There’s always room for more competition, and Nvidia, which has been reaping the fruits of its labour in graphics cards, is turning up the heat. The industry juggernaut has unveiled a new Arm-based processor that will power a new generation of Windows PCs, pitting it head-on against the likes of Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple.
Touted as “the most efficient PC chip ever built” at a keynote address during Computex 2026 in Taipei, the RTX Spark “superchip” fuses the Nvidia Blackwell GPU architecture and custom Grace CPU technology. Co-developed with Microsoft and MediaTek, it features 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU cores, and 128GB of unified memory, with a focus on running artificial-intelligence (AI) agents locally.
This translates to the ability to execute tasks across applications, generate content, and automate workflows, as well as secure onboard data. No benchmarking metrics were shared, but Nvidia claims that its new chip will deliver “roughly half” the graphical power of an RTX 5070 mobile GPU and all-day battery life. Alongside powerful AI chops, users can also expect souped-up content creation and gaming performance – Nvidia cites examples such as rendering a 90GB 3D scene, editing 12K-resolution video, and playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at 100 frames per second (FPS) at 1440p resolution.
All that, packed into a portable, lightweight form factor to boot. The RTX Spark is due to debut in the fall on laptops from Microsoft (Surface Laptop Ultra), Dell (XPS 16), HP (Omnibook X 14, Ultra 16), ASUS (ProArt P14 and P16), Lenovo (Yoga Pro 9n), and MSI (Prestige N16 Flip AI+), followed by Acer and Gigabyte at a later date. Eventually, it will come to over 30 laptops and 10 desktops across different price points, though no exact figures were given.
The announcement comes at a time when Windows on Arm is gaining ground over traditional x86 processors, with creative applications like Blender, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, Affinity by Canva, and more already running natively on the platform. Gaming, too, has seen a recent shift – Riot Games is bringing League of Legends and Valorant over, while Epic Games’ Fortnite made the leap last November.
Alongside RTX Spark, Nvidia also unveiled DLSS 4.5 Ray Construction (not DLSS 5, unfortunately), which uses a second-gen transformer model to deliver enhanced image quality, cleaner particle effects, and more accurate lighting. It will be available on RTX 20 and newer GPUs starting this August, supporting 27 titles at launch, including Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Pragmata, Crimson Desert, Resident Evil Requiem, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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Kevin Low
