# "Fastest Windows Arm PC" Ampere guide
**URL:** https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [June 9, 2024, 5:19pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811 "2024-06-09T17:19:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JoeSpeed](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/JoeSpeed)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2024, 5:19pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/1 "2024-06-09T17:19:20Z")
Windows on Arm [Ampere Altra home builds](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/asrock-rack-ampere-home-builds/769) is a thing so adding it to [How to build Arm developer homelab with Ampere Altra](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/arm-developer-build-guide-for-ampere-altra/786). Share your insights and I’ll roll it up into the build guide.
“Fastest Windows Arm PC” is Ampere powered [System76 Thelio Astra](https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-astra-a1-n1/configure?srsltid=AfmBOoq1SGc7BM7d8T7YjWPBSRa-ZZafZ0ezJ4JnrEJXmBc2C8UqriRX) per Jeff Geerling’s testing and review:
> **[System76 built the fastest Windows Arm PC | Jeff Geerling](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/system76-built-fastest-windows-arm-pc)**
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AshDjtlV6go)
Windows 11 24H2, Windows Server 2025 Insider Preview install and work fine. Main issue is lack of drivers but people are working on that. Not yet officially supported though Azure and their customers run huge Windows workloads in production on Azure Arm Ampere Altra instances all the live long day.
- Download and install the Windows 11 (or Server) arm64 ISO.
- TPM module makes Windows install easier! [https://mitxpc.com/products/tpm-spi](https://mitxpc.com/products/tpm-spi) [https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-tpm-spi/p/N82E16816775069](https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-tpm-spi/p/N82E16816775069)
- [ASPEED Windows Display Driver](https://www.aspeedtech.com/support_driver/) 1.15.2 and later for Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 Insider preview. Also supports [ASRock TOMMY display card](https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-tommy-other/p/N82E16816775074) for 2nd display in addition to the display built into all Ampere Altra boards including ASRock Rack, ADLINK, Gigabyte, Supermicro, HPE, et al.
- Intel i210 Windows on Arm driver [GitHub - filipnavara/igb: Intel GbE Family Community Driver for Windows 11](https://github.com/filipnavara/igb), build from source and self-sign. Or install [Release preview2 · filipnavara/igb · GitHub](https://github.com/filipnavara/igb/releases/tag/preview2) after enabling test signing (`bcdedit /set testsigning off` on command line). It’s a bit easier than building from source (which is always an option though). Intel i210 drivers are stable enough that the ASRock Rack Ampere Win11 machine has been running with them for weeks, 3 week uptime at the moment, only restarted because of HW upgrades. h/t/ Filip Navara
- [NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX](https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=mellanox) network cards drivers are included because Windows on Arm on Azure on Ampere Altra. There is a more fully featured ConnectX driver in the Windows on Azure instances.
- Realtek NICs under different brands but same gen chips, so there’s some Toshiba/Lenovo/Xiaomi. The newer Realtek chips are supported although the Realtek drivers are not distributed in-box. [GitHub - coolstar/if\_re-win: Open Source Realtek Ethernet Windows driver](https://github.com/coolstar/if_re-win) h/t Filip Navara [https://x.com/filipnavara/status/1778346760307437835](https://x.com/filipnavara/status/1778346760307437835)
- [Marvell 88W8897 is an AzureWave AW-CB178NF connected to the second m.2 key m via an adapter](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/asrock-rack-ampere-home-builds/769/21). Tracked this one down on the Microsoft page for [Windows on ARM NXP](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/hardware/supported/nxp_drivers), then got the drivers mentioned from the NXP Windows BSP. You seem to have to right click and install via the .inf, but it works fine afterwards. h/t @ara
- WoA includes are many USB drivers including Samsung phones and such, aside from the generic ones, USB4 peer-to-peer.
- NVIDIA GPU driver is not yet released but if you follow the news …
One approach I’ve noticed many doing successfully is digging into the list of Windows on Arm device drivers, finding which chips are supported because they’re used in Surface, laptops, et al. and then finding PCIe cards or USB dongles with those chips on Newegg, Amazon, et al.
Azure Windows arm64 instances also have drivers including more fully featured Mellanox driver. PnPUtil says so.
Cinebench result for Windows 11 24H2 on Ampere Altra using only 64 of the cores. Looking for Cinebench update that unlocks its full potential and uses all 128 3.0GHz cores for a much higher result.
h/t @geerlingguy for so many things
. [Everything I've learned building the fastest Arm desktop | Jeff Geerling](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/everything-ive-learned-building-fastest-arm-desktop)
. [Ampere Altra Max - Windows, GPUs, and Gaming | Jeff Geerling](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/ampere-altra-max-windows-gpus-and-gaming)
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=argfZlPZKdY)
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydGdHjIncbk)
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5H5rT87JE)
And thanks to our ADLINK friends too
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxe-UyDq5XY)
> **[Ampere's New 128-Core Arm Workstation Runs Windows](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ampere-64-core-arm-workstation-runs-windows)**
>
> Ampere launches developers kits for cloud native app developers.
---
### Author:  [@Hifihedgehog](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/Hifihedgehog)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2024, 1:38am UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/2 "2024-06-18T01:38:25Z")
Hi! Is there any sort of NVIDIA driver in Windows yet? I have gotten rumblings that there is one floating around under the radar that is being previewed and that a general release is imminent for ARM especially with Oryon/Snapdragon X hitting the market.
---
### Author:  [@JoeSpeed](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/JoeSpeed)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2024, 5:26pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/3 "2024-06-18T17:26:13Z")
can neither confirm nor deny …
---
### Author:  [@Hifihedgehog](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/Hifihedgehog)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2024, 5:46pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/4 "2024-06-18T17:46:23Z")
---
### Author:  [@pimzand](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/pimzand)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2024, 6:24pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/5 "2024-06-27T18:24:24Z")
I would love to see this. It might come with an NVidia aarch64 GOP to give us pre-boot graphics in Linux.
---
### Author:  [@JoeSpeed](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/JoeSpeed)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 7:18pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/6 "2024-10-29T19:18:33Z")
#ReleaseTheNvidiaDriver
>
---
### Author:  [@JoeSpeed](https://community.amperecomputing.com/u/JoeSpeed)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 7:20pm UTC](https://community.amperecomputing.com/t/fastest-windows-arm-pc-ampere-guide/811/7 "2024-10-29T19:20:33Z")
@bexcran has pre-boot graphics working by building multi-Arch / x86 emulator into EDK2