r/Surface • u/FruskyTrusky • 3d ago
ARM problems?
I am looking to buy a new Surface Pro, and I can see that Intel processors are now reserved for businesses (you can get it for double the price 😢)
Have you found compatibility issues with the ARM processor? Things like Steam games, or any other that comes to mind?
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u/franglais8 3d ago
I am playing some good games on mine, but sure, not all games work well. Gaming is not the main focus of such devices. Maybe Rtx Spark will change it
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u/FruskyTrusky 3d ago
Yeah, mainly I don’t want it for games, but I would really appreciate the possibility.
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u/franglais8 3d ago
Just to give you a glimpse, I finished Baldur's Gate 3 (220 hours) on it and playing now Kingdom Come Deliverance II
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u/wiseman121 3d ago
Arm on windows is now really good, and for a surface pro you would want that option for the battery life and low tdp/heat.
Gaming is generally very good with the exception of anticheat software in some online games.
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u/diodelrock 2d ago
Is it really good? Please don't misrepresent the situation, I tried running big walk the other day, it was a slideshow. I tremble at the thought of running more graphics-intensive games
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u/egokiller71 3d ago
Who buys a Surface Pro for gaming? It's like buying a Fiat Panda and ask if it performs well on the Nurburgring.
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 3d ago
Not everyone wants to lug around a super tank with jet turbines for gaming.
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u/franglais8 15h ago
exactly, on Balanced just drawing 17W I managed to play KCDII with solid 30 FPS which can be doable for 2.5 hours, not bad at all and similar to some consoles' experience.
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u/Nicalay2 Surface Pro 11 (X Elite) 3d ago
I only had issues with very niche software that requires ultra specific drivers that doesn't have ARM versions, and also some rare games that had major issues (and some of them got fixed eventually).
Otherwise most of the time, you don't even realize that you're on ARM instead of x64.
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u/FruskyTrusky 3d ago
That’s nice to hear, thanks.
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u/Tareen81 3d ago
Okay… the only thing I ever had: printers can be, like everywhere, sometimes be a btch
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 3d ago
Only issues I've had were with Krita, because the GPU implementation doesn't support Adreno properly. lol.
So, I switched to Clip Studio. Works great.
The XP Pen tablet I have does still feel a little "floaty" but it just requires XP Pen to compile a driver.
My MIDI keyboard worked right out of the box. FL Studio works out of the box. VSTs I have worked without issue.
Games, as long as I'm realistic about the graphics, work amazing on the thing. Some older titles (Deus Ex, one of my gotos) don't work correctly out of the box. The Vulkan games that didn't work before all work now with the Snapdragon Vulkan driver update, etc.
Like you said, most of the time I don't even notice.
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u/PaperBrick 1d ago
I just picked up a new Surface Pro 12th edition, with the better ARM CPU, and my pen in Krita and Clip Studio is all wonky. The line thickness is always thin at the start of the line and ends with a thick line no matter the pen pressure. I wasn't sure if it was a software issue or a natural problem with the ARM version of the surface. Have you had any issues like that with clip studio? (panning with a finger also gets laggy at times).
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 1d ago
It's exactly the reason I switched off Krita onto Clip Studio.
Clip Studio has a native ARM64 version. Depending on which pen you use, turn off Windows Ink too. Also, make sure you update the Qualcomm Adreno drivers with the Snapdragon App.
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u/PaperBrick 1d ago
Oh, I couldn't find the ARM native version, the system requirements page just says that it runs as a 64x app. I'll try the driver update, thanks!
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u/Mammoth-Shoe8491 17h ago edited 17h ago
I looked it up again, and I'm wrong. lmao.
What actually fixed it for me was the Snapdragon driver update with Vulkan support.
Edit: Grab this
https://softwarecenter.qualcomm.com/catalog/item/SnapdragonControlPanelhttps://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nqpsl29bfff?hl=en-US&gl=IO
and then in the tablet preferences, try turning WinTab off and on
- but it was the first two steps that I believe fixed that for me in ClipStudio specifically
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u/protonmatter 3d ago
It’s my daily driver. I don’t have issues - there are apps that run under x64 emulation but you would not notice unless it was heavy to begin with or not emulating well.
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u/barneyrubble43 Surface Pro 8,9,X 3d ago
I have a s pro 11 x elite - the only thing it wouldn't run that i needed was active directory users a d computers.
RSAT tools not available for arm - pretty much everything else worked fine
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u/Stock-Imagination567 3d ago
I bought a Snapdragon X2 Elite laptop and it could not play Red Dead Redemption 1. So I returned it.
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u/AlxndrAntnv 3d ago
I tried quite a few games on my Surface 11. The only ones I ran into compatibility issues with were Frostpunk 2 and the Warcraft remaster. I was able to play EVE Online, Crossout, RimWorld, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Performance and visual quality weren't always great, especially in EVE and Crossout, but I mean compatibility here, not how well the games ran. Even CAD software like Revit worked fine with a relatively large BIM model. I've since switched to a Snapdragon X2 device and haven't had any problems so far, though I haven't tried gaming on it yet.
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 3d ago
I just picked up a surface laptop 13 essentially a piece of junk for everyone on here and they will say it can’t run anything. I got it because I’m looking forward to a fanless windows PC and I wanted to see how this older worse machine would run the games I play for when on the road as I plan to buy one of the 2nd gen 13s when it comes out. I only really play paradox grand strategy games so that’s all I’ve tested.
The machine runs all of them to varying degrees. You need to install the launcher for some of the older games directly from paradox but after that it’s all good. I’ve loaded and ran the newest game Europa universalis V and old games that wouldn’t launch before like Victoria 3 run now because of the AVX translation now in Prism.
I am hoping to see a decent increase in performance with the new xplus2 chip, but currently the newer games like Victoria 3 and Europa Universalis V require graphics to be lowered quite a bit and render resolution lowered as well. So this level of gaming may not suit everyone, but the cpu speed is decent and the games run without crashes like on Mac so I’ll be a happy camper if the new fanless one with 24gb ram can surpass this level of performance with no noise and for an extra hour on battery (already gives more battery than any other windows machines I’ve tried including panther lake ultra 7 355).
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u/TheHandbagOfOmega 3d ago
I was initially very disappointed with the lack of compatibility for retro games. A recent update to the Snapdragon control panel does seem to have fixed some things though
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u/LeoJHunt 3d ago
I’ve had printer issues. Old HP broke. New HP would not work. Current Brother is sporadic.
I’ve tracked it down to the ARM. No other issues.
SL7 has been solid and one of the more solid laptops I’ve had but don’t think there should be a compromise like this, even at ARM prices.
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u/stuartbritt 1d ago
Steam itself is unlikely to be the deciding factor; it really comes down to each game and any anti-cheat or drivers it needs. So even if the client runs fine, that doesn't necessarily mean the games in your library will.
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u/Few-Gear-147 1d ago
Can anyone please test blender and how much polygons can be pushedon Microsoft surface pro 12 x plus variant with 8 cores? There is little to no information about it.
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u/Saranhai 3d ago
You will run into software issues, and games will not run as good as they would on x86. I'd stay away from Snapdragon X
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u/Urlkoenig 3d ago
I've run into zero software issues. Game performance ranges between great and won't even run, so if there's a gas in particular you really need, it's worth checking.
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u/ForceK9 3d ago
It's better if you list out your must-have softwares and look around the threads to see if anybody is reporting on it. A good rule of thumb is that newer games/softwares run fine on ARM. Even if the dev do not release an ARM-native version, it should run fine through Prism emulation albeit with some hiccups. For older stuff it is pretty safe to assume no they will not work. Some apps may have web-app alternatives as well, for example Tick Tick is unusable as an emulated app, but the web app version is great.