I plugged an Nvidia RTX 5090 into a gaming handheld

It made maine wonder: what if I plugged this paper into a handheld gaming PC instead? So I did, and fto maine show you: it’s a wonderment to behold. It’s capable to make maine judge successful a rich | early wherever handhelds get much powerful erstwhile you dock them astatine home.

I started pinch the aforesaid $1,999 RTX 5090 FE and 1000-watt powerfulness proviso from my desktop test, dropping them some onto a $99 Minisforum DEG1. It’s an open-air outer GPU that tin link to the Oculink larboard that’s now shipping successful a fistful of portable gaming PCs, truthful agelong arsenic you bring your ain desktop GPU and powerfulness supply.

I plugged that Oculink cablegram into a $1,000 GPD Win Max 2 handheld. And then, pinch conscionable an AMD Ryzen 8840U mobile CPU and 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth, alternatively than the 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 that Nvidia’s GPU technically supports, my caller Franken-desktop spit occurrence anyhow. I’m talking complete 100 frames per 2nd successful Cyberpunk 2077 astatine 4K solution and Ultra settings. I’m talking astir playable framework rates successful each the astir intensive games astatine 4K and near-maximum specs.

Across our 8 trial games, it did tally betwixt 7 percent and 47 percent slower than erstwhile my workfellow Tom Warren paired a 5090 pinch the fastest gaming CPU money tin buy. But it was only 4 to 29 percent slower than that 5090 successful my SFF desktop and acold faster than erstwhile I stuck an RTX 3080 successful that desktop. And it was four to 12 times faster than the handheld’s Radeon 780M integrated GPU could negociate connected its own.

Start pinch the “5090 handheld” file successful my array below:

For example, my GPD Win Max 2 reappraisal portion averages conscionable 17fps successful Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 astatine Extreme spec astatine the handheld’s autochthonal 2560 x 1600 surface solution — and if I group the crippled to the lowest, astir murphy graphics imaginable astatine a pixelated 640 x 480 resolution, the very champion I tin get is 113fps. Plug successful the RTX 5090, and I get 131fps pinch the graphics astatine their highest settings. From murphy to ultra pinch 1 plug — and a owe payment.

Not that you’d want to play games that potent connected a handheld’s mini soul screen, of people — and I saw the champion results plugging successful an outer monitor, too, because you suffer little capacity shuffling information backmost and distant crossed that Oculink cable. My Call of Duty framework complaint went from 131fps connected the handheld’s 1600p soul surface to 134fps connected an outer 4K monitor. Of our trial games, only Black Myth: Wukong fell beneath 60 frames per 2nd astatine autochthonal 4K.

I don’t want to oversell Oculink GPUs excessively overmuch because they’re not wholly fresh for primetime, and they travel pinch immoderate awesome caveats compared to Thunderbolt and USB-C tech.

First up, Oculink cables are not hot-swappable for illustration USB products. It’s so tempting to ideate playing a crippled handheld, past plugging it successful and resuming pinch astonishing graphics connected a large screen, but that’s not the reality. You person to unopen down your PC each clip you link and disconnect aliases consequence harm — the first clip I tried an Oculink strategy a twelvemonth ago, I apparently damaged its larboard for good. And earlier you powerfulness connected your PC, you person to powerfulness connected the eGPU first. (The Minisforum DEG1 I’m utilizing does effort to sync pinch a connected PC and powerfulness connected and disconnected astatine the aforesaid time, but it hasn’t been foolproof for me; the institution says it’s designed to sync pinch its ain mini-PCs.)

Second, existent Oculink cables themselves aren’t arsenic robustly designed arsenic galore USB products. While they’re shaped for illustration a smaller DisplayPort, pinch the aforesaid benignant of locking connector, they look acold easier to accidentally dislodge, bend, aliases break.

Third, Oculink is not a single-cable docking solution for illustration Thunderbolt aliases USB4 because it doesn’t supply USB data, audio, aliases powerfulness to a connected laptop: I had to tally a abstracted USB-C powerfulness cord to the handhelds I tested. That’s a feature, not a bug, truthful there’s thing to get successful the measurement of your GPU bandwidth.

Fourth, location simply aren’t each that galore devices pinch Oculink. GPD is 1 devotee, and I tested it moving pinch an early sample of the Ayaneo 3, but the companies you’ll find astatine your section Best Buy — Asus, Lenovo — are presently putting USB4 ports into their handhelds alternatively of Oculink.

And fifth, Oculink is presently specified an afterthought for companies for illustration Nvidia that their drivers person apparently been bugged for years. When I first plugged the 5090 into the GPD Win Max 2 and the Ayaneo 3, they refused to pat into its powerfulness astatine each until I installed a community-developed “error43” patch that worked for illustration magic. Even so, I saw a mates of crashes that I couldn’t pin down.

Today, prospective eGPU buyers person to prime betwixt the reduced bandwidth and compatibility pains of Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 aliases the cleaner but less-user-friendly Oculink, but hopefully best-of-both-worlds options won’t return excessively agelong to materialize. Asus has already announced the first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU, moreover if the institution doesn’t presently person immoderate smaller, weaker PCs pinch Thunderbolt 5 that could really return advantage of it, and possibly immoderate early 80Gbps USB4 devices could connection the aforesaid without needing Intel’s Thunderbolt certification.

Maybe then, I won’t request a desktop astatine all. I’ll person a handheld gaming PC, and I’ll conscionable plug it into my eGPU erstwhile I get home. Maybe this could moreover beryllium the early of PC gaming for the masses — a early for those who don’t want towering desktops — if the manufacture tin conscionable fig retired which cablegram to use.