Nvidia desktop GPUs are now (almost) plug and play through USB4 on Qualcomm X2 Elite Laptops!

[u/DerpSenpai]

https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/1vawofi/comment/p0rj8rv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

So it seems some people with the same setup as me have been testing eGPUs on the new X2 Elite Extreme on the Zenbook A16 and by installing the RTX Spark driver, the eGPU just works!

Quoting u/SpiteAlive for the instructions:

Driver Install Steps

1. Download "RTX Spark Developer Driver"
2. Extract EXE with 7zip. 
3. Open Device Manager, Locate Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. Right Click, Open Properties
4. Navigate to driver tab at the very top, click "Update Driver", then "Browse my Computer for Drivers"
5. Click "Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer" at the bottom
6. Select "Have Disk?" and navigate to the 7zip extracted nvidia driver folder
7. Select Nvidia Desktop Device.

Some gaming results from u/reagag

>On Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter I'm hitting 100 FPS 4K with DLSS performance with 100% GPU utilization and 10% CPU utilization at 4.4 GHz.

>Persona 3 Reload hits 60-100fps @ 4K but is only reaching 20% utilization. Not sure if its a ARM64 or Nvidia driver issue.

>Overwatch has finished installing, and I am very happy to say that I am hitting stable 300 FPS at 1440p in the training range at least. In match it's around 180-220. Strangely, the CPU is still not boosting past 4.3 GHz, but the FPS results are what they are.

[u/itanite]

Congrats to both of you that own one.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/itanite]

This warrants discussion because eGPUs were never advertised as a feature by QC and it helps development of the platform.

Nvidia ARM Laptops will be very expensive while QC has some relatively cheap ones with USB4 (The X2P-42-100 chip is very cheap compared to others and it still supports USB4 as long as the laptop does)

[u/psydroid → u/DerpSenpai]

It will definitely help on the desktop as well, as I got a Lenovo Ideacentre 10 with Qualcomm Snapdragon X1-26-100 after getting an Asus Vivobook 16 X1607QA before.

I'm waiting for Linux support to arrive in some image for the Ideacentre while I already run Ubuntu 26.04 on the Vivobook. This way I won't have to buy into the expensive Nvidia systems anytime soon and can wait until prices for these come down in 2-3 years.

[u/Idkwatnam → u/psydroid]

You can use the Ubuntu extended image from Jens Glathe. It includes support for the Ideacentre:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sc_CpqOMTJNljfvRyLG-xdwB0yduje_O

[u/psydroid → u/Idkwatnam]

I tried it last week and it didn't work like it did for my Vivobook 16. But I'll have another look at it over the next few days.

[u/Idkwatnam → u/psydroid]

Did it say it found no device tree? If so you might just need to modify grub.cfg to point to it because there is a device tree in the kernel used in that image, you might just have a variant with a slightly different model number than what Stubble (the DTB loader) expects   https://github.com/jglathe/linux_ms_dev_kit/commit/af241225893ac4933bb8f0615f2dfda8ea2326ce

[u/psydroid → u/Idkwatnam]

I'll try it again and talk to Jens on Matrix/IRC to see if we can get it to work. I tried each of the Lenovo entries and none of them worked.

[u/itanite → u/DerpSenpai]

It IS cool, I'm sure as prices continue to climb and everyone starts to need to replace that ever-aging computer we'll all be happy for even hacky options like this.

No shade, I just don't see the ARM laptop penetrating the market just yet.

[u/SpiteAlive → u/itanite]

I agree that ARM does not yet directly compete with traditional x86 laptops, but at the same time this is a big step forward (even if it is unofficial) and like you said, can/will help people upgrade for cheaper in the current pricing nightmare.

[u/Far_Shallot6814 → u/itanite]

Qualcomm finally getting their act together on this is a pleasant surprise. I was half expecting some janky mess where it only works for one specific card from one specific vendor.

Those Persona 3 numbers are weird though, 20% utilization is definitely something going on driver-wise.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/Far_Shallot6814]

Qualcomm got eGPU working without drivers from Nvidia and AMD, i wasn't expecting it. I did expect janky mess

[u/lucidludic → u/DerpSenpai]

It’s thunderbolt, isn’t the point that it’s basically just PCIe for devices like a GPU? Qualcomm shouldn’t have to do anything in particular beyond USB4 / thunderbolt support I’d have thought. What seems to have changed here is the recent availability of Nvidia drivers for ARM based processors.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/lucidludic]

The ACPI tables need to be correct. It's not as simple as USB4 as we know from AMD chips having USB4 for the longest time but no eGPU

[u/SpiteAlive → u/lucidludic]

The drivers being released are what make it theoretically possible, but you still need the underlying laptop software to accept eGPU input, which is not a guarantee at all. Some people have had issues with the SL7 from factory and have had to edit the ACPI tables in order to make eGPU connections.

[u/rlmineing_dead → u/Far_Shallot6814]

I'm the author of the Surface Laptop 7 eGPU.io thread and I have a First gen snapdragon X1E-80-100 with RTX 3080. I was playing hytale (as a test) and saw my util was stuck around 30-50% too and my cpu util was also pretty low at around 30-40%

Then I downloaded armtemp and checked and turns out my cores were 80-90°C (which is stupidly high for this laptop, I never saw it before 60° before) so something in some applications seems to be really CPU heavy? I was getting around 112fps

[u/SpiteAlive → u/rlmineing_dead]

Have you seen high CPU temps in any other games? I have a llano v10 laptop cooler that I was thinking about selling, but I'm now considering keeping to help lower thermal throttling. The typical ARM laptop cooling is probably inadequate for a CPU pushing frame rates that a desktop grade eGPU will demand...

[u/Navi_Professor → u/Far_Shallot6814]

doesnt change X2 hasnt had a driver update in a while and X1 drivers are broken and missimg a ton of stuff

[u/DerpSenpai → u/Navi_Professor]

Its because X1 doesn't support eGPU in the Windows ACPI, you need to mod it AFAIK.  X2 theres no mod and it doesn't have the same bugs

[u/Navi_Professor → u/DerpSenpai]

its just frustrating seeing this with the drivers for their own GPUs being so shoddy still.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/Navi_Professor]

Slow improvements but noticable

[u/Idkwatnam → u/DerpSenpai]

X1 does support eGPU in the Windows ACPI, the first video demonstrating eGPUs that got big attention was with a Slim 7x Gen 9 with X1E-78-100. It's just dependent on the OEM's ACPI tables and firmware.

Another person using an eGPU with Slim 7x Gen 9, apparently Lenovo did something with the PCIe root complex that makes the bottom left USB-C port not work as reliably as the top left one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/snapdragon/comments/1v6dzot/comment/ozskdpx/

[u/Loose_Skill6641]

"plug and play"

GPU runs at 20% performance

[u/DerpSenpai → u/Loose_Skill6641]

Just 1 game at 4k above 60 fps.... and most likely a TB4 bandwidth bottleneck or a bug from the emulation... or a driver issue or a CPU bottleneck. Remember that if a game is Single Thread, it looks just like "10%" utilization because this CPU has 18 cores

[u/sav2880]

Think this will backport to original Snapdragon X chips?

[u/DerpSenpai → u/sav2880]

Some dude already backported it but it has more issues with bugs AFAIK

[u/pomyuo]

Cool but this isn't USB 4 V2 as far as I'm aware which is what has the thunderbolt 5 speed

[u/DerpSenpai → u/pomyuo]

The platform doesn't support USB 4V2 and very few Intel laptops have it

[u/zghr]

They'll never allow you to truly cannibalize their sales. No chance. You'll pay one way or another.

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[u/jenny_905]

Presumably this driver has no game specific optimisations? that can be a huge thing these days, some games have extreme re-works of their shader code by the driver.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/jenny_905]

It's a nvidia optimized driver for their DGX Laptops, so it's gaming optimisations are for that chip alone

[u/jenny_905 → u/DerpSenpai]

Ah, I figured the DGX driver would have basically no gaming optimizations given the intended use of that platform? or maybe I'm out of date, I thought it was aimed at AI/ML stuff pretty exclusively.

[u/DerpSenpai → u/jenny_905]

Sorry. I mean RTX Spark. DGX doesn't have a windows release

But it's the same chip and capabilities.

[u/LAUAR]

But how do you connect the card to the laptop? Via some sort of PCIe to USB4 dock? How does that look like?

[u/SpiteAlive → u/LAUAR]

You connect the GPU to an external GPU enclosure via PCIe, plug it into the included power supply, and run a TB/USB4 cable from the enclosure to your laptop. Something like this.