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Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

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Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#121

Post by andrewclunn »

mariusor wrote: post #104
schmorptron wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a longer term play. Step 1) Establish a large enough non-windows userbase with great compatibility tools Step 2) Studios and especially game engine developers notice linux install base Step 3) Some tangible benefit to running natively, if only stability, pops up and the userbase is now large enough to care about it Step 4) Engines, and then games get better native support

I am pretty sure you're wrong. Here's a tweet from 2021: https://x.com/flibitijibibo/status/1416118465442852869 To quote from down the conversation: > @flibitijibibo (Jul 16, 2021): Don't look at me - I'm just trying to figure out how much time I have left, either way it's pretty clearly finite Also some anecdata from someone that pretty much bought all native linux releases from Steam since the linux version was rel…

Sometimes (with older games) I force proton installation instead of the native port because it runs better.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#122

Post by sph »

anthk wrote: post #93
flohofwoe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH running through a Win32/DX API shim isn't much different than running through SDL, yet Linux games using the SDL are considered "native" but Win32 games running through Proton are not? (the Win32 and DX APIs are also much more straightforward to use than wrestling directly with X11, Wayland, Vulkan and the Linux audio API flavour of the month)

SDL handles everything for you. On Windows, good luck with running DirectX 6, 7, 8, and some DX9 and Direct Draw games under Windows > 8 without issues. Direct Draw games will lag even under an i5.

Yet Proton game work better and with greater performance than most native ports, which are created once by third-party teams (i.e. Feral), never properly tested or rarely updated.

Soon Wine will have Wayland support and 99% of those ports that no one is willing to update will remain stuck on X11.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#123

Post by dncornholio »

guruprasadah wrote: post #113

> There are also some other tags such as "proton_experimental" and "proton-arm64ec-vanguard" Could this potentially, have any chance, of being a method/branch of proton able to run the Vanguard anti-cheat, i.e being capable of running Valorant? It's just a wish, but would be really nice if true.

No, not in a chance. Vanguard needs to be developed from the ground up to be able to support Linux.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#124

Post by cesarb »

chithanh wrote: post #62
zamadatix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even calling Intel x86 a loss overnight AMD is doing more than fine enough, server and consumer, for x86 to stay with a competitive presence into the 2030s even taking a dim view of the architectures future.

After buying Intel, Qualcomm could sink x86 by simply not renewing the cross-licensing agreement with AMD. With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, Qualcomm could then ensure that going forward, the only economically viable way of running x86 code is on Snapdragon CPUs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...

> With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures,

AMD released the x86-64 documentation more than 20 years ago; any patents on that (which includes SSE2) would have already expired by now.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#125

Post by Novosell »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #71
modeless wrote: post #22

It seems pretty clear to me that this is for Valve's long-awaited standalone VR headset, Deckard. What other reason would they have to support Gorilla Tag on ARM? https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1837210246076588500 Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.

I don't think this is about the hardware necessarily. They probably make more money from the Steam store and there are some notable ARM based platforms where you currently can't use Steam and where they are not able to sell games. Macs would be a big juicy target, for example. If they can get emulation working well enough with proton on that, that's a huge market. Lots of people with disposable income on there that c…

It isn't a huge market though. Mac has never been particularly big for gaming, they've always come in very low on the steam hardware survey.

Now, post-ARM, it's beat by Linux even.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#126

Post by [deleted] »

Rohansi wrote: post #28
namrog84 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes i dont see why not. At least on the surface technical level. I used to work at ms on xbox backcompat games and we AOT recompile PowerPC arch to x86. (Xbox 360 to Xbox one). You could likely aot recompile any arch with enough resources to fix up issues and things. One key difference is older games were fixed so no more updates. It can be a little trickier with modern games still taking updates but could be done.

Not possible to fully AOT for all applications because you don't know which ones do JIT compilation to generate x86 code at runtime. Many games make use of LuaJIT, for example.

[deleted]

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#127

Post by gpderetta »

chithanh wrote: post #117
gpderetta wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ARM based steam deck seems more likely.

But unlike ARM Chromebooks, an ARM Steam Deck does not exist today, and will not exist until at least November 2025 per Valve statements. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-09/new-steam... (archived link w/o paywall: https://archive.md/VWvsW )

I think it is pretty clear that Valve plays the long game. Proton existed for years before SD was released.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#128

Post by gpderetta »

flohofwoe wrote: post #103
anthk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SDL handles everything for you. On Windows, good luck with running DirectX 6, 7, 8, and some DX9 and Direct Draw games under Windows > 8 without issues. Direct Draw games will lag even under an i5.

Good luck running a >20 year old native Linux game on a modern Linux distro without recompiling. A Proton like layer would also totally make sense on Windows, assuming that support for older Windows APIs is better in Proton than on Windows itself (which isn't a far fetched assumption).

> A Proton like layer would also totally make sense on Windows

it is not full Proton, but DXVK is used on Windows as it has sometimes better compatibility and/or performance for older titles.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#129

Post by chithanh »

cesarb wrote: post #124
chithanh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After buying Intel, Qualcomm could sink x86 by simply not renewing the cross-licensing agreement with AMD. With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, Qualcomm could then ensure that going forward, the only economically viable way of running x86 code is on Snapdragon CPUs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...

> With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, AMD released the x86-64 documentation more than 20 years ago; any patents on that (which includes SSE2) would have already expired by now.

Yes, you could emulate an x86-64 CPU with SSE2 (aka x86-64-v1), but that is no longer sufficient for lots of modern x86 code. Windows 11 wants SSE4.2 at least or else it won't even boot.

As Arstechnica wrote, Intel specifically warned that they hold patents on emulating the more recent instruction sets.

Re: Valve is testing ARM64 support for popular games

#130

Post by chithanh »

johnny22 wrote: post #72
chithanh wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After buying Intel, Qualcomm could sink x86 by simply not renewing the cross-licensing agreement with AMD. With Intel's patents on emulating x86 on other CPU architectures, Qualcomm could then ensure that going forward, the only economically viable way of running x86 code is on Snapdragon CPUs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/intel...

I gotta feeling that would raise legal issues at time of sale. I don't see that happening.

You would need the FTC to intervene to stop the acquisition. And currently there is a massive lobbying push by US technology companies to replace Lina Khan with someone who is more merger friendly.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/kamala-ha... (non-paywall archive link: https://archive.md/PhHhU )

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