When you think of Windows 10 on ARM, you probably don’t think about playing hit games like Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Nvidia, though, wants to change that and open up the door for RTX Graphics on ARM-based PCs.
At the annual Game Developer Conference, Nvidia showcased Wolfenstein: Youngblood and The Bistro running on a PC powered by the MediaTek Kompanio 1200 ARM-based processor. The PC also had an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU inside which accelerates the games. This is the first time ever that these two games are running on a device with an ARM-based chip.
The demo is intended to show how five different technologies usually associated with Intel and AMD gaming systems can run on ARM. That includes DLSS, RTX Direct Illumination, RTX Global Illumination, Nvidia Real Time Denosiers, and RTX Memory Utility. See it for yourself in the video below.
Judging from the video, it does seem as though the performance of games on an ARM device when paired with an Nvidia GPU can be pretty impressive. Nvidia was clear to point out that an ARM version of these games isn’t being released. Rather, Nvidia wants to showcase what developers can do and how life-like games can feel on ARM. You can see it first-hand in the video as storefronts, fires, streetlamps, sunlight, and shadows all look more vibrant and create a cinematic experience.
“RTX support for Arm and Linux opens up new opportunities for game developers to provide more immersive experiences on a wider variety of platforms,” said Mathieu Muller, senior technical product manager of high-end graphics at Unity. “With GeForce RTX’s cutting-edge graphics features, Unity developers targeting Arm platforms will have more tools in their toolbox to create with.”
RTXDI, NRD, and RTXMU SDKs for Arm with Linux and Chromium are available now. It’s up to developers to use the SDK in their games to tweak for ARM. It shouldn’t be too long for more developers to come on board though, as Nvidia just showcased the true power of ARM chips.