Android Apps will ONLY run on ARM-based systems


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A Z68 based system, specs are in my signature.

 

I have tried "rooted" variants of BlueStacks and every time I try it - the last being a week ago several programs do not work including Final Fantasy IV (even after copying the OBB file from my Samsung tablet to the relevant folder on the virtual BS file system). It crashes, a lot. I suspect it uses SSE2 rather than AVX-256 or even SSSE3 which makes it perform like garbage at times as well. 

 

It is imperative that emulators use the latest and greatest instruction sets available. For Intel CPUs that would be AVX-256. For AMD SSSE3. More software needs to be compiled properly with the Intel math kernel lib from Composer or at least some optimization that makes it not use SSE2 or worse. 

 

Also, it installed to my C partition and sucks up space in \programData\ which I HATE. I had to move it to another drive and use NTFS junctions to stop it from using up the space on my limited 256GB drive. Any software that incessantly uses the system partition and doesn't give the user a choice of where it stores its data especially when its such a bloated program like BlueStacks always gets bad marks in my book. I have almost 100 NTFS junctions to get around such crap.  

While emulators DO need the latest/greatest instruction sets, some functions are specifically not available IN those latest-greatest instruction sets - instead, they have to go back to older instruction sets (such as SSE3 and even SSE2).  That is why even the 4th generation Core i-series STILL supports SSE2, in addition to AVX,  You also point to another part of the problem - specific incompatibilities, even among cross-compatible-in-general CPUs.  For AMD CPUs, you optimize one way - for Intel Core 2 (not even i-series, but Core 2, such as my own Q66xx), you optimize another.  That is how emulators (and BlueStacks in particular) wind up with code-bloat.  Lastly, you CAN install BlueStacks somewhere other than the default (which is in SystemRoot\ProgramData) - however, how much functionality gets broken when you do?  That is a problem for developers in general - BlueStacks is FAR from the only guilty party there.

 

The whackage of BlueStacks may be fair (and I'm saying that it is) - however, consider the breadth of merely the Windows hardware base - none of which can be ignored by a developer.  Windows 10 ALONE has the widest range-gate of any flavor of Windows in history - and that's JUST on desktops and portable PCs.  It stretches all the way back to Vista - if not XP in some hardware cases.  Hardware configurations are wildly diverse - and that's just on desktop-formfactor PCs.  A developer of an emulator that runs on Windows has to take all that into account - as would any other niche developer for Windows.  Sometimes the miracle isn't that the bear dances the Macarena; the miracle usually is that the bear dances at all.

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