NVIDIA's RTX Spark superchip just posted its strongest benchmark run yet, and the numbers are turning heads. Two fresh Geekbench 7 listings for the Arm-based N1X silicon show a full-fat 20-core part landing within 11 percent of Apple's 14-core M4 Max in multi-core performance, while comfortably outpacing the best x86 mobile chips AMD and Intel currently ship.
The results are early engineering-sample numbers on pre-release hardware with unfinished drivers, but the trajectory is unmistakable: NVIDIA's first all-in-one laptop silicon is maturing fast, and the gap that looked embarrassing a few months ago is now a real fight.
Two SKUs, One Impressive Story
The Geekbench database now holds entries for both known RTX Spark configurations, each paired with 64GB of unified memory. The flagship 20-core part, clocked at 4.0GHz, scored 2,570 points in the single-core test and 23,126 in multi-core. The cut-down 18-core sibling, running at 3.9GHz with its cores split 10+8, delivered 2,541 single-core and 21,776 multi-core.
Context is everything here, so here is where those numbers land against the current field:
- Apple 14-core M4 Max: 25,957 multi-core, so the 20-core RTX Spark trails by about 11 percent, down from a much wider gap in earlier leaks.
- Apple M3 Max (14-core): 22,385 multi-core, meaning the 20-core NVIDIA part is actually 3.3 percent faster.
- AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo): 20,609 average, so even the 18-core RTX Spark beats it by 5.6 percent, and the 20-core wins by roughly 12 percent.
- Base Apple M4 Pro: around 21,700 multi-core, which the 18-core Spark essentially matches and the 20-core clears by a healthy margin.
Single-core is the weaker story, as expected for a first-generation Arm design. Apple's current base M5 remains about 41 percent faster, and every Apple silicon chip from the M3 generation up outruns the NVIDIA part in single-threaded work. But against the Windows ecosystem the picture flips: the 20-core RTX Spark beats the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 by 5.8 percent in single-core and edges Intel's Core Ultra 9 275HX by more than 4 percent, with only Intel's Core Ultra X9 388H (Panther Lake) pulling ahead by around 7 percent.
On the graphics side, the developer driver for Windows 11 ARM64 confirms 5,120 CUDA cores on the 18-core part and 6,144 on the 20-core flagship, matching the desktop RTX 5070 and RTX 3080 in raw core count. NVIDIA co-developed the superchip with MediaTek, and it combines a 20-core Grace-derived CPU with a Blackwell RTX GPU on a unified memory fabric.
Why This Leak Matters
The momentum shift is the real headline. Before the Computex 2026 announcement, the same silicon, then known as N1X, leaked in Geekbench 6 and failed to beat Apple's older M3 Max, drawing shrugs from the hardware community. Early Surface Laptop Ultra prototypes followed with reports of stuttering games and CUDA workloads failing outright.
Those rough early results now look like driver teething problems rather than silicon limitations. Each successive leak has closed the gap, and Tom's Hardware notes that if the trend holds through launch, reviewers could see the RTX Spark matching the maxed-out M4 Pro and base M4 Max when it ships.
Here is what makes this run genuinely exciting:
- Multi-core leadership on Windows: both SKUs beat AMD's flagship Strix Halo APU, something no x86 laptop chip from Intel or AMD currently does across the board.
- Apple's margin is shrinking: from failing to beat an M3 Max to within 11 percent of an M4 Max in a single quarter of driver work.
- GPU headroom: a Blackwell GPU with RTX 5070-class core counts means the AI and graphics story may be even bigger than the CPU numbers.
NVIDIA has also committed to making DRM and anti-cheat software work on day one, addressing the historical weakness of Arm-based Windows machines and the reason Qualcomm's Snapdragon push never fully converted gamers.
The first RTX Spark laptops from Dell, Asus, HP, and other partners are expected this fall, and NVIDIA has positioned the platform as the centerpiece of its personal AI agent vision, with local 120B-class model inference pitched alongside mainstream gaming performance.
Engineering-sample scores always deserve a grain of salt, and these Geekbench runs are no exception. But the pattern across three consecutive leaks is clear: NVIDIA's superchip keeps getting faster, the driver stack keeps improving, and Apple's comfortable lead over Windows laptops is no longer comfortable at all.
If the final retail silicon matches these numbers, the fall laptop season is going to be the most competitive Windows versus Apple showdown in years, with RTX Spark as the challenger nobody saw coming this fast.
Comments