What are your thoughts on transitioning to Arm?

[ZedClampet]

WARNING: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm looking for discussion and enlightenment

Before you say it's only happening in laptops, moving to Arm in desktops seems to be only a matter of time. Arm is just out-pacing x86 these days.

The biggest issue for gamers may be having to rely on an emulator made by Microsoft to run games. For people who prefer Linux, I guess you can run Wine on a Linux Arm machine, but I have no real clue. I'm sure Valve will figure it out is all I need to know since the only time I'll ever be running Linux on an Arm machine is if Valve puts Arm in the Deck (highly likely, is my wild guess since they'll get left in the dust by other handhelds if they don't)

To make matters worse, Microsoft will some day stop supporting the emulator (assuming it has to be updated occasionally), but hopefully by then there will be other options (or perhaps it will be like DOSbox).

Another potential hurdle is that it's possible that there could be pressure to make two versions of each PC game, one for x86 and one for Arm.

Also, it's very possible that the next generation consoles will go to Arm, which could cause issues with PC ports for people who are still on x86 machines. By "issues" I mean they just wouldn't port the games to x86 if a decent portion of PC players were on Arm.

SO, feel free to ignore all of the above and just give me your thoughts on this transition which has just begun to happen.

 

[Colif]

So far the only desktop motherboard for ARM is for developers of mobile applications, so its unclear if ARM will extend outside of laptops. I did ask about that yesterday. (I am completely ignoring fact all Apple computers use ARM, I am talking windows based PC here. Not toys )

AMD are making their own ARM CPU but so far they only for embedded systems. Their next gen CPU aren't far away so speed difference might not be so great. I don't know if they plan on releasing any ARM for desktop as their roadmap doesn't suggest it... they on Zen 4 now, its already marked out to Zen 6.

No idea about Intel.


ARM's performance advantages might be eroded by fact it has to emulate all the X86 applications, and this can make it not that much faster than standard x86 CPU are now. They don't have to emulate, its native for them.

The main difference with Windows on Arm is software compatibility. Most Windows applications and games are primarily compiled for x86 processors, not Arm processors. Windows has a built-in compatibility layer that translates x86 instructions to Arm instructions, but it's not perfect—more on that in the next section. There's also some Windows software that can't run through the compatibility layer, like hardware drivers.

What is Windows 11 on ARM and How Does it Compare to Regular Windows?

Windows has been available on ARM-powered PCs for years, but should you use it?

www.howtogeek.com

drivers for hardware will all need to be rewritten to work on ARM. That will be fun times... I remember cross over from win 7 to 10... So this is a lot of work for lots of companies just to have their hardware work with ARM. How many won't bother? How many won't see it as worth the work? Lots of old hardware won't work on it.

I think I will just watch and wait. Hate to buy a PC based on ARM just to find its not supported very long. Or my hardware doesn't work on it. Next upgrade I have to replace motherboard, CPU & Ram anyway so I am open to anything. Right now leaning towards AMD still. Might be safer until ARM is better known.

MIcrosoft still have the belief that everyone uses a laptop. Nope... too small for me, and I don't want to have to completely buy a new PC every time the GPU is too slow. No 5.1 sound was also a reason I used to give as well. Only advantage I see to them is they still work if there is a black out.

 

[BeardyHat]

WARNING: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm looking for discussion and enlightenment

Before you say it's only happening in laptops, moving to Arm in desktops seems to be only a matter of time. Arm is just out-pacing x86 these days.

The biggest issue for gamers may be having to rely on an emulator made by Microsoft to run games. For people who prefer Linux, I guess you can run Wine on a Linux Arm machine, but I have no real clue. I'm sure Valve will figure it out is all I need to know since the only time I'll ever be running Linux on an Arm machine is if Valve puts Arm in the Deck (highly likely, is my wild guess since they'll get left in the dust by other handhelds if they don't)

To make matters worse, Microsoft will some day stop supporting the emulator (assuming it has to be updated occasionally), but hopefully by then there will be other options (or perhaps it will be like DOSbox).

Another potential hurdle is that it's possible that there could be pressure to make two versions of each PC game, one for x86 and one for Arm.

Also, it's very possible that the next generation consoles will go to Arm, which could cause issues with PC ports for people who are still on x86 machines. By "issues" I mean they just wouldn't port the games to x86 if a decent portion of PC players were on Arm.

SO, feel free to ignore all of the above and just give me your thoughts on this transition which has just begun to happen.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. I'm happy the translation layer is working well so far, but I'm concerned about our Legacy games we still want to be able to play, especially if we are going to have to rely on a major corporation for it.

That said, I am excited about the prospect of ARM. As I think people are familiar with, I'm very much an integrated graphics proponent; I like to game on my laptops and I like them to be thin and light, so the more performance out of a smaller solution, the better. I've been eyeballing Apples new chips with envy, though admittedly, I don't know much about them and I will never own an Apple product.

All we can do is wait and see, but this may incline me towards keeping some of my computers around for "Retro Gaming" as they age.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You can find articles about every 10 years claiming x86 is obsolete and RISC is the future, Im pretty sure its a lot more complicated then that and x86 isnt going anywhere for the forseeable. Im definitely no expert though.

Either way Ive always enjoyed messing about with hardware and building and maintaining a tower is something I enjoy, so I'd be sad to see that aspect of PC gaming go away. But if it all goes out the window (ha) and I have to put up with some over priced wafer thin computer with an SOC in it to play games I guess thats what Ill have to do.

 

[Colif]

x86 can still run operating systems and software that were written 30+ years ago, which is likely the main reason why people don’t simply switch - they have software that doesn’t run on ARM that they still want to use - refer almost all the games released until now.

Everything i read suggests ARM good for laptops but Desktop/Server unlikely to swap to it. Power usage doesn't matter so much if you plugged in. CISC still more useful than RISC but the performance gap is shrinking.

Its great for OEM as it sounds unlikely people will be making their own PC with ARM:

ARM processors do not have a separate CPU. Instead, the processing unit is on the same physical substrate as the other hardware controllers; this is an integrated circuit. Additionally, unlike Intel or AMD CPUs, there is no ARM processor manufacturer. Instead, Arm Holdings licenses chip designs to other hardware manufacturers which then incorporate the ARM processor chip into their hardware designs. Unlike a traditional x86-based computer, ARM chips are not interchangeable and are highly application specific. These processors are manufactured together in what’s called a system-on-a-chip (SoC).

ARM vs x86: What's the difference?

ARM and x86 have similarities and both are used in some of today's fastest supercomputers. But they also have very significant differences.

www.redhat.com

note: If you have an AMD CPU now, you already have an ARM core... you can't use it directly, its actually where the TPM is. Its where Secure Boot resides. Windows can't use it eiither... intentionally for security reasons. Its where your PIN is stored.
So AMD have been using ARM for a long while. Just not as main cores...

Intel tried risc already. Look up Itanium

AMD & Nvidia are lining up ARM chips for 2025. Reported in 2023, I haven't seen anything newer.

AMD teams up with Arm to unveil AI chip family that does preprocessing, inference and postprocessing on one silicon — but you will have to wait more than 12 months to get actual products

Versal AI Edge Series Gen 2 is expected late 2025

www.techradar.com

I forgot I watched this a few days ago:

 

[Zloth]

It makes me think we're in the early 90's again, when RISC was going to take over. I mean really, it was CERTAIN to do so! Everybody knew it, they were just waiting for it to happen. PowerPC showed up and even got used in PS3 and Xbox 360, but PC gamers went with Windows 95 on CISC chips.

Maybe they can make it happen this time, but I'm not going to believe it until I see it and keep seeing it for at least a few years.

 

[Colif]

Sort of related:

Lots of people concerned about the new recall feature in Windows 11 24H2 but they missing one detail. it only works on Co pilot+ PC and right now, the only CPU that qualifies is the Qualcomm ARM CPU's... so most people up in arms won't even see the feature until they get a new PC.

 

[Brian Boru]

There are 2 main options:

Spoiler: Perfect Arm Transitions

…

Spoiler: Zero to Hero

 

[Colif]

All the games have to run through a translation layer so their performance suffers.
Games with anti cheats may not work until new versions written for ARM.
8 fps in Cyberpunk
42fps in GTA 5 1080p low settings...

Needs to improve before I would look at that.

 

[Zloth]

Needs to improve before I would look at that.

Well, yeah, you're basically emulating. If somebody compiles a game for ARM then runs it on current architecture, I expect it wouldn't do very well, either.

 

[BeardyHat]

All the games have to run through a translation layer so their performance suffers.
Games with anti cheats may not work until new versions written for ARM.
8 fps in Cyberpunk
42fps in GTA 5 1080p low settings...

Needs to improve before I would look at that.

Honestly, call me optimistic with this. I get the issues with frame time and the like, but the fact that it's running some of this stuff at all is fairly impressive, especially considering it's ridiculously early in the life cycle. I could see it being viable if Microsoft and continue supporting and refining the processor. Cyberpunk is getting worse performance than my i7-1160G7 with Radeon 5500XT eGPU, but really not that much worse at similar resolution and settings; plus as we've seen with emulation over the decades, time and refinement brings performance improvements.

Also, as a person who plays many indies, I'd be curious to see the performance of some of the more popular stuff like Dredge, Dave the Diver or Balatro, further still, running fairly basic stuff like Stardew Valley or Rimworld. I know I'm in the minority, but I couldn't possibly care less about all the multiplayer titles tested here and could absolutely see this being totally viable as an everyday PC that you pretty much just keep to indies with, which is already a big part of my laptop experience.

Basically, I wouldn't count this out yet. We'll undoubtedly see improvements in the translation layer and I'll be curious where it'll be in a years time; I doubt I'd pick one of these up even in the next 5 years to replace my current Intel Thinkpad, but it would be nice to have even more healthy competition in the PC space as far as CPU manufacturers go. I'd love to have been able to choose a Ryzen for my current laptop, for example, but they just don't offer one in this form factor and maybe we'll see that change with ARMs entry.