I'm wondering if it will be able to run my true love, MoI.

Problems in the way:
1) Windows 8
2) ARM processor, rather than an Intel - is it going to have to emulate Intel apps?
3) Heaven only knows what sort of graphics chips.

Hi Yenmonger, from what I have seen there will be 2 main different types of those new "Surface" tablet/laptops - the one labeled "RT" is the ARM processor one and the other one (which may come out slightly after the RT one, I'm not sure if it's available for ordering yet) is an Intel CPU based one.

As far as I understand the "RT" one with an ARM processor will not have any method of running Intel based programs through any emulation layer, so I don't think that it will be possible to run MoI or any other regular existing Windows software on it. This machine will only run the new "Metro" apps which are kind of lightweight iPad like apps that are specially written to run under that particular new Metro environment.

So you should definitely not get the "RT" Surface if you want to run MoI, as far as I know MoI will not run on that one.

It should probably run on the non-RT Intel based one, that one should run regular Windows apps in its desktop environment. To make sure you might want to hold off a bit to make sure that MoI does work ok on the final Win8 release. But I would generally expect for that one to work.

I assume that these have Intel integrated graphics, so probably not the most powerful 3D graphics but these integrated Intel graphics systems have improved quite a bit over the past 4 years or so, so the current generation stuff is not really all that bad as it used to be. It still could possibly limit things to a "not really heavy duty" type level of 3D performance though.


There may be a big fiasco brewing with people buying the "RT" Surface version (which is the less expensive one), thinking that they're getting an actual Windows machine and not really knowing in advance that they're getting a kind of special purpose machine that's not actually compatible with regular Windows programs.


- Michael

Hi Yenmonger, yeah just checking over at their order page, the only surface that seems to be available currently for pre-order is the "Surface with Windows RT" - this is the ARM based one which will not run any regular pre-existing Windows applications. So do not get that one if you want to run MoI !

I'm sure that this is going to be an area of considerable confusion, since it's not very obvious to people that "Windows RT" is a specialized version of Windows that is not compatible with previous versions...

At some point I think they will be having an Intel based surface as well with the same chassis and keyboard but that will be running regular Windows 8 instead of "Windows RT". That version does not appear to be available for pre-order quite yet.


And yes, re: graphics chips, some info on that here: http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/microsoft-surface-rt-pro-specifications-comparison-144545

The ARM based one uses an nVidia Tegra chip, it's more of a smart phone-ish type graphics chip I think, and the Intel one has Intel HD graphics 4000.

The Intel version has better specs across the board, higher res display, etc... - I would not be surprised if it came in at something like twice the price of the ARM based one.

- Michael

Thanks for the great info!

It's too bad the sexy tabletness will come at such a high price. A slim notebook or ultrabook would probably get me better bang for the buck.

Of course, that's all predicated on a bucket of money falling onto me.

I wonder if anyone has tried MOI on Surface RT with emulation, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2095934?

Hi wunddal,

> I wonder if anyone has tried MOI on Surface RT with emulation,
> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2095934?

It's probably not going to work, because of this part:

> Known problems
> Launching one x86 app from another is not supported yet.

That probably means that MoI would not be able to launch any of its secondary worker processes.

Also the ARM CPU that runs the Surface RT is not all that powerful to begin with, probably running an emulation layer like this will result in really slow execution speed.

If you want to run MoI on a surface, you should be able to do that if you get the surface "Pro" version which is a regular computer, the surface
RT" version is pretty different.

- MIchael