4 ms·

Is parallels running the ARM windows preview emulating 64 bit X86 fast enough for anything practical? Can I play ten year old games?

• mhh__ 6y ago
  > Can I play ten year old games? Based on peak performance at least I would assume yes. Honestly I'd be a little bit worried if you couldn't considering just how expensive they are.
  • zepto 6y ago
    Expensive compared to what?
    • mhh__ 6y ago
      Copied from a different comment of mine: £999 is a lot of PC. The processor in the M1 air is about 20% faster than the one in my laptop (£550 IIRC), but to spec an M1 out with the same amount of storage and RAM brings it to £1999. I should stress that my now slightly ageing laptop is much thicker than an Air, but it's also used to play modern games so that balances out. Personally, for the price of an Air I could actually use I'd just get something cheap and a big PC setup.
      • zepto 6y ago
        What’s the battery life like on your PC? It sounds like the things you care about are raw performance per £, and other factors are not important. If that’s what you are looking for then the Air is not for you, but it doesn’t mean it’s expensive. It just means you don’t need the things it offers for the money. If you do care about battery life, then the M1 Air is cheaper than the only comparable alternative - the M1 MacBook Pro. Nobody else even makes anything comparable.
        • mhh__ 6y ago
          > What’s the battery life like on your PC? Actually not too bad - not good, but good enough for it to last long enough to write up lab data for 5 hours or so which is all I needed it to do. It's pretty diabolical in Linux, but I think that's partly my fault because I've not bothered to fettle with the power (not an unreasonable requirement given that the rest of the distro has been fiddled with)
          • zepto 6y ago
            Yeah - that’s an entirely different class of machine from the 15hr MacBook Air. If 5 hours will do for you, no need to spend the extra money.
• bouk 6y ago
  Yes it is fast enough. People are playing GTA V and many other games at completely acceptable performance. Here's a bunch of reports people made for games: https://applesilicongames.com/ https://applesilicongames.com/
  • rhexs 6y ago
    Pretty impressive —- Parallels supports some sort of GPU pass through on ARM already?
    • bouk 6y ago
      I have no idea what voodoo they're doing for this. It's incredible.