A handheld with an RTX 4090 GPU? Cyberpunk 2077 runs at 60 FPS in 4K on DIY gaming portable

A gaming handheld packing an NVIDIA RTX 4090 graphics card sounds improbable, but an eye-opening DIY effort has achieved just this - and it boasts some seriously nippy frame rates while staying impressively cool.

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As Notebookcheck picked up (via TechRadar), this is the work of Qingchen DIY on Bilibili, as showcased by NITTRX on YouTube (see this video clip).

It's a 12.5-inch handheld PC - obviously stretching the definition of portable to some extent - which comes with an RTX 4090 of the mobile variety with 16GB of VRAM (it's not like it would ever be a desktop GPU, of course). That's partnered with an Intel Core-i9 14900HX laptop CPU (with 24-cores), and the display is a 4K affair with a 60Hz refresh rate.

This allows Cyberpunk 2077 to run at between 60 to 70 FPS in 4K resolution, likely with high (or maybe even max) graphics settings (based on the VRAM usage of just over 8GB - the video doesn't actually show any info on the visuals). God of War buzzed along at about 110 to 120 FPS in 4K.

Even in the confines of the small chassis here, the RTX 4090 managed to keep at a decent temperature of just over 70C (and the CPU runs just under that temperature, at around 66C to 70C apparently).

So yes, this is a top-end gaming laptop crammed into a small case, which represents a pretty remarkable feat.

Will we see vendors like ASUS or MSI coming out with these kinds of designs and supersized form-factors? Don't count on it. There are obvious barriers to adoption, and we've already touched on one of them - the size isn't quite so portable as the more traditional and compact PC handhelds. We can only guess it's pretty weighty, too, which won't make it very comfy for longer gaming sessions.

Furthermore, there's battery life to consider - it's plugged into power in the video, though it can seemingly work on battery, but likely for only a very short time if you're gaming with any graphics details cranked.

There's also pricing - a handheld packing high-end mobile components is going to be expensive, especially when you consider that top-end gaming portables are already pretty pricey.

Still, this is pointing the way to the possibilities of beefier hardware for these kinds of devices, even if it won't be as extreme as we see here, because this obviously isn't a very practical prototype. It'll be interesting to see where the handheld world ends up in terms of bringing in more powerful portables much further down the line.