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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Sean Endicott

These 6 NPU-friendly creative apps prove Microsoft was right about Windows on Arm

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ASUS ProArt PZ13 Copilot+ PC.

What you need to know

  • During Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm highlighted several big-name creative apps that are now optimized to utilize NPUs.
  • Blender, Affinity Photo 2, Capture One, Moises, Cubase, and Nuendo either already take full advantage of Snapdragon X processors or will soon.
  • Microsoft and Qualcomm have worked on Windows on Arm for years, but 2024 has been a turning point for the computing platform.

The best Copilot+ PCs got a big boost during Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. But the improvements don't come from a hardware upgrade or a new chip (though Qualcomm did tease its next-gen processor at the event). Instead, Snapdragon-powered PCs with an NPU will be better able to run a group of popular creative apps.

Blender, Affinity Photo 2, Capture One, Moises, Cubase, and Nuendo all have new NPU capabilities that are available now or that will ship in the near future. The updates improve performance and efficiency by shifting certain parts of app workloads to an NPU rather than taxing a CPU or GPU.

Blender, a popular piece of software for 3-D modeling, now has an NPU-powered feature that you can download for free through GitHub. With that plug-in, Blender will simulate rendering on a PC's NPU and reduce the time it takes to turn a 3-D object file into a 2-D image when using text-to-image AI.

The entire Affinity suite of creative apps was already optimized for Windows on Arm earlier this year, but Affinity Photo 2 can now better utilize the hardware of Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon chips. Object selection, subject selection, and other features within Affinity Photo 2 now use a PC's NPU, improving performance. Those NPU features are in beta now and should ship in November 2024.

Capture One is a piece of photo software built for photographers that shoot in-studio. The app natively runs on Windows on Arm, getting better battery life and performance than if the app had to run through emulation. Now, Capture One has AI cropping and AI-assisted color grading that utilize Snapdragon NPUs.

Shifting over to audio apps, Moises is now optimized for Windows on Arm and NPUs. The app allows musicians to isolate vocals and instruments from music tracks. The app also detects chords, can shift pitches, and can convert a song into a different key. Instrument and vocal isolation now run better on a Snapdragon-powered PC, thanks to the app taking advantage of a device's NPU.

Cubase and Nuendo, which are both apps for musicians, gained native support for Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus PCs this week. They are both Digital Audio Workstation apps that were improved by Microsoft rewriting its MIDI stack for Windows from the ground up.

Snapdragon X tease

Microsoft's Surface Pro 11 is one of many new PCs with a Snapdragon X Elite processor inside. (Image credit: Daniel Rubino)

Qualcomm did not share many hard facts and figures about its next generation of Snapdragon chips for PCs, but the company did show off some charts and benchmarks. A chart about Qualcomm's 2nd Gen Oryon CPU states that the next generation of PCs processors from Qualcomm will deliver significant performance gains while using less power.

The promise of the 2nd Gen Oryon CPU using 57% less power than its predecessor is impressive if it holds true in real-world testing. Notably, Qualcomm's chat only shows single-core performance in a Geekbench test. But if the gains are real, Qualcomm will have another set of CPUs ready to compete with the best from Intel and AMD, such as the Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2.

With app makers optimizing apps for Snapdragon-powered PCs and Qualcomm teasing its next-gen Oryon chips, it's a good time for the Windows on Arm platform. 2024 was a turning point for Arm-based computing, at least on the Windows side of things. It seems 2025 could be the year the platform takes off.

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