The best reason to care about Nvidia’s RTX Spark: ‘everything’ will run on Arm

Fourteen years ago, Microsoft released a Windows PC powered by an Nvidia chip, the Microsoft Surface. However, the Surface flopped due to the Nvidia Tegra chip not being able to run existing Windows applications. Now, Nvidia will once again be at the forefront of Arm-powered Windows PCs with the RTX Spark laptops. Senior director of products Justin Walker assures that all apps, games, and software, including those requiring kernel-level anti-cheat, will run smoothly on Spark.

While most readers may not want to spend $7,000 on a new AI workstation with 128GB of RAM, the excitement lies in the prospect of Arm chips being able to perform all the functions expected of a traditional Windows PC. Nvidia showcased the RTX Spark chip at its Editor's Day event, highlighting its benefits for gamers, creators, developers, and AI power users.

The chip is essentially the same one used in mini desktops for AI developers a year ago, but this time it runs full Windows 11. Microsoft's Prism emulator enables old Windows apps and games to work on the Arm chip. Although Nvidia isn't the first to make a bet on extending PC software to a new platform, it aims to surpass others in AI and gaming.

The RTX Spark offers more graphics horsepower than Steam Deck or Snapdragon X Elite laptops, making it comparable to a midrange discrete GPU like an RTX 5060. Nvidia has partnered with various game companies to ensure compatibility with anti-cheat software in popular games such as Fortnite, Roblox, Rust, and Call of Duty. While some games may run slower due to the conversion of x86 instructions to Arm instructions, most games should perform well, especially in graphics-intensive scenarios.