The ASUS Zenbook A16 is not a gaming laptop, but what if it were a gaming desktop? One YouTuber sought to find out what happens when you connect an eGPU to the Zenbook A16. The results are surprising and show a promising potential future for gaming on Arm processors.
Connecting the Zenbook A16 is not something for the faint of heart. Until recently, it was not possible to connect any GPU to a Snapdragon X-powered laptop, even if you were willing to use unofficial methods.
ETA Prime connected an RTX 4060 to a Zenbook A16 using the developer driver for RTX Spark. That GPU is also from NVIDIA, and its driver can be installed on a PC like the Zenbook A16 to connect an RTX 4060.
Obviously the setup is not official or optimized, but it does work to an extent. Some other NVIDIA GPUs were also successfully connected, but ETA Prime saw the best performance with the RTX 4060.
ETA Prime runs through all of the specific hardware used, but the heart of it all is the AOOSTAR AG03 Thunderbolt 5 & OCuLink eGPU Dock.
The Zenbook A16 was able to hit impressive framerates and settings when connected to the RTX 4060.
In ETA Prime's video, you'll see Forza Horizon 6, Cyberpunk 2077, Project Cars 2, and DOOM: The Dark Ages at very respectable framerates and settings.
Hitting those framerates often required frame generation, but gameplay looks smooth. In Cyberpunk 2077, ETA Prime was able to hit the low 40s at high settings without frame generation and the low 70s with frame generation.
The Zenbook A16 runs on a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor, which is quite speedy. But the chip leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to graphics. On top of that, games are not always optimized for Windows on Arm, so you can end up with issues like Halo: Campaign Evolved missing textures and having a transparent ground.
Experimentation by ETA Prime and Ghobso Gaming (who tested Halo: Campaign Evolved) shows that Snapdragon X2 chips are capable of playing games. But those processors lack support and optimization.
If drivers ship and game developers embrace Snapdragon X-powered PCs, we could see a significant jump in gaming on Windows 11 on Arm.
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