Gaming on Snapdragon X Elite - Abysmal

Presenter: Brett Sticklemonster
Videographer: Brett Sticklemonster
Editor: Brett Sticklepickle
Thumbnail Designer: Reece Hill

[paulanderson]

I can't say I necessarily agree that the GPU is the obvious factor especially based on the difference in performance with CS:GO and cyberpunk.
I'm thinking it's more of an optimization issue regarding the underlying x86 emulation.
Out of all of those games CS:GO should have been the smoothest and easiest to run.
Even the behavior of Doom points towards some sort of possible problem with it recompiling for the graphics.
I suspect as another commenter mentioned a lot of this could be solved with optimization but the question is when will we see those optimizations and will they actually take the time?

[Randomness]

surely game devs will start developing and optimizing for ARM right..?

(no, they wont)

[ublr]

The GPU should be alright, considering a lot of amazing looking game on Android.
We might need wait a bit for the GPU drives and Prism update..

[oirionman]

From what I’ve seen the Adreno Gpu is actually quite capable. It’s just evident that when it came to prism Microsoft never prioritized making good gpu emulation. On arm optimized gpu benchmarks the adreno does very well, on par with Intel and amd igpus

[pmknmash]

while it is disappointing that the integrated graphics aren't strong enough for gaming, I think Qualcomm and Microsoft hit on the fundamentals for this transition. battery life, webcam quality, and screen quality are all good or above average. glad they focused on that first. here's hoping next gen arm chips are more competitive on the gaming side

[julianorozaa]

It's clear with GTA, Witcher and Cyberpunk performance that the problems are the drivers/emulation layer. It should be able to be improved if Qualcomm sticks to it.

[clanpsi]

Sub-par performance at a premium price? Are they trying to be Apple pre-M1?

[Pomali]

I have a surface pro 11 and have seen gpu usage being quite low during gaming, i would expect it to improve with better drivers.

[chefffs]

Crazy that companies think we want them watching us all the time taking pictures of our desktop.

[hansjd]

are you using MSI afterburner? (i'm not good at differentiating all monitoring software)
but I saw "ETA prime" having issues when using afterburner

[systemBuilder]

Good review - it's the first one where you spanned most of the popular games 2020-2024. Most reviews just mention what worked, none told us that 50% of common titles wont start and another 25% run at 20 fps ...

[kangaroo]

saw something where touching the screen, improved performance, its like these things drop settings then boost when it registers screen contact like a phone. I would say this thing needs software tweaking

[Djuntas]

Follow up video is needed. I know some of the numbers from the 780m AMD. 90 FPS is not good result in GTA5 on those settings iirc.

[Reed-]

I've needed to see this for a long time

[mannkeithc]

I have a Windows Dev Kit 2023 and been using daily for 16 months. This has a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor, so around 50% of the performance of an X Elite processor. Though I agree with your gaming assessment, I have seen significant improvements in both emulation and graphic driver performance, especially on Windows 11 24H2, such that I can play many more games than when I first got the Dev Kit. Typically, indie style or less demand games with directX 11 support, such as Spelunky / Spelunky 2, Tomb Raider I - III Remastered, Kentucky Route Zero, the recent "Beyond a Steel Sky", DREDGE, Songs of Conquest, Disco Elysium, Duck Detective, Cuphead, Witcher 3 and Genshin Impact. Sometimes the games would not open or repeatedly crash unless I configured the display to be a borderless window rather than full screen. What does work well in retro game emulation. Dolphin, athersx2, ppsspp, Duckstation, and DosBox-x all have native windows arm64 versions, and RMG - N64, mGBA, ScummVM, OpenMW - Elderscroll III Morrowind, all run well via x86/x64 emulation.

[SaperPl]

Good video checking the reality. ARM still needs to catch up in the emulation game or gain enough user base to get relevant so devs will have incentive to make arm builds.

[rocker]

Thank god at least someone is covering this

[ryondler]

Guess whats its very recently introduced so even though the gpu is very powerful and high end without optimization it would be stuttering , lags etc.

[FitzGeraldGamingJr]

Winlator on Snapdragon Gen 3 vs Snapdragon X Elite. Would love to see this

[srit]

Who would have guessed that Windows ARM would have had compatibility issues