Nvidia and Microsoft Put RTX Spark in Windows PCs, Surface Laptop Ultra From $2,599

Nvidia and Microsoft used a San Francisco event on Wednesday to launch RTX Spark, a new system-on-a-chip for Windows laptops and compact desktops, with preorders open now and devices shipping October 16. The Surface Laptop Ultra built around it starts at $2,599, while the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box starts at $5,999, according to independent coverage from Tom’s Hardware.

At the Windows AI and Surface event at Dogpatch Studios, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella framed the launch as the start of an agentic era for the PC. “The personal computer is the ultimate tool, it’s my ultimate tool, and for a whole generation of people, it’s our ultimate tool,” Huang said. “What happens in the era of agents, when the agent is on your computer? It is now your personal assistant.”

What RTX Spark puts in a laptop

Nvidia says RTX Spark pairs a Blackwell RTX GPU with up to 6,144 cores and an up to 20-core Grace CPU connected at 600 GB/s, for one petaflop of FP4 AI performance and up to 128GB of unified memory. Microsoft’s Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and Devices, said the Surface Laptop Ultra was built around the chip: “With up to 128 gigs of unified memory and up to a petaflop of AI compute, you can run models on this laptop that simply don’t fit on a traditional machine.”

Nvidia says the platform can run models such as Qwen 3.8 Flash Next, a 125B model with 51B n-gram, locally and unmetered, and that it carries the full CUDA software stack. Systems are coming from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, MSI and Gigabyte, in designs from slim laptops to compact desktops intended for always-on agents. The compact desktop, Nvidia says, uses the same superchip in a chassis built for 24/7 operation.

Windows 11 gets agent controls

Microsoft announced general availability of Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC), OS-level infrastructure that lets agents run in the background under operating system control. “We are building these primitives directly into Windows, so agents can be secured, observed and governed,” Davuluri said. Tom’s Hardware reports that Windows will also require agents to attribute their actions to themselves, with IT rules that can be set once and applied across a fleet of devices.

Other Windows 11 changes include quick actions in the taskbar Search menu for changing settings, taking screenshots or arranging windows using natural language, with Copilot launched when a request calls for it. Microsoft’s Jacob Andreou said the new Copilot is getting access to local files and local models and can take actions on the user’s behalf, switching to local models when privacy calls for it; those features are coming over the next few months.

DGX Station comes to Windows

Nvidia also previewed DGX Station for Windows, which it calls the first deskside AI supercomputer for the Windows enterprise desktop. It runs on the GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip with 748GB of coherent memory and up to 20 petaFLOPS of FP4 compute, enough for models up to a trillion-parameter scale locally. Until now DGX Station ran on Linux. Nvidia says Linux toolchains remain accessible through WSL, and HP and Dell desktops are expected later this year.

Preorders for RTX Spark laptops are open now, with availability on October 16; compact desktops go on sale in November. Nvidia is taking sign-ups for DGX Station for Windows availability notifications.

Related reading

Sources

• NVIDIA, Microsoft Kick Off a New Beginning for Windows PCs With RTX Spark and AI Agents — NVIDIA Blog
• Microsoft and Nvidia launch Surface Laptop Ultra with RTX Spark — Tom's Hardware