Hardware hacker team runs GTA Vice City on TP-Link WiFi router by adding AMD Radeon GPU

Wireless routers come with more capable processors than you may have thought. After all, a WiFi router needs to address the growing demand for faster network traffic, calling for relatively high processing power. One good example of this regard would be the TP-Link WDR4900, which has now been modded by hardware hackers of KittenLabs to run the classic GTA Vice City.

The wireless router was released in 2013, and it packs the PowerPC e500v2 processor. This interesting CPU differs from the typical ARM and MIPS chips found in other routers as it offers a full 36-bit address space and a good level of performance.

Moreover, as the DIY modding group notes, the PowerPC e500v2 processor has excellent PCIe controllers. Thanks to all these, the TP-Link TL-WDR4XXX WiFi routers became very popular in the modding scene, enjoying continuous support from open-source software such as DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt.

While the CPU of the TP-Link WiFi router also offered plenty of connectivity options, the PCIe slot wasn’t particularly GPU-friendly. So, to connect an eGPU, KittenLabs cut PCIe traces from the CPU and attached a custom-designed mini PCIe breakout PCB. Then, the DIY modders bootstrapped a version of Debian Linux to the wireless router, which had some additional kernels enabled to offer AMD graphics driver support.

Initially, the hackers planned to run a modern AMD Radeon RX 570 GPU, but KittenLabs faced driver compatibility issues. Later, the GPU was switched to the Radeon HD 7470 with legacy drivers. While it’s a very dated graphics card, it definitely has what it takes to run classic PC games such as GTA Vice City.

But it’s worth noting that the modders needed to run a special version of the game for the processor architecture of the PowerPC chip. It also required a lot of software tinkering to make things work. Even with all these, this DIY project is definitely an interesting achievement for the team. To learn more about the project, you can read the detailed blog by KittenLabs found in this link or watch the video attached below.

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