Windows ARM Apple silicon gaming

[Lsant]

Now that we have windows using ARM on laptops there’s a chance game developers put effort to launch their games optimized for ARM?

 

[MrGunny94]

Too early to say, it will depend on how the sales for these new Snapdragon chips will go. It will also depend on the game engines getting support for ARM

Unreal Engine for example supports ARM and Metal from Apple side.

 

[senttoschool]

Yes.

ARM isn't going away. Its marketshare will only increase. ARM will have advantages in price and perf per watt. In the near future, Nvidia will also launch their ARM SoC and developers will have no choice but make an ARM version.

 

[StasDeBure]

I don't expect big success of arm PCs in the Windows world. AMD Strix Point is behind the door with better NPU and also similar power efficiency.

 

[l0stl0rd]

I agree with this above.
And even if ARM on Windows becomes popular I don’t think it will change a thing.
They still use DX12, OpenGL and Vulkan for one. The Os will still be different too.
I don’t expect it to change anything for Mac Gaming or App support.

It is not like there are a lot of Linux ports of games and apps because it is x86…

 

[wonderings]

What type of gaming are you talking about? You are going to need a GPU to really get the performance for the high end and complex detailed games. End of the day if you want a computer for gaming you need a PC.

 

[crazy dave]

I agree with this above.
And even if ARM on Windows becomes popular I don’t think it will change a thing.
They still use DX12, OpenGL and Vulkan for one. The Os will still be different too.
I don’t expect it to change anything for Mac Gaming or App support.

It is not like there are a lot of Linux ports of games and apps because it is x86…

While I'm not certain, I believe the original question was simply support for ARM which by itself would make things like WINE/GPTK faster if they don't have to do Rosetta translation on top of Windows/GPU API emulation.

=============

But more generally neither ARM CPUs nor even GPU APIs are a major stumbling block for porting. I still see this repeated everywhere but it isn't actually true anymore. Most games, even AAA, use Unity/Unreal/some off the shelf engine. I won't say that native porting to Macs/Linux to ARM or not is merely a click away when using those tools, but the technical side isn't the holdup. The most common game engines all have Metal/Vulkan backends and the ability to make games for whatever platform the developer wants, that flexibility is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

The real issue is support costs versus the perceived size of the gaming market. Why bother with any cost to porting at all, and then the higher cost of supporting a platform, if the perceived tiny Mac or Linux gaming base is just going to get the game somewhere else like a console, phone, or Windows gaming PC? That's why we even see games like Genshin Impact come out for Android, iOS, PC, console, but not Mac or Linux. Obviously porting to Mac or Linux isn't the issue - the "hard part" of doing that's practically already been done - e.g. for Mac, it's on iOS already - and they still won't do it.

 

[senttoschool]

I don't expect big success of arm PCs in the Windows world. AMD Strix Point is behind the door with better NPU and also similar power efficiency.

Nah, AMD won't reach the same power efficiency as ARM SoCs. It's just a different design philosophy. It might have more raw power but lower perf/watt.

Strix Point won't change the experience of Windows laptops like M1 did. Qualcomm's Oryon SoCs have a chance.

 

[l0stl0rd]

Nah, AMD won't reach the same power efficiency as ARM SoCs. It's just a different design philosophy. It might have more raw power but lower perf/watt.

Strix Point won't change the experience of Windows laptops like M1 did. Qualcomm's Oryon SoCs have a chance.

Maybe it should not be too bad if they tun them at the “default” 28 W.

I would love to see some numbers/specs for Lunar Lake, sound like it could be very efficient from their presentation.

Going by their presentation they might actually do better than AMD.

 

[dmccloud]

Maybe it should not be too bad if they tun them at the “default” 28 W.

I would love to see some numbers/specs for Lunar Lake, sound like it could be very efficient from their presentation.

Going by their presentation they might actually do better than AMD.

I think AMDs announcements at Computex this week may have leapfrogged whatever Intel is releasing for their 15th gen parts. The 9000 series (Zen 5) has a higher IPC than the 7000 series, so they have actually dropped the power draw across everything but the 9900x. Additionally since AMD has not followed Intel down the power/efficiency cores path, those cores are all performance based, yet still at lower wattages than Intel.