--- title: Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference... description: Linux runs on Nvidia RTX Spark laptops like the MSI Prestige, but plugging one into wall power locks the GPU clock to about 780 MHz instead of the 2 GHz-plus... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux | daily.dev og:description: Linux runs on Nvidia RTX Spark laptops like the MSI Prestige, but plugging one into wall power locks the GPU clock to about 780 MHz instead of the 2 GHz-plus... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/1l3b4yLf3.png og:image:alt: Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Linux runs on Nvidia RTX Spark laptops like the MSI Prestige, but plugging one into wall power locks the GPU clock to about 780 MHz instead of the 2 GHz-plus it hits on Windows. On GPT-OSS-120B, Windows and WSL both hit roughly 65 tokens per second, while native Linux managed only 13.9. The cause is the Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework, a Windows-only firmware component with an encrypted power table that Linux can't decrypt. Unplugging the laptop brings Linux speeds much closer to Windows. WSL keeps full GPU boost whether plugged in or on battery, making it the practical choice until Nvidia ports the power management logic to its Linux driver. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does my Nvidia RTX Spark laptop run Linux so much slower than Windows when plugged in? A Windows-only firmware component called the Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework manages power sharing between CPU and GPU, and Linux has no equivalent for it. When plugged into wall power, the GPU clock locks around 780 MHz on Linux versus roughly 2.2 GHz on Windows, because the firmware's power table is encrypted and only Windows can decrypt it. _daily.dev surfaces hardware-specific gotchas like this before you sink hours into a dual-boot setup._ ### Does unplugging a laptop fix GPU clock throttling on Linux with Nvidia RTX Spark hardware? Yes, unplugging largely resolves it. On battery power, Linux GPU clocks reach around 1,800 MHz under load and token throughput on LM Studio lands around 61 to 67 tokens per second, close to Windows. Plugged into wall power, the same test drops to about 15 tokens per second with clocks around 780 MHz, the opposite of typical expectations. _track quirky platform bugs like this on daily.dev before they derail your AI dev setup._ ### Is WSL a good alternative to native Linux for running vLLM on an Nvidia RTX Spark laptop? Yes, WSL is currently the more practical choice. It runs on top of the Windows driver stack, so it inherits full GPU clock boost whether plugged in or on battery, reaching 65.1 tokens per second on GPT-OSS-120B versus 13.9 for native Linux. The main adjustment needed is increasing WSL's default 14GB memory reservation for large model workloads on a 128GB unified memory machine. _developers weighing WSL versus native Linux for AI workloads follow benchmarks like these on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 121 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-11-04). **TL;DR:** Commenters see this as yet another instance of Nvidia's historically poor Linux support, with many suspecting the encrypted power table is either deliberate market segmentation/DRM-in-waiting or simple Windows-first negligence rather than a pure bug. **Sentiment:** 5% positive · 25% mixed · 70% skeptical **The case for** - A few note Nvidia's closed Linux drivers have historically still matched Windows in features and performance, unlike AMD's pre-open-source era. - Some expect the issue will likely get reverse-engineered or patched fairly quickly given community interest. **The pushback** - Many suspect this is deliberate market segmentation or a precursor to DRM/licensing schemes for AI compute rather than an innocent bug. - Nvidia is repeatedly criticized as historically the worst major vendor for Linux support. - Several call it basic incompetence that a multi-trillion-dollar company shipped a laptop with broken power management on Linux. - Some argue running local inference on a laptop at all is a questionable use case versus a home server plus remote access. - Concern that encrypted/locked-down firmware previews a broader trend toward DRM for AI models and hardware, further entrenching cloud dependency. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Discussion is dominated by distrust of Nvidia's motives, broader worries about AI centralization/DRM, and familiar complaints about Nvidia's Linux track record, alongside a side debate about whether laptops are even the right form factor for local inference. **Hottest debate:** Whether the power table lockout is intentional market segmentation/DRM-style gatekeeping or just another case of Nvidia's Windows-first negligence toward Linux. **Open questions** - Will Nvidia port the encrypted power management logic to its Linux driver, and how quickly? - Can the encrypted firmware/power table realistically be reverse-engineered given it's a 'Windows-only' Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework component? - Is the GB10/DGX Spark driver stack similar enough to be ported over to fix the RTX Spark issue? **Highlights** > >Oddly, the direction of the problem flips depending on power source. Unplugged, Linux hit around 61 to 67 tokens per second on LM Studio, comparable to Windows. Plugged in, that same test dropped to about 15 tokens per second. Absolutely hilarious. This is just incompetence. No reason Nvidia with its TRILLIONS of market cap couldn't of tested and fixed this on Linux before shipping. Or a day one patch. I have no doubt that'll it'll work right eventually. Long after RTX Spark laptops flop and can be purchased for half off. Last night I pulled out my 5070TI laptop and installed CachyOS. I was running various models within about 20 minutes. That 12GB of VRAM is a hard limitation, Unsloth can't split jobs between vram and system memory. > — [999900000999 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50365264) > No, we are just seeing a push towards Nvidia wanting to make money. Nothing stops you from giving Nvidia half a million for their latest and greatest AI GPUs, unless you are in China I guess, but China does very well despite the export control. It is just classic market segmentation, the thing Nvidia and just about every company that can benefit from it has done for decades. Cloud providers are ready to pay a lot of money, consumers wanting local AI have a lower budget, and gamers even lower. But a low budget is greater than zero, and there is still money to be made on these markets. But they also don't want to compete against themselves, so they are going to find ways of crippling enterprise-class workloads on consumer hardware. It used to be that they crippled high precision arithmetic on consumer hardware, because it was a differentiating factor, but AI doesn't care about high precision, so now, it is something else. > — [GuB-42 on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50364018) > Years ago I would think I was being paranoid to think they would patch hardware retroactively to make it slower so you need to pay more to use your own hardware. In 2026, I think this is what all car companies are doing after you pay the full car price. I don't see a reason why they wouldn't do it with so little competition > — [motbus3 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50363845) > Nvidia doing what Nvidia has always done; proprietary closed drivers. Weird choice to cryptographically protect the power settings. Key problem is that we've allowed a company that's always been this way to form a monopoly. Other brands exist, perhaps it is now worth the effort to migrate and rebuild elsewhere. > — [jleask on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50363520) > It's not weird at all, they know people will buy these laptops, put linux on them and stash them in data-centers, so they are trying to prevent this. > — [dist-epoch on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50364308) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50362905) · 210 points · 121 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Nvidia's RTX Spark is a chip unlike any other, and it could change Windows laptops forever](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-s-rtx-spark-is-a-chip-unlike-any-other-and-it-could-change-windows-laptops-forever-lgrsetnyj) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [ASUS ROG Strix Laptop Sees Driver Fix For Linux Performance Too Low Compared To Windows](https://daily.dev/posts/asus-rog-strix-laptop-sees-driver-fix-for-linux-performance-too-low-compared-to-windows-bnioff3xz) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Best of Both Worlds: Using a Gaming PC's RTX 5070 from a separate Linux workstation](https://daily.dev/posts/best-of-both-worlds-using-a-gaming-pc-s-rtx-5070-from-a-separate-linux-workstation-5ejbtfk6u) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#nvidia](https://daily.dev/tags/nvidia), [#gpu](https://daily.dev/tags/gpu), [#ai-inference](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-inference) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3"},"datePublished":"2026-11-04T11:21:05.389Z","dateModified":"2026-11-04T13:37:23.224Z","description":"Linux runs on Nvidia RTX Spark laptops like the MSI Prestige, but plugging one into wall power locks the GPU clock to about 780 MHz instead of the 2 GHz-plus...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8d1b4cb4c190fb91a2a9c09306eb6cd5?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8d1b4cb4c190fb91a2a9c09306eb6cd5?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"linux,nvidia,gpu,ai-inference","timeRequired":"PT9M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-rtx-spark-encrypted-firmware-slows-inference-speed-to-35-on-linux-1l3b4ylf3#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why does my Nvidia RTX Spark laptop run Linux so much slower than Windows when plugged in?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"A Windows-only firmware component called the Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework manages power sharing between CPU and GPU, and Linux has no equivalent for it. 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