Windows ARM64 Build

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Expand view Topic review: Windows ARM64 Build

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by BFeely » Sat Aug 24, 2024 7:18 pm

Blzut3 wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2024 9:13 pm I don't think any of those run UEFI (Pi and Macs don't as I stated), so Windows won't work out of the box on them not because Microsoft is blocking it but because embedded vendors refuse to implement the right firmware for it. This goes for Linux too since most of the complaints I see about non-Raspberry Pi boards is that support for the specialized images is very poor. I'm not sure where the surprise is that AMD, Intel, and Nvidia haven't shown any interest in making drivers for that. Which is why I think if the new Snapdragons support PCIe over USB4 that could be a big deal for potential driver support.

Ignoring the boot issue with the Macs, I don't believe I've seen any change here but this is pretty much the last I heard about the viability of using third party GPUs with the Mac Pro: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marca ... 1013808982 So not a viable platform for developing ARM GPU drivers at least at this time.

Again the one exception I'm aware of is the Ampere stuff (although that Mastodon thread notes the Altra has issues with its PCIe implementation too), but I don't expect that to really be on the radar until Server 2025.
People have made Windows 11 run on Pi 4 with an emulated UEFI. This doesn't work for 24H2 however as that requires ARMv8.2 and thus requires a Pi 5.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Fri Jun 21, 2024 8:09 am

It had a 24H2 release. Came with some copilot stuff that I immediately uninstalled, so can't comment much on that part.

I uploaded the driver to vulkan.gpuinfo.org. The upload is branded as x64 due to the Vulkan SDK only came in a 64 bit build. From what I could tell on the startup screen its the same info returned for ARM64. It also came preinstalled with Vulkan to D3D12 driver that Microsoft created.

Here's a screenshot of vkdoom booting with an arm build:

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Rachael » Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:56 pm

No, I'd be really surprised if they backported the drivers, really. The GPU itself is pretty well capable of running light-weight Vulkan stuff if the drivers are provided but they aren't, in this case.

In any event, this is the first time I've seen first-party GPU drivers on Windows ARM64. They're buggy, but they still count, and they're still better than the layer drivers.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Blzut3 » Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:35 pm

Found a collection of the drivers files (Qualcomm seems to have pulled the downloads for the GPU drivers from their site temporarily since I swear they were up there a few weeks ago): https://github.com/WOA-Project/Qualcomm ... ree/master Poking at the cab files (the ones in question would be qcdx*) it looks like native Vulkan and OpenCL are indeed exclusive to the Snapdragon X. Granted only time will tell if that remains to be the case. Given it feels like Qualcomm wants to sweep the 8cx/7cx models under the rug, I'd be kind of surprised if they do back port it.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Rachael » Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:18 pm

If you are curious this is approximately the model that I have - except I think it has double the RAM (which still isn't much)
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-ga ... Id=6466552

It's an excellent client for RDP and Moonlight. But not much else.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Blzut3 » Thu Jun 20, 2024 6:54 pm

Did it ship with Windows 11 23H2 or so these have an early release of 24H2? Only ask since the marketing kind of makes it sound like key features are coming in 24H2.

Also can you collect the driver version numbers? I would be curious, if Rachael still has one of the older machines, if native Vulkan is exclusive to the Snapdragon X driver.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Thu Jun 20, 2024 4:04 pm

OK just a short update for this thread now after I've been playing around with the Snapdragon X Elite on the Asus Vivobook S:

It does indeed have a true vulkan driver and nothing is locked down. The display driver is rather unstable unfortunately. The Firefox render process crashes once in a while. The entire screen also blinks in some rare situations. VKDoom crashes if you switch between full screen and windowed. You can't debug it since there's no Vulkan SDK available for ARM64 (no validation layer).

For general performance, battery time is rather nice. The GPU seems to be almost fully featured (except for anisotropic filtering not supporting nearest) - it even did raytracing okayish for what you can expect from an iGPU. Every ARM64 process on the system seems snappy. I'm a bit more unsure about x64 emulation performance though. Discord is visibly laggy. All in all I'd say its pretty nice compared to my Dell XPS 15.

As a developer its been a fun thing to try out. As an end user there's still too many rough edges for me to recommend it. Maybe if they fix the display driver issues and more software gets an ARM64 build.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Rachael » Thu Jun 20, 2024 1:14 pm

Shift+F10 -> oobe\kindly-go-fuck-off-oobe-and-never-come-back.cmd

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Thu Jun 20, 2024 9:14 am

I used this guide. The TL;DR: is that you press shift+10 at the country/region screen, run OOBE\BYPASSNRO in a prompt, reboot, press shift+10 again at same screen and then run "ipconfig /release". Was easier than I feared it would be, actually.

Now if only I could say the same about installing the language pack! That took 3 hours of pain, a PC factory reset and a recovery reinstall! For once Linux won big time in the installation on my hardware. :)

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Rachael » Thu Jun 20, 2024 2:43 am

Join a domain, except don't actually join one, that's the option that lets you create a local account.

Of course, if you're on Windows 11 Home ... you're fucked ... but not really, there are ways around that, too. Microsoft's overreach has gone a bit too far with this one though.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Thu Jun 20, 2024 12:30 am

Oops - I was looking at the graph at 3:17 where they have a Premiere Pro + Blender Classroom comparison. However I totally misread the graph, thinking the Qualcomm bar was the AMD and that longer was better! Never mind. :)

In any case, my curiosity got the better of me and I ordered one - it should arrive sometime today. Now to figure out how to avoid creating a Microsoft account! Last I read Microsoft blocked the most common method.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Blzut3 » Wed Jun 19, 2024 11:56 pm

dpJudas wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 4:04 am Edit: as expected, they show in the beginning how its 10%, but then later in the video they show Blender Classrom where it only runs at 37% when emulated compared to what a x64 AMD laptop did. The older Qualcomm ARM ran at 31% emulated. Really need more benchmarks on this thing.
Unless I missed a part, how did you calculate 37%?

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Wed Jun 19, 2024 4:04 am

Finally some benchmarks for this thing from Dave2D. Still waiting for a review from one of the more reliable sources (i.e. Hardware Unboxed or Gamers Nexus), but sounds really good if its true that the x64 emulation hit is only 10%.

Edit: as expected, they show in the beginning how its 10%, but then later in the video they show Blender Classrom where it only runs at 37% when emulated compared to what a x64 AMD laptop did. The older Qualcomm ARM ran at 31% emulated. Really need more benchmarks on this thing.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by dpJudas » Thu Jun 13, 2024 8:54 pm

That's pretty nice. I can't wait to see the benchmarks for these chips.

Re: Windows ARM64 Build

by Blzut3 » Thu Jun 13, 2024 8:32 pm

Qualcomm released some architectural details of their new chip, and it appears they've announced native Vulkan 1.3 support is coming to Windows (also D3D 11? Not sure if that was there before).

Details: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21445/qu ... eep-dive/3

Mostly unrelated but Apple Silicon is getting Vulkan 1.3 support on Linux soon: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/vk13-on-the- ... month.html Technically nothing prevents Apple from packaging up Mesa's drivers on macOS, the reverse engineering efforts at one point at least even had the ability to run on macOS, but since the kernel ABI is unstable/private it's not realistic for Mesa to do that officially. I doubt they will though.

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