Nvidia RTX Spark is official. The long-rumored, single chip that will likely power many gaming PCs of the future is finally here. By combining an RTX 5000 series GPU and an Arm-based CPU on a single chip, the new RTX Spark N1X system on a chip (SoC) is set to power a host of gaming PCs and laptops launching later this year.
Nvidia has worked with Arm to create SoCs before, such as for the auto industry, its Nvidia Shield streaming devices, and as used in the Nintendo Switch. However, this is the first time the company has fully swung for a gaming PC takeover with Windows-based PCs and laptops powered by this chip. There are going to be limitations in terms of raw GPU power, but these chips could seriously shake up our best gaming PC and best gaming laptop guides in the not-too-distant future.
Taking to the stage at the Computex tech trade show in Taiwan, Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, declared the first chip for the new platform, the N1X, as “the most amazing chip the world has ever built” thanks to the fact that “100% of the Nvidia software stack” and “every single application that Windows has ever run” will work on this chip.
The new chips will be available in a variety of configurations, but the full-fat version will contain 20 Arm CPU cores, a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, 128GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and 300 GB/s of memory bandwidth. For a rough comparison, Apple’s latest M5 CPUs contain 18 Arm CPU cores, while 6,144 CUDA cores is the same number as in the RTX 5070.
The CPU, GPU, and memory are connected by an ultra-fast NVLink C2C bridge that ensures the large shared memory pool is very quickly accessible by either portion of the chip. This is crucial both for fast gaming performance and for ensuring speedy AI operation, because, oh yes, there’s a big emphasis on AI here.
While the RTX Spark platform is, on the one hand, about simply making a single chip that can be an alternative to existing AMD and Intel laptop CPUs (and indeed Qualcomm laptop CPUs), it’s also designed around a completely new type of computing. Instead of a conventional operating system with drivers and applications, Nvidia has worked with Microsoft to create a platform that has AI agents at the heart of the system. According to Nvidia’s vision, you’ll hardly have to lift a finger to get anything done, with “the application […] going to be replaced by an agentic AI.”
It remains to be seen quite what the reality of this setup is. Whether this amounts to a streamlined set of systems that make it easier for AI agents to access Windows features and interact with existing applications, with the rest of the interface still feeling like normal Windows, or if there’s a fundamental change in how you use these machines. We’ll find out more closer to the launch later this year.
On which, the RTX Spark release date is set for “Fall 2026” with 30 laptops and ten desktops already confirmed to be launching with the new chips. Indeed, the likes of HP and Microsoft have already announced their new RTX Spark laptops, including a new Microsoft Surface.
Meanwhile, Nvidia also outlined the future for RTX Spark, with the version launching this year based on its current Blackwell architecture (powering RTX 5000 GPUs), but future versions already in the works based on its upcoming Rubin and Feynman GPU architectures.
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