I’m not 100 % sure how it exactly works, but I think Microsoft recompiles/translates the games and you then download the changed binary instead of playing off your disc (which is also why texture streaming should be a lot faster).

This is most likely a process that’s automated for the most part though. And I highly doubt it’s recompiled from source, that’s why I called it “translated”.

Games using the id tech engine were often affected by visible texture pop in, and apparently the PS3 version was affected more than the 360 version, but the latter still was noticeably affected. Rage uses id tech 5, but I remember playing BRINK (id tech 4) on PS3 which had no mandatory install (it ran from the disc without installing anything to the HDD upfront), but used the HDD extensively for caching texture data. After I upgraded from the standard 5400 rpm HDD to a 7200 rpm HDD I remember texture pop-in was noticeably reduced.

Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One or Series isn’t really accurately emulating the hardware, instead it translates the original code to something the One and Series understand.

Porting games to a different architecture is normally quite a bit more involved than just recompiling them, especially when architecture-agnostic code wasn’t a design goal of the original game code. No, Valve couldn’t release all their games natively running on ARM tomorrow, the process would take more time.

But even if Valve were to recompile all their games for ARM, many other studios wouldn’t just because a few gaming handhelds would benefit from it. The market share of these devices wouldn’t be big enough to justify the cost. Very few of the games that run on Steam Deck are actually native Linux versions, studios just rarely bother porting their games over.

I’m not saying ARM chips can’t be faster or otherwise better (more efficient) at running games, but it just doesn’t make sense to release an ARM-based handheld intended for “PC” gaming in the current landscape of games.

Apple can comparatively easily force an architecture transition because they control fhe software and hardware. If Apple decides to only sell RISC-V based Macs tomorrow and abandon ARM, developers for the platform would have to release RISC-V builds of their software because at some point nobody could run their software natively anymore because current Macs would be replaced by RISC-V Macs as time passed by. Valve does not control the full hard- and software stack of the PC market so they’d have a very hard time to try and force such a move. If Valve released an ARM-based gaming handheld, other manufacturers would still continue offering x86-based handhelds with newer and newer CPUs (new x86 hardware is still being developed for the foreseeable future) and instead of Valve forcing developers to port their games to native ARM, they’d probably lose market share to these other handhelds as people would naturally buy the device that runs current games best right now.

In a “perfect world” where all games would natively support ARM right now an ARM-based handheld for PC gaming could obviously work. That simply isn’t the world we live in right now though. Sure we could ramble on about “if this and that”, it’s just not the reality.

As you said yourself, it’s not the same thing. Proton can occasionally beat Windows because Vulkan might be more efficient doing certain things compared to DirectX (same with other APIs getting translated to other API calls). This is all way more abstract compared to CPU instruction sets.

If Qualcomm actually managed to somehow accurately (!) run x86 code faster on their ARM hardware compared to native x86 CPUs on the same process node and around the same release date, it would mean they are insanely far ahead (or, depending on how you look at it, Intel/AMD insanely far behind).

And as I said, any efficiency gains in idle won’t matter for gaming scenarios, as neither the CPU nor the GPU idle at any point during gameplay.

With all that being said: I think Qualcomm did a great job and ARM on laptops (outside of Apple) might finally be here to stay. But they won’t replace x86 laptops anytime soon, and it’ll take even longer to make a dent in the PC gaming market because DIY suddenly becomes very relevant. So I don’t think (“PC”) gaming handhelds should move to ARM anytime soon.

No, that’s not at all what I said. Translating between CPU architectures and translating API calls isn’t even close to the same thing.

Yeah, it’s also not “just” if it’s one of what feels like hundreds of steps now to make the OS somewhat usable.

If both AMD/Intel and Qualcomm do a good job with their core design and the same process node is used, I don’t see how a translation layer can be any faster than a CPU natively supporting the architecture. Any efficiency advantages ARM supposedly has over x86 architecturally will vanish in such a scenario.

I actually think the efficiency of these new Snapdragon chips is a bit overhyped, especially under sustained load scenarios (like gaming). Efficiency cores won’t do much for gaming, and their iGPU doesn’t seem like anything special.

We need a lot more testing with proper test setups. Currently, reviewers mostly test these chips and compare them against other chips in completely different devices with a different thermal solution and at different levels of power draw (TDP won’t help you much as it basically never matches actual power draw). Keep in mind the Snapdragon X Elite can be configured for up to “80W TDP”.

Burst performance from a Cinebench run doesn’t tell the real story and comparing runtimes for watching YouTube videos on supposedly similar laptops doesn’t even come close to representing battery life in a gaming scenario.

Give it a few years/generations and then maybe, but currently I’m pretty sure the 7840U comfortably stomps the X Elite in gaming scenarios with both being configured to a similar level of actual power draw. And the 7840U/8840U is AMD’s outgoing generation, their new (horribly named) chips should improve performance/watt by quite a bit.

Not sure why you’d want an ARM-based handheld to play PC games at this point in time. Pretty much all PC games are available in x86 only, and any efficiency gains these fancy new ARM chips supposedly have will be lost when translating x86 to ARM.

RIP and thank you for your contributions!

I’m gonna say Valheim, even though the native version doesn’t respect your default audio device so it can end up outputting sound to the wrong device at startup, which you can then correct using a volume mixer.

That’s the reason why I still play the Windows version via Proton though.

But you were asking for my favorite game with a native Linux port, not for the game with the best Linux port :D

Well I was planning to get a new iPhone that fully supports Apple Intelligence, but if Apple can’t swallow their pride by properly opening up their platform but would rather leave out headlining features, I guess I won’t.

No one is forcing people to use Apple devices. That’s not what this is about.

It’s about other services trying to reach potential customers that happen to be using an iPhone. Spotify has to go through the App Store if they want to reach any customers on the second largest mobile platform. And Apple themselves have a lot of advantages concerning integrating their own music streaming service into the OS while Spotify is limited by the rules Apple sets, including taking 30% of any subscription made through the App Store.

Ping your own VPS?

A privacy data breach that exposes someone’s sexual orientation can have far-reaching effects, including the loss of employment, loss of familial relationships and friendships and even the potential for physical harm or death.

Of course data privacy is important, but I feel like in these cases the problem lies even more with the employer, family or “friends”.

True. Might be easier to just drop a bunch of torrents to the website though.

That’s not what this is. You can download a supposedly dead torrent, add more trackers that might have peers available for that torrent to it, and re-add the modified torrent to your client.

I highly doubt most do, just that the percentage of Linux users may be higher than on many other platforms.

The most used platform for Lemmy is likely still Windows or a mobile OS.

So it’s just a worse Analogue Pocket for almost the same price…?

Well it still technically does give them a list, it’s just that even with the list there are a lot of combinations.

So I guess Apple’s stupid “Core Technology Fee” definitely has to go.

The way this sounds though maybe a lot more has to change though. Maybe their whole verification process is unlawful as well.