Two weeks ago, I showed you How the fastest graphics card in the world works in a small form factor PC. To my surprise, the edition of the founders of NVIDIA RTX 5090 delivered the vast majority of its performance, even in a 12.7 -liter office with a five -year processor.
It made me ask me: what happens if I plug this card on a portable game PC instead? So I did it, and let me tell you: it’s a wonder to see. Just make me believe in a rich future where pocket computers become more powerful when you moored them at home.
I started with the same diet of $ 1,999 RTX 5090 Fe and 1000 watts of my office test, dropping them on A mini-forum of $ 99. It is an outdoor external GPU which can connect to the Oculink port which now ships in a handful of portable game PCs, as long as you bring your own desktop GPU and your power supply.
I connected this Oculink cable to A GPD laptop of $ 1,000 Max 2. And then, with just an AMD Ryzen 8840U mobile processor and four PCIe 4.0 bandwidth channels, rather than the 16 PCIe 5.0 tracks that the NVIDIA GPU technically supports, my new shot from Franken-Desktop Spit anyway. I’m talking about more than 100 images per second Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K resolution and ultra parameters. I am talking about playable images frequencies in all the most intensive games at 4K and almost maximum specifications.
Through our eight test games, it did Run between 7% and 47% slower than when my colleague Tom Warren associated a 5090 with the fastest gaming processor money. But it was only 4 to 29% slower than this 5090 in my SFF office and much faster than when I stuck an RTX 3080 in this office. And it was Four to 12 times faster that the integrated GPU Radeon 780m from Handheld’s could manage alone.
Start with the “5090 portable” column in my table below:
5090 EGPU against 5090 Desktop @ 4K
Game |
3080 SFF |
5090 computer |
5090 SFF |
5090 bench |
5090 Handheld vs 5090 SFF |
5090 pocket bench |
5090 portable against 3080 SFF |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Assassin’s Creed Mirage (ultra high, native) | 65 | 108 | 135 | 144 | -20.00% | -25.00% | 66.15% |
Black myth: Wukong (100%resolution) | 22 | 55 | 63 | 62 | -12.70% | -11.29% | 150.00% |
Black myth: Wukong (Dlss + Frame Gen) | N / A | 132 | 147 | 146 | -10.20% | -9.59% | N / A |
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Extreme) | 58 | 134 | 140 | 145 | -4.29% | -7.59% | 131.03% |
Cyberpunk 2077 (ultra, no RT) | 40 | 101 | 108 | 109 | -6.48% | -7.34% | 152.50% |
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra RT + DLSS Quality + FG) | N / A | 132 | 152 | 153 | -13.16% | -13.73% | N / A |
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (very high, native) | 59 | 80 | 112 | 153 | -28.57% | -47.71% | 35.59% |
Horizon Zero Dawn (DLSS + FG quality) | N / A | 151 | 206 | 237 | -26.70% | -36.29% | N / A |
Metro Exodus improved (extreme) | 33 | 85 | 92 | 91 | -7.61% | -6.59% | 157.58% |
Return (Epic) | 61 | 113 | 138 | 142 | -18.12% | -20.42% | 85.25% |
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (the highest) | 89 | 150 | 207 | 238 | -27.54% | -36.97% | 68.54% |
For example, my GPD Win Max 2 Review Unit is only 17 images per second Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 At Extreme Spec to the Handheld 2560 x 1600 screen resolution – and if I define the game on the lowest graphics and the most potatoes as possible to a pixelbone resolution 640 x 480, the best I can Obtain is 113 images per second. Connect the RTX 5090, and I get 131 IPS with the graphics to their highest settings. Ultra potato with a socket – and mortgage payment.
Not that you want to play games that can also on the small internal screen of a pocket computer – and I also saw the best results plug in an external monitor, because you lose less performance mixture through This Oculink cable. My Call of duty The image frequency has gone from 131 IPS on the internal 1600p screen of the pocket computer to 134 images per second on an external 4K monitor. Of our test games, only Black myth: Wukong fell below 60 images per second at the native 4K.
I do not want too oversal GPU Oculink because they are not entirely ready for grande hours, and they come with major warnings compared to Thunderbolt and USB-C Tech.
First of all, the Oculink cables are not Hot swappable like USB products. It is SO Trying to imagine playing a portable game, then plugging it in and taking up with incredible graphics on the big screen, but it is not reality. You have to close your PC each time you log into and disconnect or risk damage caused – the first time I tried an Oculink system a year ago, I apparently damaged its port for good. And before feeding on your PC, you must first feed on the EGPU. (The ministerum deg1 that I use tries to synchronize with a PC and a power connected at the same time, but it was not infallible for me; the company says that it is designed to synchronize with its own mini- PC.
Second, the current Oculink cables themselves are not as robust as many USB products. Although they are in the form of smallerport, with the same type of locking connector, they seem much easier to dislodge, bend or accidentally break.
Portable graphics against EGPU graphics, internal display versus external
Game |
780m (1600p, internal screen) |
5090 (1600p, internal screen) |
5090 (4k, external screen) |
5090 (1440p, external screen) |
780m (potato settings) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Assassin’s Creed Mirage (ultra high, native) | 18 | 106 | 108 | 109 | 89 |
Black myth: Wukong (100%resolution) | 6 | 72 | 55 | 81 | 76 |
Black myth: Wukong (Dlss + Frame Gen) | N / A | 140 | 132 | 161 | N / A |
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Extreme) | 17 | 131 | 134 | 140 | 113 |
Cyberpunk 2077 (ultra, no RT) | 12 | 107 | 101 | 116 | 101 |
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra RT + DLSS Quality + FG) | N / A | 153 | 132 | 164 | N / A |
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (very high, native) | 15 | 77 | 80 | 86 | 71 |
Horizon Zero Dawn (Dlss Quality + Frame Gen) | N / A | 138 | 151 | 158 | N / A |
Metro Exodus improved (extreme) | 7 | 94 | 85 | 98 | 51 |
Return (Epic) | 15 | 110 | 113 | 113 | 52 |
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (the highest) | 20 | 144 | 150 | 150 | 96 |
Third, Oculink is not a unique mooring solution like Thunderbolt or USB4 because it does not provide USB, audio or power data to a connected laptop: I had to run a USB power cord -C separate on the laptops that I tested. It is a feature, not a bug, so there is nothing to hinder your GPU bandwade.
Fourth, there are simply not as many devices with Oculink. GPD is a devotee, and I tested it by working with a first sample of Ayaneo 3But the companies that you will find in your local best buy – Asus, Lenovo – currently put the USB4 ports in their pocket computers instead of Oculink.
And fifth, Oculink is currently a reflection afterwards for companies like Nvidia that their drivers have apparently been bubbed for years. When I connected the 5090 for the first time to the GPD Win Max 2 and the Ayaneo 3, they refused to draw from its power until installation A “error43” patch developed by the community It worked as magic. Even so, I saw some accidents that I could not pin.
Today, potential EGPU buyers must choose between the reduced bandwidth and the compatibility pain of Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 or the clean but less friendly oculink, but we hope that the best world options do not take Too much time to materialize to materialize. Asus has already announced The first Thunderbolt 5 EGPUEven if the company does not currently have a lower and lower PC with Thunderbolt 5 which could really benefit from it, and perhaps a future 80 Gbit / S USB4 The devices could offer the same thing without the need for Intel Thunderbolt certification.
Maybe then, I will not need an office at all. I will have a portable game pc, and I will simply connect it to my EGPU when I come home. Perhaps this could even be the future of the PC game for the masses – a future for those who do not want imposing offices – if the industry can simply determine which cable to use.