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Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck

Gaming

Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck

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Valve’s Steam Deck portable console can install not only SteamOS, but also Windows 10/11, but Microsoft’s system is not designed for this form factor. The fact is that UI elements are not optimized for small screens, and controllers cannot be used as a replacement for a mouse and keyboard.

Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck

And so a Microsoft employee created a prototype of Windows Handheld Mode, showing what Windows 11 would look like if it was optimized for Steam Deck and other similar consoles. So far, this is only a prototype, and it’s not a fact that he will get to the release. However, the idea looks very interesting. WalkingCat user this week published two short videos with a presentation of the project, so there is some chance that the company will listen to the opinion of the community.

Among other things, the portable mode demos show the setup and driver installation screen, the game launcher, and the portable mode settings screen, which allows you to configure power settings, as well as the functions of the Steam Deck buttons.

Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck

Microsoft is experimenting with adapting Windows to Steam Deck

Note that one of the reasons for using SteamOS based on Arch Linux is that the developers were able to adapt this OS to a small screen with a diagonal of 7 inches and a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. Also this system works well with controllers and other equipment. But at the same time, SteamOS still does not support all games from the Steam store, and there are no Epic Games Store, GOG or Xbox clients that can work under Linux.

Note that there are AYA, Anbernic, GPD and One Netbook consoles on the market with Windows preinstalled. Asus will soon join their ranks. However, these companies rely on third-party solutions that run on top of Windows. So if Microsoft ever creates a full-blown version of Windows Handheld Mode, then it could be part of the growing market for handheld game consoles.

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Gaming

Most games will run on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. The performance issue is still open

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Most games will run on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC

Laptops based on the Qualcomm SoC of the Snapdragon X Elite line should appear on the market this summer. The first tests show that in terms of processor performance, at least in these very tests, the top platform of the line is very good. Now Qualcomm says games will run on the Snapdragon X Elite too.

Most games will run on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC.  The performance issue is still open

More precisely, the company representative said that most games will run on Snapdragon X Elite. Here, of course, we are not talking about GPU performance, about which we still don’t really know anything, but about the technical side. Since we’re talking about the Arm platform, running software built for x86-bit architecture requires certain manipulations. Qualcomm says game developers will have three options to choose from.

First, they can port their games to ARM64 to achieve the best CPU performance and power consumption. Of course, no one will do this for the sake of laptops on Snapdragon X Elite at first.

Second, developers can create a hybrid ARM64EC application where Windows, its libraries, and Qualcomm drivers run natively, but the rest of the application is emulated to achieve near-native performance. This also requires additional actions from developers. But the third option is that developers can do practically nothing, and their games should still work, but using x64 emulation. It is not yet known how much performance will suffer. Let us remember that the problem is that Snapdragon X Elite does not support discrete video cards, that is, in any case, it relies only on its own GPU.

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Introduced inexpensive 4K ViewSonic monitor for MacBook and consoles

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Introduced inexpensive 4K ViewSonic monitor for MacBook and consoles

ViewSonic has released a new 27-inch monitor called the VG2781-4K, designed specifically for Apple Mac users. The monitor is now available on JD.com for $239.

Introduced inexpensive 4K ViewSonic monitor for MacBook and consoles

The monitor has a minimalistic design, it is equipped with a narrow frame and a 27-inch 4K Ultra HD IPS screen with a frequency of 60 Hz and a brightness of 400 cd / m2. In terms of color accuracy, it boasts 10-bit color covering 100% of the sRGB color gamut, 95% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and 92% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. The VG2781-4K is also recommended for use with PS5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch consoles.

It has 178-degree viewing angles and is equipped with two 3W speakers. The monitor stand supports tilt, height adjustment, left-right swivel and vertical rotation.

Introduced inexpensive 4K ViewSonic monitor for MacBook and consoles

The monitor features a USB-C port (supports 96W PD charging), 2 HDMI 2.0 ports, 1 DP 1.2 port, 1 USB-B 3.0 port, and 3 USB-A 3.0 ports. It can stream 4K images, data, and charge your MacBook or mobile devices using a USB-C cable.

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Components

What happens if you run a game with ray tracing only on the processor without using a video card? Tests showed that there will be 1 fps

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What happens if you run a game with ray tracing

Modern video cards already do a good job with ray tracing, although a lot depends on its implementation. Now it is possible to run tracing on the CPU.

What happens if you run a game with ray tracing only on the processor without using a video card?  Tests showed that there will be 1 fps

The developer of the Mesa library has implemented support for ray tracing on the processor in Vulkan and tested it in Quake II RTX. Even at 720p resolution, performance was only 1 fps. True, for some reason the authors did not indicate the processor model, which makes the tests not particularly clear, but, on the other hand, it is unlikely that professionals would use any old CPU for such a task.

Be that as it may, if the most powerful modern CPUs with a huge number of cores can already cope with games that are undemanding by modern standards without a GPU at all, they are unlikely to be able to do ray tracing yet.

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