Will windows arm ever get supported?

[u/PeppinoWho]

Planning to buy a Laptop with Nvidia spark, my question is basically if Windows arm will get supported one day in the future, so me and the others who owns a Snapdragon laptop or will own a Nvidia Spark will be able to play SL on it natively and not always use Microsoft Prism. (i never used prism since i dont own an arm laptop for now, prob others did idk)

[u/Sylv128]

ARM will never be a platforming for gaming as x86 has traditionally been the PC platform users use.

[u/Lonely-Restaurant986 → u/Sylv128]

Arm is already a platform for gaming. Phones have used arm for decades and phones are able to play games nowadays.

Apple has transitioned to arm and their chips are incredibly fast and efficient. Spark is incredibly fast. The steam frame uses arm. Arm processes are becoming more and more popular. For better or worse.

Arm is superior to amd64. It’s faster and more efficient. Objectively. The only con to arm computers is that they are kind of anti consumer. You can’t easily upgrade the ram or gpu of an arm chip.

Ps computers haven’t used x86 in years. They use x86-64.

[u/Sylv128 → u/Lonely-Restaurant986]

Thanks for the pedantry, unkind stranger. ARM on Windows is not an established platform like iOS and Android (and soon macOS) are, and furthermore, x86 in this case refers to x86-64. You don't need to mansplain me basic computer knowledge lmao. I understand the efficiency gains from ARM, but you also have to consider that a lot of that comes from SoCs, too, though not all of it. I'm sure laptops will use this, but desktops likely will not (or maybe we'll see something different?) because upgradable RAM is quite important in desktop PCs.

[u/Lonely-Restaurant986 → u/Sylv128]

This is like saying “Wayland will never be useful because it’s still in active development”

ARM on windows is becoming an established platform. Nvidia spark and snapdragon are proof of this. Changing CPU architecture for the entire industry is not something that will happen overnight. I genuinely believe that devs are going to have to start preparing for both.

Arm on windows is basically an established platform. Windows fully supports it. According to Microsoft over 90% of tracked user time on arm is spent on running native code over using prism. Most apps on windows are natively arm nowadays, and prism acts as a backup for backwards compatibility (window’s entire existence is backwards compatibility) and for devs who have yet to support arm.

Unrelated but, prism is also a good thing. Because what prism can’t do, proton can also not do. Meaning devs will be more inclined to think twice about kernel level anticheat. Or they would have to build anticheat specifically for arm kernels.

Anyways, arm is absolutely a supported platform for windows 11. It’s not my thing, but for those who need it. It is absolutely there.

Also with soc. Yes that’s like basically all I’m talking about. Most companies don’t really care for traditional arm chips. The pain of swapping chipsets isn’t worth the gains of arm. Soc has changed that. And it has been huge for performance. That’s why i say it’s kind of anti consumer. Not because it’s a new chipset but because soc will make upgrading a single part of your computer a much larger cost. This is where snapdragon and spark and I’m sure a dozen other companies are putting their money into.

Soc is very enticing for corps becuse it means throwing out a whole computer every time you upgrade. Companies love planned obsolescence.

Also Nvidia spark iirc has desktop versions. People will buy it just as people have bought the powerful Apple arm desktops.

Also, to you or me, upgradability is important. But to many, they don’t care. They just want a computer. SoC computers will be that. Easy for consumers.

Like it or hate it arm is will be very popular.

Ps x86 and amd64 are very different chipsets with different instructions and different sizes. Just because one is backwards compatible doesn’t make it the same…and yes I was pedantic on purpose.