NVIDIA RTX Spark Hits Windows PCs as Adobe Rebuilds Creative Apps

Engadget reported that RTX Spark is the first time powerful Arm CPUs have been combined with NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU technology and up to 128GB of ultra-fast unified memory on a single chip. The top configuration includes up to 20 NVIDIA Grace Arm CPU cores, split into 10 performance cores and 10 efficiency cores, a Blackwell GPU with up to 6,144 CUDA cores, and up to 128GB of LPDDR5x unified memory running at 9,400 Mbps. A lower configuration has 18 CPU cores and 5,120 GPU cores. The chip also carries fifth-generation tensor cores, fourth-generation ray tracing cores and a Blackwell video engine with support for AV1 UHQ and 4:2:2 encoding and decoding.

NVIDIA claims RTX Spark is twice as efficient as a laptop powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H and an RTX 5070 dedicated GPU while gaming at 60 watts, according to Engadget. The company has previously said RTX Spark systems should be similarly powerful to RTX 5070 laptops. Ifanr reported that NVIDIA claims the platform can reach up to 1 PFLOPS of AI performance in FP4 precision with sparsity, more than 20 times the 40 to 50 TOPS level of mainstream thin AI PCs.

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra with the RTX Spark N1X was shown at the Oct. 7 Windows and Surface event, where Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang appeared together, Ifanr reported. The 15-inch machine has a 3:2 Mini LED touch display with HDR peak brightness of 2,000 nits, is about 18mm thick and weighs 2.0kg. It includes a magnetic USB-C charging connector, USB-A 3.1, HDMI 2.1, a full-size SD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack and two full USB-C ports. Ifanr said the chassis and cooling were given extra room to let the chip run at full performance.

Adobe's software support is one of the platform's launch pillars. Deepa Subramaniam, an Adobe vice president, said the company "rearchitected" Photoshop, Premiere and Substance 3D to "take full advantage" of RTX Spark, according to Engadget. Adobe says the optimized apps are two times faster for AI tasks and editing across workflows. Photoshop is intended to be more responsive and faster at rendering complex workflows, with real-time changes when users apply effects such as Light Leaks or remove elements with the Remove tool. Premiere is expected to deliver speed gains in rendering, effects, AI-powered editing and color grading for audio and video, while Substance 3D Painter speeds up texturing, opening and saving large projects, and exporting textures.

Engadget's reporter said the platform is clearly a response to Apple Silicon, which also pairs Arm CPUs, capable GPUs and unified memory. The reporter did not notice performance drops while playing Gears of War: E-Day on battery power at 1440p with high graphics settings. RTX Spark systems are positioned for 1440p gaming, with support for DLSS 5; a new DLSS Frame Generation performance mode can push Cyberpunk 2077 to 280fps with 6x frame generation, compared with 213fps without performance mode. Because the platform is Arm-based, it will not natively run every Windows game.

Ifanr tested local AI workloads on the Surface Laptop Ultra. Running Qwen3.5 35B-A3B with Q4 quantization through Ollama and Open WebUI produced sustained generation speeds of 59.65 tokens per second, while Qwen3.8 27B reached 20.98 tokens per second after warmup. A local version of WorkBuddy could execute agent tasks on device, including some offline tasks, though Ifanr said it does not yet automatically switch between cloud and local models. The site also demonstrated a Mirobot robotic arm and small robots controlled locally with no cloud round-trip delay, and said a local model could work with Home Assistant for smart-home control.

Gaming performance from Ifanr's tests showed Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with automatic DLSS and no frame generation averaging 67.17fps without ray tracing and 39.49fps with ray tracing on Ultra. CS2 averaged 109.7fps in a 1080p Dust2 benchmark at very high settings. Marvel Rivals, in a native Arm version, averaged 171fps at 1080p with all-ultra settings, Lumen global illumination and reflections, native DLSS and automatic frame generation.

PC makers are preparing a broad launch. Ifanr reported that Asus has put up to 128GB of unified memory in a 14-inch ProArt P14 weighing 1.48kg, while Lenovo and MSI showed convertibles with pen support, and Dell and HP introduced RTX Spark versions of the XPS 16 and OmniBook. Microsoft is also adding more Windows 11 support for on-device AI tools such as Perplexity and simplified setup for agents including OpenClaw and GitHub Copilot, Engadget reported. The result is the strongest Windows on Arm lineup to date, Ifanr said, though Arm compatibility remains a limit for some games and applications.