Snapdragon X Elite eGPU Support: Everything About That

Snapdragon X Elite laptops are all over the market now and we’ve seen a lot of benchmarks and tests already. The consensus is that the latest machines are quite good, providing day-long batteries and great AI capabilities. They are also great for gaming and editing although not exceptional. And that’s where the discussion is taking us, because gamers are asking if they can connect their external GPU docks to improve the experience on their laptops. The answer is not that straightforward as it seems, so let’s get into gear with this Snapdragon X Elite eGPU support matter.

Do Snapdragon X Elite laptops support eGPUs?

Well, for an answer to this question, we need to establish if Arm chips support external GPUs and if we look at Apple’s M4 chip that started the whole ARM revolution, the answer is clearly a firm NO, at least not at the moment. No matter how they’ve tried, gamers didn’t manage to hook up their eGPU docks to M4 laptops.

The explanation is pretty simple: for a good bandwidth, eGPUs need a Thunderbold 3 or Thunderbolt 4 connection. Now, Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and it only works with x86 CPUs and it has no Arm support yet. So, logically, you can’t connect your eGPU to an Arm chip powered laptop whether it’s Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or another similar architecture.

However, that is half the story, because when asked, Qualcomm said that Snapdragon X Elite laptops will allow discrete GPUs. However, to be more precise, according to Sam Mobile, they’ve said they won’t prevent OEMs from hooking up discrete GPUs. That isn’t the same thing as allowing an external connection. Although, Snapdragon X Elite chips have 16 PCI lanes and although we already know what 8 of them do (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.), the other 8 might be used for a GPU connection.

Here’s the twist, though: Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 supports USB 4, and thus, it would support Thunderbolt 4. However, when a user tried connecting the eGPU to a Surface Pro 11, the laptop didn’t recognize and use it.

Will it be possible to connect an eGPU to a Snapdragon X Elite laptop?

There are two possible outcomes to this answer. The first scenario is that NVIDIA and AMD didn’t make the right drivers for Arm to support their chips, or Intel didn’t create the profile for the Thunderbolt 4 functionality for USB 4 on Arm.

In the second scenario, eGPUs won’t be supported at all on Snapdragon X Elite for whatever reason. Those 8 PCI lanes must be used for something and we strongly believe that we will see eGPU support for Snapdragon X Elite powered laptops in the near future.

Why are things moving so slow? Perhaps, a scenario is that Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD and Intel are still waiting for user feedback to learn about the real demand for this feature. Or, an even more wild scenario is that Qualcomm is waiting for Microsoft to develop an exclusive eGPU for Snapdragon X Elite laptops. We’ve already seen that with the Surface Dock before, so it wouldn’t be that hard to believe.

That’s what we know about this whole story right now, but it’s a working process. Of course, we will let you know about future developments when they occur.

In the meantime, use the comments to let us know what are your thoughts about this whole Snapdragon X Elite eGPU support story.