Microsoft’s Arm-based Copilot+ PCs are fast and very capable with AI – but fresh doubt has been cast on the gaming prowess of these laptops

Real Hacker StaffSeptember 4, 2024

3 2 minutes read

Microsoft’s Arm-based Copilot+ PCs are fast and very capable with AI – but fresh doubt has been cast on the gaming prowess of these laptops

Microsoft’s line-up of Copilot+ PCs is designed to run AI tasks in a superfast manner, along with providing welcome features like all-day battery life, but what about gaming?

Okay, so these are AI laptops, and not designed for gaming, that’s true – but what about dabbling in some PC games casually on your notebook? While it’s not unheard of for Microsoft to make questionable software design decisions, a new report gave me pause for thought, asserting that the first wave of Copilot+ PCs – powered by Arm-based Snapdragon X chips – don’t perform well even for more casual gaming in some cases.

Indeed, according to the report from The Wall Street Journal (flagged up by MacRumors), those Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ laptops might struggle to run a large number of PC games. In extensive testing, the WSJ found that of 1,300 PC games, only half of them ran smoothly without noticeable issues or glitches.

While problems with running PC games on Arm-based Copilot+ laptops have been well-documented since the launch of these devices, the failure rate mentioned here is an eye-opening one.

(Image credit: Arm)

Compatibility challenges for Arm devices

The problem, as you may be aware, is that Arm is a different architecture from traditional x86 chips that PC games are written for. So, to run those games on an Arm device, Microsoft needs to employ a software layer to translate x86 games (and apps) to get them working using a system called Prism.

Prism works as an emulation layer, constantly converting instructions designed for Windows devices with x86 chips into instructions for devices with Arm chips. Apple has a similar tool for its Macs that you’ve probably heard of, called Rosetta (we’re now on Rosetta 2, in fact), allowing Macs with M-series (Arm-based) chips to run x86 apps.

The trouble is that emulation inevitably introduces performance overheads, and the whole process can lead to compatibility problems in some cases, with Prism apparently not faring that well on this side of the equation as the WSJ report makes clear. On Arm-based Copilot+ PCs, as mentioned only half of tested games ran without nasty glitches or problems launching. Some popular games like Fortnite and League of Legends can’t be made to work on Arm-based devices at all right now (anti-cheat systems are a particular bugbear, as we’ve heard in the past).

Clearly, this is an issue that Microsoft must continue to work on. I’m stating the obvious here about apps and games, but being able to choose freely among the existing releases out there is a huge part of what makes a computing device usable for any given person.

A pair of laptops behind a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip in a display

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Copilot+ PC expectations and the future

For now, Microsoft has told users that if they want to play games with demanding graphics, a Copilot+ PC may not be for them. And to be fair to Microsoft, this is not one of the core aims of a Copilot+ laptop, and it was never intended to be – what is slightly worrying is the gravity of the problem as painted by this new report from the WSJ.

I hope Microsoft will address these issues with gaming on Arm silicon and continue to improve its Prism emulation tech going forward, which to be fair, is still in its early days (Rosetta is now on version 2, as noted). In the world of Copilot+ PCs, though, we are going to start seeing laptops with x86 chips inside that won’t have these compatibility issues – notebooks built on Intel’s Lunar Lake processors, and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 silicon. This is to say this is not an issue with Copilot+ PCs as such, but with Arm chips – at least for now.