Testing PC games using FEX on a high-end Android tablet can yield playable results — but the early tech is still not ready for prime time

Valve has been developing FEX, a translation layer that converts x86 instructions into ARM64 instructions, to enable ARM-based chips to run PC games. GameNative and other apps are leveraging FEX to allow Android devices to access and play games from the Steam Library. Testing on a high-end Android tablet with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 4 SoC showed mixed results, with Cyberpunk 2077 crashing but Resident Evil 3 running smoothly. The variability in performance between games is attributed to different engines and complexities in translation layers. While FEX shows promise, it still faces challenges like lack of official support from Qualcomm for mainstream games, indicating that mainstream adoption may require further development and refinement.