NVIDIA RTX Spark Hands-On: Windows Might Finally Have Its MacBook Moment
I'm at Computex 2026, I sat through the NVIDIA keynote, and then I got to go hands-on with some of the demos behind the scenes. And I'll be straight with you: NVIDIA might be having its M1 moment — except on Windows. There's a lot to unpack here, so let me walk you through what I actually saw, what got me excited, and where I'm keeping my expectations in check.
Quick Verdict
The new NVIDIA RTX Spark platform is the most interesting thing to happen to Windows on ARM in a long time. GPU performance is supposedly in RTX 5070 territory, the Blackwell architecture brings DLSS and frame generation to ARM, and the gaming and creator demos I saw genuinely held up. Apple's M5 Max is still ahead on raw graphics, but NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem and Windows access could pull far more software over to ARM than we've ever seen — and that lifts the whole industry, Qualcomm included. The catch is price: a properly specced unit is going to be expensive, and these don't ship until the fall.
The AI Talk — And Why I'm Setting It Aside
The first thing you notice in the keynote is the wall of AI messaging. NVIDIA is pitching the RTX Spark chips as the engine for agentic agents running through Windows, with the long-term vision of Windows becoming an "agentic OS."
I'm putting that aside for now. We're still years away from that being real for most people — today, anyone running agentic workflows is doing it through tools like OpenClaw or Hermes on separate machines. And honestly, the idea of Microsoft turning Windows itself into an agentic operating system feels a little too far out for me to get excited about yet. What I actually care about is the performance and whether this changes the Windows landscape. That part is real.
The Performance Pitch: RTX 5070 GPU on ARM
The headline is that these RTX Spark chips are supposed to deliver roughly the GPU performance of an RTX 5070. That's the number Jensen put on stage — and we have to take it with a grain of salt because they showed zero actual benchmark numbers. But even as a first-generation platform claim, RTX 5070-class graphics on ARM is impressive.
The obvious elephant in the room is Apple. I still think Apple is ahead here — the M5 Max graphics are more comparable to an RTX 5080. But where NVIDIA can win is the ecosystem: CUDA cores, full Windows access, and the muscle to make sure games run properly on Blackwell. If that brings more applications over to Windows on ARM, that benefits everyone — including Qualcomm, since all that translated software runs on ARM too.
The Demos: Generative AI, Premiere Pro, and Gaming
I went through several demos behind the scenes. Here's what stood out.
Generative AI (ComfyUI): They had me on one of the new laptops — the Surface Laptop Ultra, which looks really nice, by the way — running ComfyUI with a CLI open. You can talk to it or type, and have it make changes on screen, even wiring Photoshop and ComfyUI together so an agent handles the back-and-forth instead of you wrestling with how ComfyUI or Stable Diffusion actually works. Image generation took about four and a half minutes sometimes, and it could create video too. The fans kicked on, but it wasn't anywhere near as loud as a laptop with a dedicated GPU.
Adobe Premiere Pro: This was probably my favorite. Let's be honest — Premiere has been a dumpster fire for the last decade, almost all of it CPU-bound. It looks like NVIDIA pushed Adobe to put the GPU first. In the demo, you could click an object and it auto-masked quickly. If that gets properly optimized for ARM, I can see a lot of creators switching to this style of laptop instead of one with a discrete GPU.
Gaming: ARM gaming hasn't been great so far, mostly because of Qualcomm's GPUs. NVIDIA had about four games loaded. Pragmata — a game I know well — was being emulated, not native, and I'd estimate 40–50 FPS based on feel (no on-screen counter). Alan Wake, which looked converted for ARM, was easily over 60 FPS. Fortnite, native on ARM for months now, felt like 100–120+ FPS. And remember, all the DLSS upscaling and frame generation is available here because this is Blackwell.
The Reality Check: Price and Timing
I'm not going to oversell this. There's no way these are going to be affordable. Yes, NVIDIA will offer versions with 16GB and 32GB of RAM — but if you actually want to take advantage of agentic AI and large local LLMs, you'll want 128GB of unified memory, and we already know what that costs based on AMD's Halo platform: roughly $3,500 to $5,000. The most specced-out RTX Spark laptops will easily pass that.
The only reason to buy the cheaper, lower-RAM versions is if you don't care much about big local LLMs and you're focused on everyday productivity and gaming. And the timing is rough — these are targeted for the fall, Windows is going through a rough patch with all the bloat being shoved into it, and high component prices have already cooled a lot of buyers on these devices.
Where This Leaves Us
I have a gut feeling NVIDIA eventually stops releasing dedicated GPUs and goes all-in on this kind of integrated platform. Even Jensen has said on stage that everyone's buying laptops now. There's still a niche for the desktop and the raw performance it offers, but as NVIDIA develops this platform, it's only going to get better.
So yes — it's very possible NVIDIA is having its M1 moment. The timing just isn't ideal. But regardless of how you feel about it, this is good for the entire industry. It pulls everyone up, Qualcomm included, and more competition is better for all of us.
I'll have some of these laptops in the studio at some point for full reviews — so keep an eye out.
This was a sponsored trip to Computex 2026. Full links to the products mentioned are in the video description.
Published: June 2026
