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ARM

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 11:53, 27 May 2021 by Dandelion Sprout (talk | contribs) (Considering I'm seemingly among the world's most knowledgeable people on ARM PC games, I figured I could just as well write this small guide.)
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ARM
ARM cover
Developers
Arm Ltd.
Release dates
Linux February 24, 2012
Windows October 26, 2012
macOS (OS X) November 10, 2020
ARM at Wikipedia

Key points

Energy-efficient, which makes it suited for laptops and tablets.
Very limited range of hardware as of May 2021, with virtually no mid-range desktop PCs.
Drivers for graphics cards and gaming may not be easily accessible, if at all.
Very few third-party storefronts support native ARM games.

Hardware

Hardware type OS support Other notes
Raspberry Pi Linux, fan-modified versions of Windows 10[1]
Large userbase and modding community.
Video drivers are OpenGL ES only, and audio drivers are considered poor.
Raspberry Pi 4 and 400 models come with no cooling, making throttling a major issue, sometimes making third-party cooler sets necessary.
Other microcomputers Linux
More than 100 non-RaspPi microcomputers exist, many of them with better cooling and less throttling than Raspberry Pi 4. Armbian maintains a list of many of them.
Very few of them use better and more expensive parts than Raspberry Pi; one of few exceptions being Nvidia Jetson Xavier.[2]
Apple Silicon M1 Mac OS X, Windows 10
Only hardware known to support ARM64 builds of macOS.
Lack of documentation has resulted in long delays for getting Linux to run on it.[3]
Windows tablets Windows 10, Windows RT
Only hardware designed with Windows 10 ARM64 builds in mind.
More often than not have touchscreens built in.
No desktop models are known to exist; a Snapdragon mini-PC is scheduled for release in the summer of 2021.[4]
Phones and tablets designed for Android Linux
Could plausibly offer better hardware than most single-board computers.
A clean Linux install is outstandingly difficult to do.[5] Various compatibility layers to run Linux on top of Android are much easier to set up.[6] Some small phone producers aim to ship natively with Linux to skip the setup process for clean installs.[7]
Playing non-touchscreen games could prove tricky, especially without USB Type-C docking stations.

Operating systems

Operating system Official support Installation methods Software support
Windows 10 ARM builds are in beta as of May 2021. Actively developed.

Not to be mistaken for Windows 10 IoT, which is a far inferior version that can't run any known games.		 • Official version (Requires Microsoft account and having joined the Windows Insider program.)
• Raspberry Pi-specific fanmade custom versions		 All builds are ARM64, and have full native support for ARM32 and ARM64 software. Emulation of x86 is considered good; emulation of x86-64 is relatively new (Added in November 2020) and not much tested.[8]
Windows RT No new models have been released since 2013. Support ends on January 10, 2023. No known ways to install it on systems that weren't shipped with it.
ARM32 only.
macOS Stable from 11.0 Big Sur onwards. Poised by Apple to completely replace x86-64 in the long term. No known ways to install it on systems that weren't shipped with it. All builds are ARM64, and have full native support for ARM64 software. Emulation of x86-64 is mostly good, but not always.
No support whatsoever for x86 32-bit software.
Linux (Debian-based) High degree of support, with a majority of native repository packages supporting it, and increasingly more distros adding ARM64 builds. Downloaded from the distros' homepages, and can run from USBs and memory cards. Imager tools exist to simplify the process.[9] ARM32 (armhf) and ARM64 (aarch64) builds exist. ARM64 builds can run ARM32 software with multiarch.
No support whatsoever for x86 or x86-64 software, incl. Steam and GOG.
Linux (Red Hat-based) Most distros have high ARM64 package support, sometimes having packages that Debian-based ARM distros lack. Downloaded from the distros' homepages, and can run from USBs and memory cards. Imager tools exist to simplify the process.[10] ARM32 (armhf) and ARM64 (aarch64) builds exist, with priority given to ARM64.
No support whatsoever for x86 or x86-64 software, incl. Steam and GOG.

Storefronts

Storefront OS ARM game support ARM game searching
Microsoft Store Windows 10, Windows RT Most non-'Game Pass' games released between 2012 and early 2016 have native ARM support. Native support in other games is spotty. No known way to filter searches to native ARM only. PCGW's list of Windows ARM games is a de facto substitute.
Mac App Store OS X A few games, both ones intended for Mac and iPad, slowly began adding Mac ARM versions/support in game updates from early 2021 onwards. No known way to filter searches to native ARM only.
itch.io OS X, Linux A few games offer OS X and/or Linux ARM versions, and they are technically able to add Windows ARM versions as well. Search filters for ARM are very limited. Searching for raspberry pi in the top bar is one of few half-functional options.
Snap Store Linux Around half the games offer ARM versions, mostly due to the large overlap between Snap Store and distro repositories. No known way to filter searches to native ARM only.

PCGamingWiki resources

  • AppleGamingWiki aims to cover M1 Macs in general, including emulators and non-Mac operating systems.
  • ARM API fields were added to PCGamingWiki in May 2021, ready for use on pages about individual games.
  • PCGamingWiki's native ARM support lists: Windows, OS X, Linux


References