I’m benchmarking Nvidia RTX Spark LIVE: Testing CPU, GPU, AI and gaming performance

Welcome to the benchmark thunderdome. Nvidia RTX Spark is here — I’m now allowed to tell you about my last week testing it, and benchmark it for you live.

This isn’t just a new laptop chip — it’s an Arm-based Grace CPU glued to a Blackwell RTX GPU sharing up to 128GB of unified memory. If you want a diary of my thoughts and experiences all throughout the past seven days, I’ve written about my week living with RTX Spark.

But this live blog is for those who want numbers-based answers to the key claims Nvidia has made: does it run games? How fast is that CPU? Can that local AI capability automate your life? Is the Arm emulation as good as they say? Does it really have all-day battery life?

I’ve been testing this Surface Laptop Ultra in my lab all week, and while I can’t tell you my thoughts on the hardware itself, for the next few hours, I can share everything I found out about the chip itself.

Keep this page open. Let’s break some silicon.

Where to buy RTX Spark laptops

• MS Surface Laptop Ultra: $2,599 @ MS Store
• HP OmniBook X AI 14: $2,999 @ HP
• HP OmniBook Ultra AI 16 OLED: $3,199 @ Best Buy
• Lenovo Pro 9n: $2,999 @ Lenovo
• Lenovo Yoga 9n 2-in-1: $2,999 @ Lenovo
• MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ OLED 2-in-1: preorder for $3,299 @ MSI
• Dell XPS 16: $3,799 @ Best Buy
• Asus ProArt P14: $6,499 @ Asus
• Asus ProArt P16: $4,499 @ Asus

LIVE UPDATES

Let's get into Geekbench 7

The gates are open, so let’s get straight to the CPU math. How does Nvidia’s Arm-based Grace CPU stack up against Apple, AMD and Intel?

Here is the brutal truth: if you’re looking for RTX Spark to claim that single- and multi-core crown from the Cupertino crew, you won’t find it. In Geekbench 7, the RTX Spark’s speeds are noticeably slower than Apple’s M5 Pro and Max chips by quite a margin. Things get closer on the multicore when compared to Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, but single-core prowess still exists.

What about 3DMark gaming benchmarks?

This is where Nvidia gets its lick back against the competition. It has a massive Blackwell RTX GPU in it after all, and when you look at the 3DMark numbers, it matches up to something you’d see in an RTX 5070 gaming laptop — even when tasked with x86 emulation in some of these tests.

The two that are n/a on Apple M5 Pro aren't available on the 3DMark suite for MacBooks.

Battery life is a mixed bag

So what about stamina? Nvidia promised all-day battery life and technically that’s true. But it doesn’t come close to the efficiency king of Apple’s MacBook Pro.

When it comes to gaming or running local AI at full pelt, this falls in line with what you’d expect from an RTX gaming laptop (our gaming test result got one hour and thirty eight minutes) — give or take about 20-30 minutes depending on how much power the internals soak up.

Now let's get into the AI performance

You're probably reading about my adventures into local AI on RTX Spark this week. To put some numbers to Nvidia's advantage here, I ran it through UL Procyon AI benchmarks.

This isn't a test that has been normally run on other laptops in the Tom's Guide lab, so I've had to ask around my friends for insights on this.

In their experience, RTX Spark seems to be surpassing the M5 Pro's AI prowess, exceeding the capabilities of AMD Ryzen AI Max+ and blowing past Intel Core Ultra X9. Once I can do these tests myself, I'll do a follow up.

Also, for what it's worth, here's the comparison to my RTX 5060 Ti 16GB desktop GPU.

A reduction is always expected between the raw wattage of desktop parts and a laptop chip, but the Spark does get impressively close.