NVIDIA's RTX Spark chip could give Windows its true Apple Silicon moment

Arm CPU cores, a powerful GPU and gobs of unified RAM? That sounds familiar!

There's a lot we still don't know about NVIDIA's RTX Spark AI chip — we're still waiting on deeper technical details and pricing for the first batch of systems — but it has a decent shot of changing the way we think of Windows PCs entirely. RTX Spark should offer the raw performance that the first batch of Copilot+ systems lacked, and it will also push Microsoft to make the Windows experience even better for Arm CPUs (something I argued was the real highlight of the whole Copilot+ initiative, more so than AI support).

With Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon chips powering low-end and mid-range Windows PCs, there's room for NVIDIA to fill the gap at the high end, delivering powerful (and likely very expensive) PCs that will appeal to memory-hungry content creators, developers and AI enthusiasts.

Windows might finally get its Apple Silicon moment this year — a bigger push to optimize the aging OS for more efficient Arm chips, while also rethinking what's possible when you can give GPUs direct access to insane gobs of memory. The MacBook Pro comparisons were immediately clear from the first batch of RTX Spark machines like the Surface Pro Ultra and ASUS's new ProArt systems. Of course, powerful Windows laptops are nothing new, but they typically had tradeoffs like thick and heavy cases, or enormous battery-draining power demands. What if you could get a powerhouse PC that didn't feel like a brick, and also lasted as long as a low-power ultraportable?

That's the promise of RTX Spark systems, but there are plenty of details still up in the air. Based on NVIDIA's description of the chip, RTX Spark appears to be the same hardware that's in the DGX Spark AI workstation that launched last year for $3,999, but now sells for $4,699. That makes me think the initial RTX Spark systems could start around $4,000 or more. Its 20-core CPU is made up of 10 Cortex X-925 cores and 10 Cortex-A275, which are both slower than Arm's newer C1-Ultra core, Engadget Editor-in-Chief, Aaron Souppouris, points out. That hardware is currently only found in the Mediatek Dimensity 9500 chip, powering the new Oppo Find X9 Pro. NVIDIA's Arm cores are also slower than the latest Snapdragon Elite Oryon cores, as well as Apple's M5 chips. If NVIDIA is charging a premium for RTX Spark systems, you'd expect them to at least be using CPU cores from 2026.

The real stars of the RTX Spark systems will be their 6,144 RTX Blackwell GPU cores, which is the same as the RTX 5070 desktop GPU, along with their support for up to 128