this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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34
This looks cool but can it game? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 7 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I was browsing on system76's offering to see what PCs they have and noticed that they have an ARM Computer that apparently faster than the fastest Apple Mac but for cheaper (Based), but I'm wondering, how well does ARM computers game on linux with proton, it is very expensive to me atm and I can't afford it, but maybe in the future I could consider it to be my first desktop as I always been using laptops, obviously gaming isn't like the main priority as I would like a workstation to do heavy work such as blender and stuff and perhaps put gentoo on it in the future (if its supported) but I would like to game on the side when I'm winding down that's all, so can it game well?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Love it. Want it (but not to game)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

It should be able to run games that support ARM. That means you are pretty much limited to open source games. The CPU clock speed is fairly low, so don't expect great performance. These systems are intended for heavily multithreaded workloads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Actually, with the work done on box86/box64, you might be able to get stuff running well - last I heard, they got triple A games running around 45 FPS on Asahi on Apple M1.

However, it would be totally unsupported, and who knows how well the Apple M series optimizations will work on another member of the ARM family. (Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been tried on Ampere at least once.)

Really, the biggest issue is probably power usage - I don’t know if it’s enough to increase your power bill significantly, but it would definitely consume more power than say, an i7. This is due to Altra CPUs really being more for server usage - performance per watt will likely be better overall for those kinds of workloads, but you’re probably not going to make full use of the hardware. These systems are really more of server dev kits than daily drivers.

For a desktop, I’d just recommend a PC with a high end consumer grade CPU like an i7 or Ryzen 7.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The Ampre Altra runs from 32 to 128 cores (dear gods that's beautiful), but with that architecture, and the company's stated purpose, it makes more sense in a computer meant to be used as a server rather than a desktop gaming rig. You'd use a chip like that in a Kubernetes cluster for example.

Combined with an Nvidia card, a brand notorious for being a Pain In The Ass in Linuxland, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the intended purpose of a box like this is a server for AI/ML-based services.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

a freaking love the specs but godddddd....I wish this bloody thing was general purpose, it'll be so perfect, like imagine this thing compiling gentoo with dwm.......maaaaaan

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 minutes ago

I mean, you can buy it and use it in a general purpose fashion, and yeah, those cores would do wonders for all sorts of compiles. Also, it can be useful if you're like me and do a lot of Dockerised development. Given that most games are x86 only though, sadly this would be no good :-(

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 hours ago

Arm processor, an nVidia graphics card, and Ubuntu? Err, doesn't sound great.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I think Jeff Geerling made a video trying to game on a similar arm system with mixed results. I'm sure it would work, since you can game on a Raspberry Pi using Box86/64, just probably not too well for the money

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago

I watched his video, but he didn't cover that in great detail unfortunately, I was wondering if someone already owns one so he can tell me his review about it

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Proton for ARM is not (currently) a thing, if that's a factor

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

If I paid so much money it better game the shit out of games. But I honestly doubt ARM can with the overhead of emulation. And they don't even specify what kind of nvidia graphics it has. This tells me that the system isn't really meant to be used for gaming.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 hours ago

If I paid so much money it better game the shit out of games.

Laughs in Apple

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

up to RTX 6000 ADA

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

@Ace120C , well, after a super brief search, it seems like it can run Steam and thus game technically. However, the performance costs of stacking "emulation" on top of each other seems rather burdensome. If you're running a Windows game on Proton, you have those call Windows-Linux conversions stacked on top of the x86_64-ARM call conversions. I can only speculate, maybe it's not as big of a thing as I imagine it being.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

considering the cpu can reach crazy core counts wouldn't that help perhaps?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not too familiar on how well the x64 - ARM conversion works, but in general gaming tends to be more dependent on single core performance and I'd assume that emulating single core functionality with multiple cores doesn't really work, or at least with performance you'd need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah truely multithreaded games are a rarity (and hard).