Overview
- A TechPowerUp forum user named Fouquin says they found a Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra prototype in mid‑June and ran weeks of benchmarks that leaked to the press.
- The tested unit used the full‑fat RTX Spark N1X system on chip with 6,144 CUDA cores, a 20‑core Arm CPU, 24 GB of unified RAM and a 512 GB SSD.
- Testers report that immature firmware and drivers are the main bottleneck, with the GPU clock swinging roughly 1.5 GHz to 2.3 GHz and causing repeated frame stutters and some crashes.
- Installing Nvidia’s developer preview drivers raised idle power draw from roughly 7–8W to about 12–23W without consistent stability or performance gains, and some synthetic and app tests trailed Apple’s M‑series in parts.
- OEMs still plan fall 2026 launches and publishers are beginning to add native support, but final retail performance will depend on months of driver, firmware and OEM power/thermal tuning and is not guaranteed.