Quick overview:
Who would have thought we'd live to see this day? Windows gaming is coming to devices with ARM chips. In the past, gaming on ARM chips was mostly for nerds who liked to push systems to their limits, but that has now changed. With the KB5066835 update, the Prism emulator gains AVX and AVX2 support—a real game-changer for Snapdragon laptops.
What is AVX?
The abbreviation AVX stands for Advanced Vector Extensions; it is a technology used in modern CPUs to speed up calculations. This is a must-have for many modern games. The problem: ARM chips like the Snapdragon X Elite use a different instruction set than Intel or AMD processors. Until now, Windows had to laboriously implement these AVX instructions, or they simply wouldn’t work.
Thanks to the new update, this translation is suddenly working really well. Games that used to crash on startup now work. Games that were unplayable at 5 FPS are suddenly reaching 30-40 frames. Nothing amazing by gaming standards, but for ARM laptops, it's a huge step forward.
What's going on right now?
The community is currently trying out all sorts of things. It's surprising that even older AAA titles like "The Witcher 3" or "GTA V" still run very well. Indie games, of course—titles like "Hades" or "Hollow Knight" run flawlessly. Strategy games like "Civilization VI" benefit in particular because CPU emulation has now been significantly improved.
With the newest blockbusters, it's getting harder. "Cyberpunk 2077" runs at least now, but is barely playable. "Starfield" runs as well, but you have to be patient. ARM continues not to be the best choice for such titles. Before the update, it was unthinkable that they would even launch.
Exciting: A large number of Game Pass games now run on ARM. Microsoft is making targeted optimizations for its own hardware. This has the potential to develop further in the medium-term future.
Provide manual support
A minor downside: The new features are not automatically activated everywhere. Microsoft only allows AVX for programs that have been tested. To experiment, you have to take action yourself in the Windows settings and enable AVX for individual games.
This carries a certain risk. Some games will then run unsteadily or crash completely. However, as someone who likes to tinker and brings a certain understanding of technology, you can certainly achieve success. The community is already discussing on Reddit and in forums which settings work with which game and which games run unexpectedly well.
Record performance correctly
To realize the full potential of your ARM laptop, you should run benchmarks. With tools like 3DMark or Geekbench, you can see where you stand. But not only the raw FPS count is crucial, stability matters too. A game that briefly manages 40 frames and then crashes isn't any better, after all.
To test the new ARM performance, benchmarking tools that simulate real-world gaming scenarios are the best choice. It’s not just the FPS numbers that matter, but also the stability and fairness of the systems. It’s interesting to note that this trend toward transparency is also evident in other areas of gaming: The top Aviator casinos of the year, for example, always use certified random number generators (RNGs) and make their performance metrics publicly available. There, players can see in real time how random results are generated—a level of transparency that even traditional PC games are increasingly adopting. The development of ARM gaming is still in its infancy, but tools like the new Prism emulator prove that everything—from AAA titles to browser-based games—is becoming the standard through measurability and traceability.
What impact will this have on the future?
Ultimately, not much will really change for hardcore gamers. Anyone who is truly invested in gaming most likely doesn't own an ARM chip anyway, but rather a system with a decent graphics card—and what Intel and AMD deliver with these graphics cards is simply something ARM chips won't be able to match anytime soon.
The real winners, however, are casual gamers who bought an ARM laptop for university or work. While before the update probably not even League of Legends ran reasonably well, many smaller indie games should now be completely unproblematic—a massive quality-of-life upgrade!
With the M-chips, Apple is already demonstrating what ARM is capable of. The performance is impressive in gaming as well. If Microsoft and Qualcomm continue their investments, ARM could actually become a serious gaming platform in a few years. Right now, it is still a compromise, but it is significantly better than a year ago.
With the Prism update, ARM gaming goes from "forget about it" to "might actually work." Some find that completely sufficient. For many, the classic gaming PC remains the best choice. That depends on what you need.
Photo by Vishnu Mohanan on Unsplash
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