TL;DR
An NVIDIA RTX 5090 Founders Edition was connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 (and two comparable small PCs) via an OCuLink eGPU dock and M.2 adapter. With community driver patches and compatibility layers, some older games run and a few are surprisingly playable, but CPU limits and limited PCIe bandwidth on the Pi constrain modern-game performance.
What happened
The author connected an NVIDIA RTX 5090 Founders Edition to three small systems — a Raspberry Pi 5, a Radxa ROCK 5B, and an Intel-based Beelink MINI-S13 — using an externally powered OCuLink dock and an M.2 adapter card. The ARM boards required community patches (credited to @mariobalanca) and driver workarounds so NVIDIA drivers would operate under Linux; the author packaged drivers for Ubuntu and Fedora. The experiment evaluated real games through stacks that included FEX (ARM x86 compatibility), Proton/WINE, DXVK, and in many cases a WineD3D fallback to OpenGL because of Vulkan problems under emulation. Results showed the Pi could drive the 5090 but was frequently CPU-bound; older titles like Portal 2 could run at 4K above 60 FPS, while demanding modern titles (Cyberpunk 2077) struggled to exceed ~15 FPS on the Pi. Power measurements showed the Pi used under 9W under load (CPU-only), versus nearly 30W for the Beelink under the same test.
Why it matters
- External GPUs can be attached to hobbyist SBCs, expanding their potential beyond typical use cases.
- PCIe bandwidth and CPU performance, not the GPU alone, often determine playability for modern games on these systems.
- ARM-based hosts currently need driver patches and compatibility-layer workarounds to access mainstream GPU drivers.
- Older or less CPU-intensive games can be playable on low-power SBCs when paired with a powerful GPU.
Key facts
- Test systems: Beelink MINI-S13 (Intel N150 4-core @ 3.6GHz, 16GB, M.2 Gen3 x4), Radxa ROCK 5B (RK3588: 4× Cortex-A76 @ 2.4GHz + 4× Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz, 16GB, M.2 Gen3 x4), Raspberry Pi 5 (BCM2712 4-core Cortex-A76 @ 2.4GHz, 16GB, M.2 Gen2 x1 via NVMe HAT).
- PCIe bandwidth: Pi 5’s Gen2 x1 ≈ 500 MB/s vs Gen3 x4 ≈ 4,000 MB/s on the other machines (about an 8× difference).
- eGPU setup: externally powered OCuLink dock plus M.2 adapter; GPU used was an NVIDIA RTX 5090 Founders Edition (32GB VRAM).
- ARM boards required community patches (credited to @mariobalanca) and inherited some NVIDIA user-space workarounds for memory alignment.
- Compatibility layers used included FEX (x86 emulation on ARM), Proton/WINE, DXVK, and WineD3D (OpenGL fallback) depending on game/Vulkan behavior.
- Game performance examples: Cyberpunk 2077 ran at ~15 FPS on the Pi (better on ROCK 5B), Alien: Isolation averaged ~23 FPS on the ROCK 5B and ~15 FPS on the Pi, Just Cause 2 demo approached ~40 FPS on the Pi, and Portal 2 ran >60 FPS at 4K on the Pi.
- Some titles (Doom: The Dark Ages) did not run under FEX due to anti-cheat or emulation incompatibilities.
- CPU-only power draw during the Cyberpunk test: Raspberry Pi 5 under 9W; Beelink nearly 30W (GPU power not included).
- Author packaged drivers for Ubuntu and Fedora to reproduce the setup.
What to watch next
- Upstream NVIDIA driver support for ARM-based Linux hosts (not confirmed in the source).
- Further improvements to FEX, Proton, or other compatibility layers that reduce emulation overhead (not confirmed in the source).
- Availability of higher-bandwidth PCIe add-ons or future SBC revisions with wider PCIe lanes (not confirmed in the source).
Quick glossary
- eGPU / OCuLink: An external GPU enclosure or dock that connects a desktop-class graphics card to a host system; OCuLink is a cable/interface used to extend PCIe to an external dock.
- PCIe bandwidth (Gen2 x1 vs Gen3 x4): PCI Express (PCIe) links provide data throughput between CPU and peripherals; Gen2 x1 is roughly 500 MB/s, while Gen3 x4 can be around 4,000 MB/s, affecting how well a system can use a high-end GPU.
- FEX: A compatibility layer that emulates x86 user-space on ARM Linux, allowing some x86 Linux programs and games to run on ARM CPUs at the cost of performance.
- Proton / WINE: Compatibility layers that let Windows games run on Linux by translating Windows APIs to Linux equivalents; Proton is Valve’s distribution of WINE with extra game-focused patches.
- DXVK and WineD3D: DXVK translates DirectX calls to Vulkan for better performance on Linux; WineD3D translates DirectX to OpenGL and can be used as a fallback when Vulkan paths fail.
Reader FAQ
Can you attach an RTX 5090 to a Raspberry Pi 5?
Yes — the author connected an RTX 5090 via an OCuLink dock and an M.2 adapter, with driver patches to enable the GPU on the Pi.
Can it play modern games smoothly?
Not generally. Modern, CPU-heavy games were often limited by the Pi’s CPU and PCIe bandwidth; some titles ran under ~15–23 FPS, while older or less CPU-bound games did better.
Are driver packages available to reproduce this?
The author packaged drivers for Ubuntu and Fedora to enable the setup.
How much power does the Pi draw compared to the Intel system?
Measured CPU-only power draw during the Cyberpunk test was under 9W for the Pi and about 30W for the Beelink; GPU power was not included.
Do anti-cheat systems cause problems?
Yes — Doom: The Dark Ages failed to run under FEX because anti-cheat components did not get properly emulated.
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Sources
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