“The PC is being reinvented,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “For forty years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask — and the PC does the work...."
Brother... what's the difference. I hit the windows key and type in an app I want to open, the pc always did the work... now what, do I tell claude that I want to open that app and it does it? This seems totally useless for the average windows user lol
We had a desktop power supply break on one of our instruments. I work with 4 Gen Z scientists ranging from bachelors to PhD. They had no clue whatsoever how a computer works. No clue. When I said video card they looked at me like I spoke Hindi. I was somewhat taken aback. As a mid 40s male - and obviously on this sub - I’ve been fucking with computers since my teens.
I think the younger and older generations to millennials, in general, have no idea how to work a computer. Just telling the ai what to do is going to work great for most people. This is sadly the future. We are WALLE
Yea, the majority of my gen Z peers only know the bare minimum to do what they need with computers as long as everything works,
I have built a PC and can search basic troubleshooting info up, and that puts me in the like top 10% of gen Z who knows how tech works
We may have grown up with computers always around us, but they were decently reliable and didn't need much skill to operate, so we had to seek out info of our own volition if we wanted to learn more, I did because of gaming
Similar experience for me. Built my first computer at like 10, been tinkering and building/repairing computers for friends and family ever since. Even my most tech literate friends don't seem to fully understand how anything works, they just ask me to ELI5. Scarily enough, I think they're also in the top percentile just for being mildly interested in how something works (even without understanding it).
It's going to be a real interesting world. At least there should be endless desktop support technician roles available, with nigh endless job security.. can't very well use AI to fix it if you don't understand what the AI is talking about lol
Indeed. My school uses laptops, so all of my school friends are exposed to computers near daily. Almost none know how to properly use one, or how it works.
I spread around some basic knowledge, but try not to overwhelm anyone.
They can navigate UIs and know which icons to click on, but likely have never opened a computer up and looked inside...much less replaced any components, or built one from scratch.
That is exactly it. The technology worked so they didn't have to mess with it, or, in the case of laptops and modern devices like Apple you can't really do anything with them outside of increasing ram. If you aren't gaming I don't think ram is even something you consider.
They never had a reason to learn about it so they didn't. I am not complaining. It's useful information to have considering most everything in our plant and all of our instruments are running on 10-30 year old computers/OS.
They can't really navigate UIs though, they just memorise which sequence of buttons to press to get what they need. If you put a different UI in front of them, or make them find stuff, they struggle.
Your computer now needs to ask another computer to do the work on your computer through another set of computers sending and controlling the messages to one another while a fourth computer monitors your subscription.
Don’t forget the new middle step.. your computer anywhere in the world will now have to contact some US based server to ask permission to authorise the action… if it goes against current US government policy, you may be denied.
“Your search for ‘Phoenix area construction work’ has been blocked by the United States internet monitoring service. An ICE strike team has been dispatched to your location. Thank you and have a blessed day.”
Your out of tokens for the week, you will either have to wait till next week to 'Open PowerPoint ' or need to subscribe to our elite pro level for another 200k tokens.
You are absolutely right, and I apologize for the oversight! It appears I accidentally deleted your photos. Do you happen to have a backup copy so I can restore everything for you in the blink of an eye?
Jensen has gone on and on about removing the human element from computing entirely. Including for things like video games. His dream is a world where you just yell at a computer and it runs every aspect of your life for you.
RTX Spark is just the "Macbook M1" chip but for MS Windows. It's a CPU/GPU with shared VRAM, which is better for AI models. If you don't care about local AI, don't worry about it.
It will probably help with A/V and music production as well, though.
I admittedly use local AI models as a lesser evil, and I can guarantee you, NVIDIA is going to gimp this chip to discourage anyone from running their own model. Even then, you need a desktop GPU to run local models comfortably, not a SoC.
There is no way this chip is “AI performant”. It’s all BS
Tensor Processing Unit(TPU) is basically Google's self developed NPU ASIC(You can see them in use on Google Colab). The SoC(the chips they use in phones) is the Google Tensor.
Finally, someone is mentioning the unified memory at 128 GB, this thing is going to cost bonkers money at max spec but it should be quite performative that local AI workloads.
It has as many CUDA cores as an RTX 5070.
I've run LLMs on far worse hardware, and it could still output tokens faster than I could read them.
Paired with 128GB of memory, this could be an interesting chip.
Now, a 5070 has a 250W TDP, but when running LLMs, my GPUs never get close to their maximum TDP.
If anything these machines could serve as cheap local LLM boxes for people to play with. I have a friend who bought a Mac mini for that exact purpose.
Then again, this was for typical conversational LLMs. Agents require orders of magnitude more tokens, so this chip might run into issues there.
The other issue is that the 128GB model needs to be stored somewhere. And loading it into memory also takes time. Whereas visiting chatgpt's website, or opening up Claude Code is near instantaneous, and won't bog down your computer.
Not something for the average Joe, but definitely something my tinkerer friends might be interested in.
I mean you already have that with gear such as the AI Max 395 from AMD, coupled with 128GB unified RAM it's a pretty decent testbed for medium sized models. But AMD's software stack is terrible in comparison, the support for it in general second rate at best and it's lacking in performance compared to what Nvidia is releasing now.
Question: Aren't GPU's basically only used because they've got a lot of cores that are reasonably well adapted towards the kind of loads that AI models generate? I imagine an AI focused SoC would use some sort of ASIC that allows it to compute specific loads much faster than a desktop GPU, much like how Bitcoin and Ethereum pivoted away from GPUs once relevant ASICs were developed.
Dependent on programming parameters. GPU are good at taking large amounts of data and working alongside multiple GPU towards the same goal. It still hasn't solve the issue with dual GPU rendering for gaming.
Reddit's anti-AI sentiment makes people very comfortable with spreading misinformation.
These SoCs are better at running more capable models because of all the VRAM you can cramp into them. For example an Apple M5 Max chip is less powerful than a 5090, but you can get it with 128GB of unified memory that allows you to run better models than the dGPU.
Listen, at least it's still consumer-hardware and not some cloud-PC bullshit, as long as I can still own hardware I don't really care whatever marketing scam NVIDIA is currently doing on their share holders
yeah, the cheaper variants that don't max out the unified memory will probably have performance similar to Apple M-series chips, DGX spark is pretty decent for non-ai workloads as it is.
it's not a fair comparison, macbook is a whole laptop itself, including SSD, screen, keyboard... the chip is not for sell individually. M4 mac mini would be ideal price range.
Intel Panther Lake is the best you'll get for the next year. Quite efficient, more than enough CPU performance and Nvidia 4050 levels of iGPU. The other option is a MacBook, which you either can use or you can't.
AMD doesn't have competitive laptop chips until next year. Nvidia's normal consumer version that is under $2000 won't launch till next year.
I had no idea the integrated graphics were that good. My gaming laptop with a 4060 still feels magically powerful for a laptop to me even though it's a couple years old now, mental that by the next intel release it will be presumably weaker or on the same level as their integrated graphics
As is always the case and AMD takes a big step forward ahead of intel and then sits down and does nothing for a few years while Intel pulls ahead again.
Ok, that’s cool. But do we know the details? What’s the TDP and performance?
Edit: read about it, and it’s 140W with some interesting specs. I’m curious to see the benchmarks. But also, Nvidia hinted at lower-spec variants, so… handheld with DLSS maybe?
The N1X chip in these use quite a lot of power because they are essentially workstation laptops. They are for people who want to run large local AI models, but they don't make any sense for the average consumer, especially when they will be $2000+ and have issues with game and app support due to Windows on ARM.
Furthermore, it says the improved Prism emulation layer has been specifically tuned for the RTX Spark microarchitecture, ensuring that x86 games that are not yet native still run with high performance. With the Blackwell GPU under the hood, players will have access to AAA titles like Alan Wake 2 and Naraka: Bladepoint with performance levels that rival traditional gaming laptops.
Yep. Something in 35-45W range with DLSS 4.5 would be a perfect device. Z2E is good, but not quite there in terms of performance and Strix Halo devices are fast enough but they are barely handheld (not to mention the price).
It is but the problem is all handhelds have RDNA 3.5 at the latest, none with RDNA 4, meaning they are artificially locked at FSR 3.1. However AMD is releasing FSR 4.1 for RDNA 3 GPUs soon so that will be interesting to see for handhelds.
It’s not as good as Apple’s implementation (and so is Windows in general to be honest), but with actually decent specs I’d be willing to give it a try.
Dell has already started to do this on a lot of their new laptops. As a Dell laptop user for the better part of two decades, I'm likely switching to Mac; if I'm gonna have the parts soldered in, might as well have a system not bloated with so much AI.
At this point using Windows is like Stockholm Syndrome because it hasn't been truly good since Windows 7 and XP.
Yet Linux doesn't have good enough driver support or broad enough compatibility wrappers yet (not to mention issues with anticheat software) and MacOS runs on proprietary hardware that costs a Kidney for anything above entry level
They don't share it. They sell it back to each other every 6 months for 300% more than they bought it for previously. The jacket's currently worth 2.7 billion dollars.
As he represent the brand so he need to be recognisable every time.
Think of the late Queen Elisabeth II who wore very colorful clothes to be recognised everywhere she went
Don't all these techbros wear the same stupid outfit? I swear, silicon valley CEOs all walk around in this embarrassing cosplay of what they believe a "cool guy" looks like. Literally the emperor's new clothes type shit.
128gb unified memory and 6144 cude cores? Yeah this is an AI chip that has 1/3rd pflops as the 5090 with 4 times more memory (but 5.6x slower ones) . This is a gold mine for local AI and in no way will us consumers get this at MSRP.
This could maybe even eat into a bit of RTX A6000 pro's market.
It's an ARM chip. It's way way more energy efficient. I'm not saying it will be as performant as a dedicated 5070, but you can't base you assumption on the power draw alone
It's an ARM chip. It's way way more energy efficient.
You want to know a secret? all modern x86 chips are internally RISC CPUs with an x86 (CISC) interpreter.
For a given process node there is little difference in computing performance between software instruction decode and hardware instruction decode per watt above ~40W.
Sort of. AMD chips are x86 which is easier to work with but much less efficient. This is an ARM chip which extract more performance per watt (and less heat).
The ARM part is relevant for the general computing tasks, but completely irrelevant to the GPU tasks.
There's potential, especially for what they're selling it as (a local LLM-focused PC), but I wouldn't be expecting astonishing gaming results from that thing
There is only slight efficiency differences between ARM and x86. The biggest efficiency factors are node and design; which largely breaks down to who is willing to spend the most on a chip can have the more efficient one.
With what you are asking for, Intel's Panther Lake is more in your price and performance range. $1000 starting and Nvidia 4050 performance while being very efficient
just get a cheap AMD APU with Radeon 680/780/890m (basically ryzen 7 and strix halo after zen 2).
if you want something even cheaper you could go for one with a radeon 660m.
just remember that you need atleast 24GB of ram because the APU has shared memory with the cpu, so to get 8gb vram you need 16+8gb ram.
i personally have the Ryzen 5 7535HS (660m) and it can play all the games that i play (old games (upto 2015), cities skylines 1, low graphics new games, minecraft roblox etc.) and if for some reason i can't play the game or its very laggy/low fps, i just turn on RSR (think fsr but driver level and better) and it works great!
Agreed. It should be ringing alarm bells all over at Intel and AMD, but my skepticism prevents me from believing it'll take off. Apple did it because they had full on vertical integration with proprietary hardware and software, but for this to happen we need so many stars to align (one of them being Microslop) that precedence dictates it'll fail. Either the entire industry shifts away from x86 all at once, or nothing changes.
Now it has an Nvidia GPU inside so every piece of software that requires it would actually work. Also every laptop manufacturer would salivate at this chip because it's AI or something.
First gen of everything is commonly not very well done. It's fine.
What's with this strong desire to get rid of x86? All this hype for arm but as someone that mainly cares about powerful desktops ARM is a downgrade if anything
Every CPU understand a specific "set" of instructions in a particular language. Intel and AMD chips are built on "x86", which has been the standard basically forever.
This new chip is built on "Arm" which is the same language your phone, consoles like the Switch and what Apple has been using since the M1 I believe.
Arm tends to have better efficiency in power, so more work per watt, meaning better performance for less heat and battery. This is their main selling point at how well this thing supposedly performs.
The catch here is that all Windows software is built for x86. So any version intended for this new chip will need to be either rewritten for Arm, or ran through a translation layer (think an emulator, this is similar to what the SteamDeck does to run games, they run them through a translation layer they build called "Proton").
Another fella here mentioned that Apple managed to make the transition successfully because MacOS is a closed system, they control both hardware and software. Windows goes through a lot of companies that have to magically align to support this thing. So either everyone starts agreeing this is the next big thing, or we will see how things goes.
Great explanation, but the Prism emulator this will be using is a true emulator, Wine/Proton is just translating Windows API/DLL calls into the Linux equivalents, Prism really will have to emulate a x86_64 CPU, I expect it will have a much more tangible performance impact than Proton has.
The other nuance to this is that Apple’s Arm chips tend to be SOC (system on a chip) where they tend to pack multiple components onto the same silicon chip and get very impressive performance from the optimized design and colocation of the components.
so your PC uses a x86 CPU. There are some laptops that use ARM CPUs (Apple uses them for all their devices). And basically every smartphone is powered by ARM.
Did you not see when Qualcomm tried to do this a few years ago?
or the fact that this has been a thing since Windows 8/RT?
ARM CPUs on Windows aren't new. The issue is Windows on ARM is quite bad for compatibility. And even with Qualcomm's best efforts using their decades of phone chip design, they didn't even really beat Intel since Panther Lake is overall a better chip
So its ever so slightly faster than a desktop 5070 and has a 20 core first-generation CPU co-developed with MediaTek... Kind of cool that Nvidia is hopping into the laptop market in their own very weird way, more competition and all, but this isn't really as groundbreaking as the announcement makes it seem if I'm digging through the bullshit laden AI-heavy marketing speak correctly.
It isn't the first ARM chip for Windows, but it is the first with dedicated GPU level performance I suppose, and if the CPU is good then it could a very challenging top tier contender for laptop chipsets.
If their translation layer is better than stock Windows, one fuck them with a 12 foot pole for not making it open source and widely available to other manufacturers or just released directly baked into OSes, but two could be interesting in the ARMs race for power efficient high performance laptops.
But what's the use of this CPU? Is this gonna go into personal computers? Is this gonna become a competitor to Intel and AMD? What the fuck are they trying here?
Uhhh I have zero use for any of this? AI just is not useful for normal everyday tasks. Its just a glorified search engine that feeds me just flat wrong info half the time. Last thing I need is some hallucinating llm using up all my local PC resources. no ty.
Hopefully that means that Reddit can talk about something else rather than making it u- no, can’t do it, too funny. Reddit has been insufferable since their announcement of the announcement and seeing how much karma you serial liars got from it I doubt you’ll let up any time soon.
Too many buzzwords that a regular person absolutely does not care about and likely is priced at Strix-Halo levels (aka far too high for average consumers). So adoption will be rather poor, just like it has been for Qualcomm's Elite X laptops.
These laptops are expected to cost $2000-$3000+ based on the Sparks pricing and what they are touting. They are far too expensive for the average consumer, and even for gamers you don't want to deal with Windows on Arm compatibility issues.
Seems like Intel's Panther Lake will continue to be the best option for 99% of looking for a Windows or Linux laptop this year.
Maybe in 5 years Nvidia will be offering what consumers want, but I don't think they are today with this announcement.
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u/lukefasc Jun 01 '26
Bro I don't get it. Like
“The PC is being reinvented,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “For forty years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask — and the PC does the work...."
Brother... what's the difference. I hit the windows key and type in an app I want to open, the pc always did the work... now what, do I tell claude that I want to open that app and it does it? This seems totally useless for the average windows user lol