Nvidia says RTX Spark will run Windows apps and games on Arm

Nvidia says its upcoming RTX Spark laptops will run Windows apps and games on Arm, including software that has been incompatible with earlier Arm-based Windows PCs.

Fourteen years ago, Microsoft’s original Surface ran a stripped-down version of Windows on an Nvidia Tegra chip. It could not run existing Windows apps, and Microsoft wrote off $900 million in inventory. Nvidia says the first RTX Spark laptops arrive Friday, October 16, and will run Adobe apps, Office, Blender and games that require kernel-level anti-cheat software.

The RTX Spark uses the same chip Nvidia put in mini desktops for AI developers a year earlier, but the laptops run Windows 11. Microsoft’s Prism emulator translates older Windows apps and games for Arm. Nvidia says its graphics chip has more power than a Steam Deck or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, and that it supports anti-cheat software used by Fortnite, Roblox, Rust, Rainbow Six Siege and MapleStory. Support for other games is planned later.

Early testing found smooth 1080p performance in Cyberpunk 2077. However, translating some games’ x86 instructions can slow them down: Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Assassin’s Creed Shadows did not exceed 30fps in the tests described. Nvidia also says the laptops can run local AI, but the article says this is slower than using AI in the cloud. RTX Spark laptops may cost up to $7,000 and have 128GB of RAM.