I have a Pro 9 i7 and am considering upgrading to the Pro 10 (Business) or 11, as others here may also be. Two years ago I thought hard about going for the ARM model but the trade-offs seemed too big then. How have things changed now? What are the limitations or trade offs?
A lot has changed. Snapdragon X Elite appears to be the ARM answer that Microsoft has been looking for in terms of performance and performance per watt. The emulation also seems to be a lot better, and the landscape for ARM native apps also seems to be more optimistic. Evaluation units of the Snapdragon X Elite platform were shown running Baldur’s Gate 3 emulated in a very playable state at 25-30fps. General figures put the performance at ballpark 2-3x compared to the SQ2 and SQ3. Adobe has committed to bringing all of their CC suite to ARM. It’s a very promising future.
Limitations right now fall into what we don’t know. No one has a production unit reviewed. There’s a lot of promises with some limited demonstration of being able to meet those promises. We won’t know more until next month when units are delivered and in-hands of people.
That new translation layer, is it software based?
I want to know if it will offer impovments the older arm windows devices or just the newer ones.
Antivirus and other security software is still stubbornly sticking to x86 only and for the most part cant work under emulation. But if you are sticking with Defender (and for 90% of you, you should) it works on ARM just fine.
there was mentioned a codename PRISM which introduces a 20% x86/x64 emulation performance increase. Also mentioned was significant improvements in WoA. I haven’t yet seen what or how that changes the story although I’m sure it does to some extent. Ultimately conversion to ARM is the final answer. we get closer every day.
I’ve been running Windows ARM solely as my main OS for years and it has been perfect for my needs. The updates and improvements are constant. Kudos to Microsoft. The RT nightmare is long past us.
I mean things are changing a lot in the fact that now window says great arm chips the competitive or maybe even better than the MacBook chips
But it’s still going to be tough decision in terms of compromises on software and gaming and so on.
Insta 360 for windows does NOT work, will not install on non x64 architecture
Most desktop apps including web browsers and common utilities have ARM builds now. All developers have to do is click the compile arm version in Visual Studio. Any developer who hasn’t made arm versions of their apps by now should be considered Abandonware and boycotted.
Adobe has committed to bringing all of their CC suite to ARM.
I thought that they had already committed to doing that back when the Pro X launched?
and the landscape for ARM native apps also seems to be more optimistic.
Nobody wants “optimistic”. People’s applications won’t run on optimism, they need to run on ARM native or via emulation. “Optimism” is just perception, and that can change quickly if these things end up not being as good as promised once they get into the hands of reviewers and customers.
Anyone who is on the fence about these devices for their sole device should probably stick to Intel, or at least wait for all of the proper reviews to drop. If you’re looking at it for a secondary device then by all means, take the leap.
There are a lot less unknowns than you might think. As far as software compatibility, the existing Arm devices are a good indication. I have a Robo & Kala Windows 11 Arm tablet that is very similar to the new Surface Pro 11. It’s a tablet device with a 12.6" OLED display, 16 GB RAM, a 512 GB 2230 NVMe SSD, and a detachable Bluetooth keyboard. The biggest difference is that it runs the older Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processor instead of the Elite X. I can run pretty much all the same apps and device support, but at about half the CPU performance.
I’ve found most of the apps I need are already available for Arm and the ones that run under emulation are fast enough for me. Running an x64 app under emulation on my system is about the same performance as an 11th Gen Core i5. Native Arm apps on my system run faster than x64 apps on my Surface Pro 9 with a Core i7.
I get about twice the battery life on my Robo & Kala Arm system as compared to my Surface Pro 9.
My only issues with my Arm system are device drivers. They are different for Arm. Most VPN software installs a virtual network adapter. The x86 or x64 versions won’t work under emulation because it cannot install the virtual adapter. I found OpenVPN has an Arm native version that works. If Microsoft provides a driver in Windows 11, it will have a driver in Windows 11 Arm. So common things like storage devices, keyboards, mice, USB hubs, all work plug as play like normal. I can use the same USB C dock for an external monitor, power adaptor, and peripherals that I use on my Surface Pro 9 on my Arm device.
Now that more devices are coming out using Windows Arm, I expect to see a lot more Arm native app and device support in the next 6-12 months. I can do what I need now, so the native apps will be icing on the cake.
Microsoft says that Prism isn’t just a new name for the same old translation technology. Translated apps should run between 10 and 20 percent faster on the same Arm hardware after installing the Windows 11 24H2 update, offering some trickle-down benefits that users of the handful of Arm-based Windows 11 PCs should notice even if they don’t shell out for new hardware.
This. Honestly, we need to see benchmarks and things from users. I have a Surface Pro 9. No way am I making the jump until the device gets into users hands and we see how good and universal Prism actually is.
What kit have you been running it on?
If your program is literally just C# code, then you don’t even need to compile, it will “just work”.
But for the other 99.9% of applications that run on Windows, it’s not that easy. It’s less the app itself and more the libraries that the app depends on. For instance, there’s no SQLite C# library for Windows ARM64 yet. So those apps can only run in x64 emulation mode.
Software developers have to take a bottom up approach to something like porting to another architecture, and usually the lag is with the more lower level component libraries. This also happened with Apple Silicon, and now everything’s fine.
Full agree for the most part. Even if the reviews come out and real world performance was stellar, I’d be hard pressed to say this is the one and only device most people should have. There are too many unknowns at the moment.
I passed on the Pro 9 sticking with my Pro X however, this thing will definitely smoke the 9 even without software improvements. Vendors seem to be finally getting onboard as well with native ARM versions of software. It looks like a plunge worth taking … still there will seemingly be the odd missing driver or compatibility issue for awhile yet.
MacBook Pro M1 with Parallels. It’s blazing fast.
Well that’s certainly a firmer committment. Let’s see how that goes.
I passed on the Pro 9 sticking with my Pro X however, this thing will definitely smoke the 9 even without software improvements.
Sure, just like the iPad smokes every generation of the Surface. The problem is it needs to be able to DO things.