. As someone who has gamed, but no so much anymore, I look at the field and sense that just in terms of gaming, more numerous gamers are having more fun with better optimized games for medium specs.

Another factor here is the back-to-school. Anyone college-age heading to school, or living at home, or even NEETs ― sadly ― might be interested in a laptop that can also play League of Legends or CS:GO.
 
The Mac App Store should, in my opinion, say whether an app runs natively on Apple Silicon or not. I recently had the need to get hold of a video converter app, and I was astounded at just how many of them require Rosetta to be installed.
 
Oh noes! What a shame!

The data mining, I want all your info all the time, "superior" based Windows "co-miner I mean copilot) ARM (for now) laptops, can't handle demanding software.

What a shame!
 
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What is a "Microsoft's machine"? o_O

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.
What 😂

Then what are they buying them for because any self-respecting person shouldn't be buying an ARM-powered PC. I thought that was made pretty clear a couple years ago when Apple hilariously blew them out of the water by running Windows ARM builds via Rosetta translation much better than even Microsoft and their competitors' own hardware.
 
Let's just slap AI onto everything these days and hope it sells. This fad is going to die out soon... just like 3D TV, the touchbar, and Samsung Bixby.

3D Tv was awesome. Especially a big screen. Too bad it fell on its face. There were some great examples of 3D out there. Unfortunately the porn industry did not adopt the format, so it was doomed.
 
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.
Blender, I understand, but why do you want your son to be playing games in college, shouldn't he be overwhelmed with studying? Is he studying Blender for any class? Sounds like a perfect laptop.
 
The translation layer just isn't as good as Rosetta - there's more than games that don't work.
There is some x86 assembly that can't be translated to ARM automatically, and Rosetta crashes too. Games are uniquely prone to using optimized assembly in various bottle necks to optimize performance. If Rosetta2 could run on windows, we don't know if it would perform any better than Prisma, given *all* the games are intended to run on Windows/x86, and just a handful are on OSX.
 
Blender, I understand, but why do you want your son to be playing games in college, shouldn't he be overwhelmed with studying? Is he studying Blender for any class? Sounds like a perfect laptop.

After having worked at a University for 27 years, I can assure you students have a lot more free time than one might think.
 
Until enough ARM machines are sold and developers convinced it's a viable market, developing ARM games won't be of much interest.



The OP was referring to running them in a VM; which works with various amounts of success in terms of playability.
Yes that's the problem the old chicken and egg issue.

Personally I think Msoft should have "Grown a pair" many years ago and forced developers to need to change.
Companies are never going to change over to Mac's, so they'd get over it after a few years of complaining.
 
The seamless conversion from Intel to Apple Silicon is just one more example of how Apple really can do great things.
In what universe was the move from intel to apple silicon seamless?!? Sure, some things worked. Some things didn't work. Some failed miserably. Just the same as we're now seeing with the Copilot+ PCs. Do remember we're soon seeing the 4th generation of M chips so they've had plenty of time to get Rosetta to where it is now. There was a reason I didn't buy anything from the first 2 generations as I knew some of the apps I use primarily didn't really work in them. I pulled the plug at M3 and so far haven't had issues. But that all depends on what you use/used.
 
In what universe was the move from intel to apple silicon seamless?!? Sure, some things worked. Some things didn't work. Some failed miserably. Just the same as we're now seeing with the Copilot+ PCs. Do remember we're soon seeing the 4th generation of M chips so they've had plenty of time to get Rosetta to where it is now. There was a reason I didn't buy anything from the first 2 generations as I knew some of the apps I use primarily didn't really work in them. I pulled the plug at M3 and so far haven't had issues. But that all depends on what you use/used.
I migrated with the M1 Mac Mini. It has been seamless with Rosetta. Every plug in and application ran just fine for me.
 
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I migrated with the M1 Mac Mini. It has been seamless with Rosetta. Every plug in and application ran just fine for me.

You anecdotal experience may have been fine, but generally speaking there where lots of reports and reviews about software not working anymore in the beginning of the M1 transition. DAW/VST plugins, video software, 3d software and games come to mind. So the fact that you where lucky does not mean that the transition was seamless.

IMO the same teething problems that happened with the M1 are happening now with Windows PC's on ARM. People who claim otherwise have a) short memories or b) are biased towards one brand.
 
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You anecdotal experience may have been fine, but generally speaking there where lots of reports and reviews about apps and games not working anymore in the beginning of the M1 transition. DAWs plugins, video software, 3d software and games come to mind. So the fact that you where lucky does not mean that the transition was seamless.

IMO the same teething problems that happened with the M1 are happening now with Windows PC's on ARM. People who claim otherwise have a) short memories or b) are biased towards one brand.
You all make it sound like NOTHING worked. I had DAW plug-ins, After Effects plug-ins, Blender and Cinema 4D and many more Intel only apps and games.

It’s not just I “lucked out”. I had about 20 different highly valued programs and many of those had dozens of plug-ins.
 
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You all make it sound like NOTHING worked. I had DAW plug-ins, After Effects plug-ins, Blender and Cinema 4D and many more Intel only apps and games.

It’s not just I “lucked out”. I had about 20 different highly valued programs and many of those had dozens of plug-ins.

I said that there where plenty of reports/reviews of software not working. I never said NOTHING worked. I said the introduction of the M1 was not seamless (in contrast to the claim of another poster) in spite of your anecdotal experience.
 
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I said that there where plenty of reports/reviews of software not working. I never said NOTHING worked. I said the introduction of the M1 was not seamless (in contrast to the claim of another poster) in spite of your anecdotal experience.
There are plenty of reports that things worked fine. The point is it is just simply my "anecdotal experience". Maybe some obscure plug in that I did not have was an issue. But with 20 apps and dozens of plug ins, it was as seamless as it could be. I even watched the news sites VERY closely, not one major outlet reported massive issues with the architecture changes.

If you have an article of a high value app or plug-in that got reported, please post it as I am curious of all of those issues you say happened but I have not seen any reports.
 
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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.

microsoft-copilot-plus-pc.jpg

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
Copilot+ PCs rocking these Qualcomm Snapdragon X SoCs are targeting M3 MacBook Airs, and PC ultrabooks, neither of which are really configured to be great gaming performers to begin with.

Like, if you bought a Dell Latitude that only has Intel Integrated graphics (which is 95% of them) and expected to have good framerates with Diablo IV, you were definitely doing it wrong. Similarly, as great as an M3 is, it's not the SoC most Apple Silicon native games are preferring that you have. They'd probably much rather you rock an M1 Pro or M2 Pro than a base M3.

Not saying Prism couldn't stand some improvements and that Rosetta 2 isn't amazing, because both of those are true. But, we really ought to consider the class of computer that these Copilot+ PCs with the Snapdragon X are really competing with here. It's designed to compete with the U-series Intel machines. It's designed to compete with the MacBook Air (which seldom are buying with the first and foremost intention of gaming).

And for this class of machine, it sounds like it's still a step up from an Intel U-series based Ultrabook, which is everything one might want it to be.
 
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.
MacBooks, Mac studios and iMacs with their “iGPUs” (if I can call them that) have been perfectly fine. I do game development with them, MacBooks are shown often to play windows games over who knows how many emulation layers for x86 to ARM plus DirectX to Vulkan to Apple’s Metal. (There’s that Andrew Tsai YouTube constantly going through bulks of games at a time).

Many just continued using Blender since day one like nothing over Rosetta 2, while the endeavors for macOS and Metal native were taking form, for normal work that is. Render farms are another thing.

Not saying that a dedicated GPU is bad, it’s great, it’s raw power (as long as the laptop it’s on is plugged in, else it will crawl and drain the battery in an hour), but the gap between iGPUs and dGPUs from 15 years ago and today is quite minor in my experience.
 
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.
oh man, can relate. Got several consoles, a windows handheld (ROG Ally), etc… but the one that has truly reignited the joy of video games has been the Switch.

Been on a binge Zelda Link’s Awakening, Metroid Dread, Metroid Zero Mission (on GBA), Super Mario RPG, some indie ones, etc… and yeah, the experience has been fantastic, graphics do are actually great for what they are meant to convey but made me forget completely all the tech nerd stats like ray tracing, screen pixels resolution, etc

Not to mention accessible, those consoles are ready to go… turning a PS4 after two weeks of not playing is met with hours on installing hundreds of GBs on system update then games updates. Nintendo does focus on what I know believe are the more important experience related things.
 
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