Best Games to play on Snapdragon X1

So you think you were unfortunate or had a bad choice when purchasing that Snapdragon X1 laptop? If you are a gamer, there is still a lot of fun to be had on these.

One issue I will point out is that currently Adreno drivers can have issues with fullscreen on some games. When selected, if you lower the resolution it will render the native resolution and a window inside it. This does not occur with all titles but is frequent.

This means if some game requires you to lower resolution for full performance, that will produce a smaller image in fullscreen or windowed mode. Alternatives like FSR seems to work well, if the game supports it.

Given this fullscreen problem, playing on a laptop that is much higher than 1080p may require manually lowering the resolution on the Windows Settings panel and let it do the scaling.

This will be my evolving list of games that run great on Snapdragon Windows on ARM.

Counter Strike 2

CS2 is playable with recent drivers but performance can be a bit low on Adreno X1-45 devices, which would be the ones with X1P-42 or below.

My recommendation is to lower the resolution until it hits that 60FPS target and turn VSync to Off, so that the screen still updates when there is some slight delay.

It should run very well on higher end devices with the X1-85 GPU.

While Qualcomm doesn't work further on the drivers, it is one of the few games that is fully Anti Cheat compatible. Hence this is why it is on the list.

List continues after the link.

Windows and Gaming on the Snapdragon X1 ARM Chip

I have recently purchased an Acer laptop equipped with the Snapdragon X1P-26. I wanted to try out the new devices and see if Microsoft has made significant improvements to the experience.

GeForce Now Supported Gamepads

GeForce Now is a very cool way to experience gaming on your Android TV, tablet or PC. You can get started with the free account, which allows you to queue for available servers and play up to 1h per session.

The main issue I have experienced on GFN is the limited support and documentation on what controllers are supported by the app. The official page mentions some Android type controllers but the list is very limited.

We will address other options throughout the article. If you have other controllers that run well, please comment so I can expand the list.

The DDR Memory Apocalypse

RAM price trends. Ignore the sudden drop.

I have not written anything about the memory apocalypse but what happened today is quite interesting.

The above screenshot is from an online sale of DDR4 2400MHz kits produced two months ago.

I just checked and G.Skill seems to have these and 3000MHz RAM with plenty of supply. That is certainly also new stock.

Prices start at around 54€ per 8GB DIMM, which is somewhat higher than the 40€ I'd expect it to be based on spot prices.

HP Omnibook 3 14" (AMD) Quick Review

The best picture I could find on HP materials

I recently quickly tested a mainstream HP Omnibook 3 14" laptop based on the terribly bad Ryzen 5 40 chip.

This is a new laptop with excellent build quality. This model in particular has an IPS screen and a very good one at that:

• Anti-glare type but slightly gloss
• No dirty-grit like surface w/ excellent definition.
• Excellent color range, seems like a full 100% sRGB panel with great calibration.
• Response time seemed ok

The market is being flooded with IPS screens that can only do orange instead of pure red and which have a really poor color range for saturated colors. They are much worse than even most TN panels in that aspect.

So seeing this kind of screen at the $500 range is quite a welcome change that people who only do office work or watch video will very much appreciate.

All this without being some kind of super saturated OLED screen that is beyond being useful and will actually be very bad experience.

The build is also very solid, with a nice keyboard and color scheme. I will say it is not the thinnest but the keyboard was much better than what the HP Flip 16 has with it's low profile keyboard that is not suited to anything else than casual use (even that is hard...).

I think this is the same base laptop as the $800 version that has a Snapdragon X chip, which has a low end board and chip put in. Keep in mind they may end up switch for a lower end screen for the cheaper models - it would still be IPS.

The bad

So, the main issue with this is that it is a $500 laptop with a $200 CPU. It is really not up to par:

• Speedometer 2.0 run at ~205.00, boost tops at 3.50GHz (should be 4.30)
• ~240 on i5 8265U
• ~250 on i3-N305

So it is slower than what you got from Intel i5 in 2018. Not good, despite being marketed as upstream performance.

So while I would highly recommend this for office work or video at $350, I certainly hope HP discontinues this CPU and instead sells it only with Zen 3 chips or even "Phoenix 2" chips like the 4 core Ryzen 210 or the 6 core Ryzen 220.

Those are much faster, still budget, Zen 4 based chips that should be what is inside this machine. That plus 16GB of RAM would make this a very good laptop, certainly a close competitor to the Macbook Neo.

Xbox on PC is (less of) a Joke

 

UPDATE 2026/07: Microsoft has made important improvements to the Xbox app on PC, some barriers remain.

No, this is not trolling Xbox fans. I myself was an Xbox original enthusiast - it is still one of my favorite consoles, head and shoulders above the PS2 in everything but library depth.

I even had a 360, even though that already started a trend of... trend chasing the Wii that now is going into handhelds or AI. But it was still a good console with good games.
What let it down was the software issues with even the last dashboard update making things much worse and adding "avatars" no one asked for.

So, today I wanted to discuss why you should try but not seriously consider Xbox on PC. It is a joke. 

It seems no one is doing their job and are just trying to make things as they go. Why? What is one of the most important questions of a PC gamer? It is "Can I run this game?".

Xbox, incredibly does not have PC requirements information. Not, I'm not kidding. In 2026, Microsoft expects you wait for a 100GB game to download before you know if it runs or not. Have a look:

It says if you can run on which consoles, cloud or what type of device. This is the online page but the Xbox app is the same. There is no information.

You cannot do better than Steam if you don't do the... minimum requirements to serve PC gamers.

Every Steam game has this information, even if some are outdated you still know your newer machine should do ok.

Instead, Microsoft is wasting time with AI chat bot slop:

Yes, AI LLM thing bot, what I need to know is minimum requirements for Xbox consoles. No, it does not understand sarcasm or has been trained on anything else than Xbox website, it seems.

So, while I would like the Xbox app to be good and it has been improving this is still missing.

Besides the main problem on this post, other features need improvement:

1. Downloads do not stop computer from suspending. Downloading a 100GB game may mean manually waking it up if you have short of a Gigabit connection (or are using WiFi).
2. Cannot move installed games between drives.
3. Cannot use controllers other than Xbox compatible ones (360, One, Series).
4. Xbox pad works on login screen, does not let you unlock (Working with Xbox One gamepad or later)
5. Requires to have the main install folder on C drive.
6. Xbox Studios games do not have native ARM64 versions. This would be important given Nvidia is coming on board soon.

Some of these are less critical but especially 1. and 2. are rather important given game sizes lately. They are also usually fixes that don't require a lot of work.

The ARM64 support I think should be there given that market is growing. The app itself runs with no problem but x86 emulation takes a bit of a hit on performance. Most of the software now has ports for Windows On ARM, games are still very much at the starting line.

I'll keep revisiting this page if  as it improves.

The Intellification of AMD

Through multiple rebrands, AMD is slowing becoming the Intel we used to know and hate. This post will hopefully keep you away from these products or at least caution you to pay a fair price.

The first step in this journey was given with the 5000 series, but it became much worse with 7000: it had Zen 4, Zen 3 and Zen 2 chips in the lineup. The distinguishing feature? It ended in 20, 30 or 40.

Now we have a "40" chip with Zen 2 cores. This was entirely predictable.

Going back to 7000, there were 7520U chips that were some low cost 4 core chips with small iGPUs called Mendocino. 7735U was Zen 3(+), but this one could be passable, even if I think it should have never been "Ryzen 7" or 7700 to begin with.

It is hard to understand the Mendocino chips because they are mostly available in more expensive laptops than this 5000 chips, despite lower core counts and significantly worse iGPUs (40%+ deficit). You could since last year, and still can, buy 5700U (Zen 2 6C), 5625U and 5825U laptops for less. Even the 5625U is a perfectly fine chip for office work and will be for some years.

The (not so) new chips

What AMD released last October and which is now reaching shelves is the Ryzen 5 40. Yes, a Ryzen 5 naming convention, which in Intel lingo meant great performance for a reasonable price.

What you get here is another Zen 2, a 7y old architecture, 4 core chip dressed up as high performance. This is extremely bad consumer practices that AMD should end right here and now. There is nothing 2025 about this chip.

This is ending up in $500+ laptops which should are not really worth more than $300, with barely enough 8GB of RAM.

AMD should name this for what it is. A true Ryzen 10 (or Ryzen 1 if they really want it to) and nothing more.

Easier decoding for everyone:

• Ryzen 5  30,  4C/8T 2.8GHz Zen 2, Radeon 610M  2CU
• Ryzen 5  40,  4C/8T 2.4GHz Zen 2, Radeon 610M  2CU
• Ryzen 3 110,  4C/8T 3.0GHz Zen 3, Radeon 660M  4CU (!!!)
• Ryzen 5 130, 6C/12T 2.9GHz Zen 3, Radeon 660M  6CU
• Ryzen 5 150, 6C/12T 3.3GHz Zen 3, Radeon 660M  6CU (higher TDP)
• Ryzen 7 160, 8C/16T 2.7GHz Zen 3, RAdeon 680M 12CU
• Ryzen 7 170, 8C/16T 3.2GHz Zen 3, RAdeon 680M 12CU (higher TDP)

Look at this product stack. A 4C chip from a slower architecture that will have a Ryzen 5 sticker on it. I don't even recall Intel doing something this devious. Ryzen 7 in a world of Zen 4 and Zen 5 chips is also extremely misleading for the consumer.

Zen 3 chips will land somewhere around Intel Core 5 and Zen 4 6C chips in performance, which are usually Ryzen 5 parts.

Anyhow, now you know. Stay away from these and recall to this chart if you need.