this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Computer is like AC. It becomes useless the second you open Windows.
Developers already did half of work for porting on ARM: they ported on Linux.
The whole point of the Steam Deck for me is playing my older games. Unless they get x86 translation working without a performance hit them I'd rather they stay on x86.
Does a performance hit matter for older games (I'm assuming they're already 60+ if not a multiple)
It’s going to depend. If it’s a really old game it’s unlikely to matter. Anything heavy on CPU and particularly single core performance may struggle through a translation layer. A good translation layer on a good chip will probably lead to roughly similar performance in many cases, and most games seem to be GPU limited, so it’s possible it will just work out most of the time. It could always be the case that a critical section of the code somewhere ends up not translating well, leading to poor performance. It would not be terribly surprising for an important loop to end up two or four times slower than it should be, which could cause hiccups.
If the Deck can gain critical mass, they'll be able force the issue. They're already doing it with targeting Linux. The Switch is ARM, and the Switch2 leaks suggest it'll be a better ARM chip, so devs are already targeting it.
Unreal/Unity already go to ARM pretty easily, so it's not a huge deal.
I don't see the Deck as a critical mass device, and if Valve choses to make it one I will probably no longer be interested. The Deck is great because you can tinker to your heart's content in an open system. That just isn't going to fly if Valve decides they want to be the next Xbox or Switch.
Everyone is losing their shirt over ARM because Apple is producing some insanely expensive chips on it that have high performance. I'm not saying ARM doesn't have some advantages, but I think that's a long way out from going into something like the Deck where compatibility is everything. The switch being ARM has nothing at all to do with this conversation.