NVIDIA Newly launched DGX Spark is specially designed for AI CraftedMini PCHence, it’s clearly notGameRegarding its use, it’s just that the AI computing performance is very strong, and it’s an NVIDIA product. For gamers, they’ll definitely be curious whether its gaming performance is good, and whether it can be used for gaming. Recently, a netizen shared his real-world test on Reddit. The answer is that it can play games, but the performance is very poor, so it’s completely not recommended.
NVIDIA DGX Spark’s Cyberpunk 2077 gaming performance tested: 1080p average only 50 FPS
The DGX Spark is an AI mini-supercomputer powered by the GB10 Blackwell chip, integrating a 20-core Arm processor with a Blackwell GPU, 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory. Its GPU has 6,144 CUDA cores, with memory bandwidth of approximately 273GB/s, a base clock of 1665MHz, and a boost clock of up to 2525MHz. In terms of specs, it’s roughly comparable to the RTX 5070, though the memory bandwidth gap is a bit larger.
Seeing this, many people might assume that gaming performance would be the same, right? It’s completely not on the same level, because the platform architecture is different. The DGX Spark is an Arm platform, not x86, and it runs the NVIDIA DGX operating system, a customized Linux OS derived from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. That means games need to be run through an emulation layer, so they can’t fully utilize performance.
A Reddit user named Retrotom recently shared real-world test results for Cyberpunk 2077 on the NVIDIA subreddit. He managed to run the game successfully, but his final verdict was: “Don’t waste $4,000 on something meaningless.”
Retrotom uses Box64 to create an x86 → ARM emulation layer, with the following steps:
- Compile Box64 using version v0.3.8, and you need to add both the BOX32 and BOX32_BINFMT options when compiling.
- Install Steam using the install_steam.sh script included with Box64. This script will create a shell script in /usr/local/bin, set some environment variables, and then call the actual Steam executable.
- Start the systemd-binfmt service: sudo systemctl restart systemd-binfmt
- Launch Steam in the terminal: box64 steam
- Install the game and start playing.
During testing, the DGX Spark only managed an average of 50 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p (1920×1080) with medium graphics settings. If DLSS were enabled, it should reach over 60 FPS, but Retrotom said it doesn’t appear in the options, for unknown reasons.
Stability is okay, though it still crashes occasionally. Overall, it’s still playable.
Although game emulation technology on the Linux platform has advanced rapidly in recent years, it still cannot fully unleash the hardware’s potential. According to current information, it can only unleash about 80% of native performance.
So for anyone thinking about buying the DGX Spark, just stick to using it for AI purposes. Don’t expect too much from it for gaming.
Source: KOCPC Chinese