Although current Windows on Arm computers can execute many traditional x86 and x64 software through translation, they are not able to plug in a GeForce independent graphics card like ordinary desktop computers. It’s not that Arm processors don’t have PCIe, or that the graphics card hardware is completely incompatible, but that NVIDIA has not provided a Windows ARM64 native driver that supports consumer-grade desktop graphics cards.
However, a Chinese developer recently succeeded in breaking this limitation. He used the ARM64 driver prepared by NVIDIA for the RTX Spark platform. After modification, he successfully made the RTX 4060 graphics card run on a Windows 11 computer equipped with a Kunpeng 920 Arm processor. And not only is the graphics card recognized by the system, DirectX 12, Vulkan, CUDA, ray tracing and DLSS are also successfully enabled.
RTX 4060 successfully runs on Windows 11 Arm, and can be used for games and CUDA, but there are still four major limitations
The CPU, GPU, NPU, memory controller and other components of Windows on Arm computers are usually integrated into the same SoC, so manufacturers only need to prepare drivers for this set of fixed hardware, which is very different from traditional desktop computers.
Although Windows 11 can use the Prism translator to instantly convert general x86 and x64 applications into Arm64 instructions, this only applies to user mode code.
To put it simply, Windows can help you “translate” games or Blender, but it cannot translate the core driver responsible for controlling the graphics card in the same way. Without the ARM64 display driver provided by NVIDIA, even if the motherboard has a PCIe slot, the RTX 4060 cannot be used normally like a normal x64 computer when plugged in.
NVIDIA recently prepared a Windows ARM64 native driver for the new RTX Spark platform, which made this breakthrough possible.
Chinese developer VoidTech recently shared a video of his successful breakthrough on Bilibili, but the device he used was not a common Snapdragon laptop, but a Huawei Qingyun W510 workstation. This host is equipped with a 24-core Kunpeng 920 processor, two 16GB DDR4-2933 memory, and a desktop version RTX 4060 with 8GB display memory:
Kunpeng 920 adopts Armv8.2 architecture and is mainly targeted at servers and workstations. Qingyun W510 was originally based on Linux systems such as UOS and is not a Windows 11 Arm computer officially supported by Microsoft. So VoidTech’s dilemma wasn’t just the RTX 4060, but also how to get Windows to boot properly.
To solve this problem, he used the open source project `dixyes/d920s10` to patch the ACPI table in the motherboard firmware. ACPI can be understood as the communication rules between the operating system and the hardware, including processor, power management, device settings, etc. The original table contains settings that are unacceptable to Windows. The patch will remove the corrupted PCCT table, fill in the missing device identification information, and adjust other compatibility issues so that Windows 11 Arm can boot on this motherboard:
This ACPI project has existed as early as 2023 and is also applicable to Kunpeng platforms such as D920S10, THTF TK620, W510, etc., so it is not a graphics card cracking tool specifically made for RTX 4060.
After Windows starts successfully, the next step is the graphics card driver. VoidTech extracted NVIDIA’s native ARM64 display driver from the RTX Spark software package, and then modified the driver’s installation information to allow it to accept the desktop version of RTX 4060, which was not originally supported on the list:
After the RTX 4060 is successfully installed, not only does the device administrator have an additional graphics card name. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool shows that DirectX 12 is enabled on the system, and Vulkan, CUDA, and hardware acceleration are also working. The card can also run NVIDIA’s ray tracing demo program, with some tests correctly turning on ray tracing, reflections, and DLSS. Interestingly, Windows even shows this modified driver as passing WHQL:
In the 3DMark test, which natively supports ARM64, Night Raid scored 43,530 points, Solar Bay scored about 32,370 points, and Speed Way scored 2,252 points. These tests encountered no obvious translation issues and showed that the RTX 4060 itself can indeed handle graphics work properly:
Time Spy is a notable exception. This test still had to be executed via x86/x64 transpilation, resulting in a final score of 6,369 points:
Game tests all use 1080p resolution, and the average speed of “Genshin Impact” in different scenes in Fontaine and Mondstadt is only about 20 FPS. The performance test of “Black Myth: Wukong” averages about 21 FPS, and can reach a maximum of 33 FPS, but the minimum has dropped to 3 FPS. The Star Wars Reflections ray tracing display can run approximately 23 to 25 FPS:
VoidTech is also testing three ray tracing options. The first item can display ray tracing and DLSS normally, and Star Wars Reflections can also display ray tracing and reflection effects. The second item cannot turn on ray tracing at all. It seems to be due to the inability to correctly identify the graphics card, or it may be caused by the driver originally belonging to another set of products, but there is currently no way to confirm the reason:
Looking at the test results, it is obvious that this RTX 4060 did not perform at its normal level, but this experiment was just to prove that the GeForce graphics card hardware can operate in the Windows 11 Arm environment.
The RTX Spark driver uses NVIDIA’s unified driver architecture, so VoidTech believes that after the same modification, it may theoretically support RTX 20, RTX 30, RTX 40 and even RTX 50 series:
Of course, there are also some problems encountered during runtime:
- x64 translation slows down performance: Most games are still x64 versions, and the single-core performance of Kunpeng 920 is weak, resulting in a loss of about 25% of CPU performance after translation.
- Lack of native CUDA Toolkit: Windows ARM64 currently does not have a complete native CUDA development environment, and programs such as Blender still need to be translated and executed through x64.
- Anti-cheating compatibility issue: “Arknights: The End” exits directly after launching, which may be related to ACE anti-cheating or x64 translation incompatibility.
- Unable to directly output images: Although the RTX 4060 can be recognized by the system, it cannot be directly connected to the screen for output. It can only be streamed remotely through Sunshine and Moonlight.
Full video:
Source: KOCPC Chinese