Apple’s Mac lineup has gone from strength to strength since the rollout of its own Apple Silicon chips beginning with the M1, and while other manufacturers are catching up, it may have its most impressive rival yet.

Nvidia’s new RTX Spark leans on the company’s strengths in AI, gaming, and creative applications, and while it’s not out yet, it could supercharge the Windows laptop in a similar fashion to Apple’s own revolution in 2020.

Here’s all we know about each, and which could come out on top.

Release

The RTX Spark was revealed at Computex 2026, and we've already had some early hands-on time with it. The chip will roll out via manufacturers including Asus, Dell, MSI, and more in the coming months.

It’ll also come to the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, with Acer and Gigabyte expected to follow. Sadly, because it’s not on sale yet, we don’t have an idea of what the final prices on these machines will be. Expect them to be high.

The M5 Pro, Apple’s latest and greatest laptop chip, can be found starting at $2199. That’s a steep cost, but it only gets steeper if you’re looking for more memory or storage.

Specs

What’s in a chip?

As you might expect, Nvidia’s new chip is built to take advantage of the company’s expertise across the likes of AI and graphical prowess.

To that end, the company hasn’t been shy about reaching out to partners like Microsoft and Adobe. RTX Spark, thanks to its development in partnership with Microsoft, will allow the first Windows PC models “purpose-built for personal agents”. OpenClaw users, rejoice!

Nvidia has also been working with Adobe to make its suite of professional apps, like Photoshop and Premiere, run even better on RTX Spark. The result (with the caveat of us not having tested it yet) is two times the AI and graphics performance.

It’s worth noting that Apple also trots out Adobe numbers when talking about its Mac chips, stating the M5 Pro and Max models offer a 35% increase in capabilities from the prior generation.

We’re expecting big things for GPU performance, too. The Blackwell architecture from the RTX 50-series of GPUs is found in the onboard GPU, and that means plenty of CUDA cores that could, at least in theory, mean features like DLSS 4.5 could come to RTX Spark.

Apple does boast improved graphical performance for the Mac lineup with each iteration, but it would be fair to say that its ecosystem doesn’t support as many titles. With that in mind, gamers will likely prefer the RTX Spark.

The CPU on Apple’s chip supports up to 64GB of RAM, but the RTX Spark can reach as high as 128GB. Expect to pay handsomely for it, but it might make it a no-brainer if you’re using your laptop for complex AI compute tasks.

Bottom line

Watching these two chips go head-to-head in the next generation of devices (MacBook Ultra, anyone?) is going to be fascinating, but it seems pretty clear-cut to me where the dividing lines will be.

Anyone who wants raw power for things like gaming or demanding creative work is going to be leaning towards the RTX Spark. Meanwhile, those looking for streamlined efficiency and battery life will still be suited to a MacBook. While Nvidia's chip will win on raw power, it will still run Windows inside a laptop developed by a third party. Apple's unification will be its remaining strength.

More from Tom's Guide

• Best of Computex 2026: The 17 greatest gadgets from the world’s largest computing show
• I gamed for 250 hours on AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE — it’s a $549 nightmare for Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti
• I just tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — it leaves ROG Xbox Ally in the dust with breakthrough Intel Arc G3 power

I’ve tested Nvidia’s RTX Spark laptop chip (spoiler alert: it’s mindblowing), and now I’ve gone hands-on with every single laptop launching in just a few months time to set up a ranked list.

Eight premium notebooks are launching — each with their own unique features and quirks that I’m keen to share, so that when the launch date arrives, you know which one is best for you. Of course, this is personal preference, and certain systems I put in a lower grade may be better suited for you!

These are all incredible-feeling laptops, but grading them allowed me to get brutally honest with where I’d put them. So without further ado, let’s get into it.

While the Microsoft Surface Laptop was used in the demos, other models were turned off. This was something Nvidia required to ensure journalists (like me) don’t sneakily benchmark the laptops! That being said, these notebooks are basically pre-existing laptops but with RTX Spark inside and some tweaked cooling, so I can use past experience to fill in some gaps.

Nvidia RTX Spark laptops: Tier list

S-Tier: Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra and Asus ProArt P14

I’ve already shared my experience with the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra — it’s a spectacular-feeling laptop in terms of a premium build quality, fantastic mini LED screen, tactile keyboard and a utilitarian aesthetic.

But the big showcase feature here (that no other Spark system has) is that breakthrough touchpad, which is able to communicate back to you with haptics across the UI. It’s a unique sensation like when snapping apps to the sides of the screen.

That being said, it is a 16-inch beast of a system, and the reason why I love my 14-inch MacBook Pro is the power paired with portability. Enter the Asus ProArt P14, and when I say Apple’s pro notebook is in trouble, this is the most direct competition to it in terms of premium build, fantastic ergonomics, port array and that RTX Spark chip.

Throw in an OLED display, and you’ve got a phenomenal ultraportable that I’d be willing to trade off a little bit of battery life to get — but hopefully Nvidia’s “all-day battery life” comes true to make this less of a fear.

A-Tier: MSI Prestige Flip N16 AI+, Asus ProArt P16 and HP Omnibook X 14

Kicking off with the Prestige Flip N16 AI+, I’ve already gone hands-on with the Intel version of this system back at CES 2026, and I’m a huge fan of it. This is the only 2-in-1 in the lineup, and that flippable hinge has a smooth glide and strong staying power at all angles.

On top of that, the touchscreen OLED panel on the pre-existing model is gorgeous; the keyboard is nicely tactile; and the touchpad is absolutely massive. Plus, there’s a stylus stowed in the bottom of the shell magnetically.

Then there’s the ProArt P16 from Asus, which is the same as that P14, but only bigger. If 16 inches is more than your speed, this is a fantastic option. But I’ll always opt for something more portable.

And finally in the A-tier is the HP Omnibook X 14, which immediately tickled my inner love for 14-inch laptops. Premium build quality, good I/O and a top notch OLED panel up top — so why the lower grade? Well, it comes down to that keyboard.

Whenever I’m typing on laptop boards, I’m more of a fan of a subtle dish that my fingers can fall into, whereas the keys on here are much more pronounced. It definitely has its fans, but I’m a little more mixed towards them.

B-Tier: HP Omnibook 16 Ultra, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9N and Dell XPS 16 Creator Edition

Now for the B-tier. Again, not any real slight, and this is my way-too-early impressions based on holding the systems. But personal taste made this an easy decision.

The HP Omnibook 16 Ultra felt like the heaviest laptop of the bunch, and while it has all those same winning specs as other options like an OLED display and a ton of I/O, that keyboard has those odd raised keys again and the edges can feel a bit sharp on the wrists when leaning on this to type.

Next, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9N. From my time going hands-on with the Yoga Pro 9i (the same laptop shell), it’s a real prosumer piece of hardware with a nice aluminum build and those classic Lenovo ergonomics (a phenomenal keyboard for example).

But amongst a bunch of laptops that have some real unique elements that make these devices shine, it’s a rather unremarkable option. Not to say that’s a bad thing — I’m all for laptops that nail the fundamentals, but some just reinvent those fundamentals.

And then, there’s the Dell XPS 16 Creator Edition. In many ways, this is very much a Surface Laptop Ultra alternative, and another chapter in the book of Dell’s XPS apology tour for ditching the brand for a weird year back in 2024. The screen’s great, the touchpad is massive, and the I/O is plentiful.

My only main gripe is the keyboard — chiclet keys with no gaps between them. In my time testing XPS 16s of old, it took me a while to get used to a board like this, and I found myself often losing my place and making a couple of spelling errors.

Outlook

Of course, there's a lot more we need to find out first — not just actually testing these systems, but the big question of price. In a Q&A session, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did say this is the top-tier chip as part of a whole family.

That does mean we could get cheaper, lower-end models too. But looking at what we tested, we can get a somewhat decent guess of the price based on the fact its essentially the same silicon (and RAM) as the DGX Spark mini AI PC — a device that costs $5,000.

So if you want the top-tier model, this could get real pricey! But all I can say is I hope there are more reasonably priced RTX Spark laptops, which in the midst of RAMageddon may be tricky.

More from Tom's Guide

• Best of Computex 2026: The 17 greatest gadgets from the world’s largest computing show
• I gamed for 250 hours on AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE — it’s a $549 nightmare for Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti
• I just tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — it leaves ROG Xbox Ally in the dust with breakthrough Intel Arc G3 power

We've reached day 2 of Computex 2026, and from holding every Nvidia RTX Spark laptop to comparing all the new budget systems competing with the MacBook Neo, I have so much to update you on!

Beyond that, I got to talk to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about Spark, properly tested the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip in the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ (spoiler alert: AMD gaming handhelds are cooked), and went on a mission to find every budget laptop that competes with the MacBook Neo.

But that's not all, as my team is out here too — running around the exhibition center and finding all the best (and weirdest) tech of Computex. So follow along with us for all the latest.

Read the latest from Computex

• I just tested Nvidia RTX Spark laptops for video editing, gaming and AI — and the MacBook Pro is in trouble
• I held the MacBook Neo in one hand and the new XPS 13 in the other — and Dell’s affordable laptop is surprisingly lighter
• I just tested Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra — Nvidia RTX Spark brings life to one of the best laptops I’ve ever tried
• I spoke to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about RTX Spark — he is ‘willing to work’ on an RTX gaming handheld, N2X and N3X are already planned and the chip is 'more like R2D2’ than a laptop CPU
• I just tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — Intel Arc G3 is a breakthrough for handheld gaming, but at what cost?
• I thought Asus' massive 32-inch OLED would be my favorite Computex 2026 monitor — but I found one that was even better
• I tested the Acer Predator Atlas 8, and played a game Intel told me not to — the numbers are staggering

LIVE UPDATES

Computex is still going strong

Hey, all! Our Computex 2026 coverage is going strong as we're on the ground in Taipei checking out the latest and greatest from the computing world. Keep it locked here four all of our live updates and hands-on impressions.

RTX Spark put to the test

We've had the opportunity to put Nvidia's RTX Spark to the test for video editing, gaming, and AI, and the results are... impressive. Now, the obvious caveat is that we don't know what these machines will cost once they arrive — but it should make Apple and its MacBook Pro a little more than nervous.

Here's what my colleague Jason had to say after he'd spent some time with Nvidia's new chip: "With Microsoft in tow, working in lockstep to rebuild Windows 11 for Nvidia's agentic vision for the future of computing, these are going to be some truly mighty notebooks that may very well revolutionize the Windows laptop and truly stand on their own as the future of computing."

• Read the full story: I just tested Nvidia RTX Spark laptops for video editing, gaming and AI — and the MacBook Pro is in trouble

MSI debuts 'Triple Mode' monitor

This right here is the MSI MPG OLED 322URDX36. It's the first 31.5-inch, 4K 360Hz gaming monitor on the market to feature the 'Triple Mode' configuration technology.

It lets gamers switch freely between 4K 360Hz, 2K 520Hz, and FHD 680Hz based on their preferences — meeting the specific performance demands of various game genres.

The monitor rocks a peak HDR brightness of 1,500 nits and integrates an AI Care Sensor that "leverages accurate human detection to provide real-time OLED panel protection without compromising user privacy." Whatever that means.

Could Microsoft be building the most exciting RTX Spark laptop?

Microsoft will be facing down the MacBook Pro with the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year, it's one of the first eight laptops to arrive with Nvidia's RTX Spark on board and it could be seriously impressive.

Microsoft claims this will be most powerful Surface it's ever built and there are a few specs we are already pretty confident about. For starters, it has a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra display that can reportedly reach 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness. There's also a full set of ports, including HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack.

The Surface Laptop Ultra will also reportedly have “all-day” battery life and you can expect it to come in Platinum and Nightfall finishes.

• Read more: Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra packs an Nvidia Spark chip — and it could be a MacBook Pro killer

Intel Arc G3 steps up against AMD

Intel Arc G3 and G3 Extreme are really bringing the heat with a monstrous integrated GPU and XeSS 3, seemingly delivering some of the best handheld gaming experiences you can get.

We've checked out the Acer Predator Atlas 8 and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ here at Computex already, and both have impressed us with their smooth performance.

This is a huge win for Intel, which has, up until now, played second fiddle to AMD and its near-dominance over the handheld space.

MacBook Neo has competition from Dell

We just got to go hands-on with Dell's new XPS laptop line but one device in particular stood out: the new Dell XPS 13. Thin, light and affordable, you know where this is going. We have another MacBook Neo competitor in our midst.

The Dell XPS 13 does have a few nice extras you don't get on the Neo, like a backlit keyboard, a touchscreen and two full-featured USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 ports with one on each side. Stay tuned for our full hands-on but so far, I'm quite impressed.

A mesmerizing laptop

Laptops tend to look similar, which is why the Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Vincent van Gogh Edition stands out. Adorned with the troubled artist's work on the lid, it’s certainly a conversation starter. The fact that it’s built around a Prestige 14 Flip AI+ means you’re getting quite the workhorse here, too.

But what about the price? It’s the one question nobody can really answer, given how RAMageddon has put the whole computing market in flux.

To hazard a guess, given that the current Prestige sells for $1,299 and this is a more powerful special-edition machine, we bet it could be around $2,499. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what the actual price is.

8 laptops confirmed to launch in the fall with RTX Spark

Nvidia's RTX Spark chip is already slated to appear in a bunch of laptops arriving this fall, including a new Surface Laptop from Microsoft. Following on from the laptops, expect to see it appearing in mini PCs and small form-factor from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Acer and Gigabyte.

Powered by the new chip, these laptops are poised to deliver a thin-and-light form factor coupled with elite battery life and enough power for desktop-class AI development and heavy video editing. They'll also be pretty good when it comes to gaming, too.

The only question is what will the pricing be for these new machines?

• Read more: All 8 laptops launching with Nvidia RTX Spark this fall — and what they can do

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ leaves the ROG Xbox Ally in the dust

Intel Arc G3 handhelds are the talk of the town here at Computex 2026, and I just got an early hands-on with the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+. In short, believe the hype — this is the next generation of gaming on the go, unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Of course, a lot of this comes from that new silicon, which copies a lot of Panther Lake’s homework, including that monster integrated GPU with XeSS 3 support to deliver some blistering frame rates (more on those later) while being much more power efficient than any AMD-filled handheld I’ve tested.

But the secret sauce here is MSI’s DNA — learning from previous Claws and dramatically upgrading the design, vastly improving airflow to keep it cool, bringing a gorgeous new display, tweaking the ergonomics and tactility of the vibration, and making it even easier to upgrade.

The Asus Xbox Ally X20 isn’t just another special edition handheld

We’ve already seen a ton of new handheld gaming PCs here at Computex 2026. Instead of going that route, Asus has decided to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its Republic of Gamers (ROG) subbrand with a special edition of the ROG Xbox Ally X.

Dubbed the ROG Xbox Ally X20, this new device uses (mostly) the same hardware as last year’s Xbox-themed handheld. You still get the powerful performance of AMD’s Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

While not technically a new device, Asus has made some fundamental changes under the hood and has also given the handheld a regal makeover, with hints of gold throughout its design.

The best of Computex 2026

Our best of Computex 2026 round-up is live! There, we detail the 17 products that impressed us the most during our time at the convention.

From Nvidia’s biggest chip release in the last 20 years, Intel revolutionizing handheld gaming, mind-blowing monitors, and actual value-for-money laptops to take on the MacBook Neo, we’ve fallen in love with so much tech here in Taipei!

Eight laptops are launching with Nvidia RTX Spark inside at Computex 2026, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is easily one of the best — so beautifully designed it almost makes Spark feel like a side character.

Gunning for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Microsoft doesn’t miss with a seriously luxurious build, great I/O for pros, fantastic ergonomics (including a breakthrough touchpad) and a mesmerizing display.

And you’ve seen what it will be able to do from all the RTX Spark testing I’ve done. This will not be a cheap laptop with that chip inside, so Microsoft has rolled out the red carpet in utilitarian aesthetics. Let me tell you about it.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Specs

A seriously good looker (and worker)

Make no mistake about it — the Surface Laptop Ultra is built different. On the face of it, this is a Surface Laptop if it started bulking for a few months. But once you get into the details, you realize it’s so much more than that.

It starts with a beefy utilitarian presence atop any desk. This is a hefty machine, but those premium materials and the added bulk makes this feel ready to power through any task you throw at it — just like a MacBook Pro does.

The similarities also extend to the port selection, but chalk this up as a win for the Ultra with its additional USB-A for wider support. They keyboard feels gorgeous to type on, which is something that Microsoft has really excelled in in the past — giving you a nice tactility to every key press that makes it feel intentful.

But the real star of the show on that bottom deck is the 30% larger haptic touchpad. It’s an absolute ocean with a smooth gliding surface, with every click giving me those same snappy sensations I love from the MacBook Pro’s trackpad. But as an addition here is the haptics that actually communicate back to you.

Built directly into Windows 11, you’ll feel small hints of feedback as you do key things like snap apps to sides of the screen. On top of that, the company is working with key developers to give you those same sensations in third party apps like moving your cursor over clips in a video timeline.

It’s a feeling that when returning to my MacBook Pro, I felt like something was missing! Top it all off with that gorgeously color-accurate and smooth PixelSense display up top that can get seriously bright, and you’ve got a nice-looking beast that’s ready for anything.

Monstrous performance

Speaking of ready for anything, that’s where I get to the fun stuff inside. You’ve seen a lot of the software stuff it will be able to do from the Microsoft Build announcements — in short, expect a lot of agentic AI features to take advantage of that RTX Spark chip.

And as you saw in my testing of Spark itself, there’s a lot to be had here from the massive local models changing the dynamic of how you interact with a computer from it being a tool you lays idle when you’re not using it, to an active assistant machine.

But let’s compare apples and oranges and put it up against the MacBook Pro workload. You want your laptop to get the pro stuff done speedily both on and off the charger. After flying around the most dense Unreal Engine map while connected and disconnected, that’s easily proven true. There’s also tie-ins with Adobe to use much more of that built-in RTX 5070-level GPU and turboboost creator tasks beyond levels I’d seen in equivalent Apple laptops.

But the real killer app for me is the ability to use the same laptop to work by day and play by night. Alan Wake 2 is built natively for Arm and can run at 1600p resolution with ray tracing and DLSS 4.5 ray reconstruction at buttery smooth frame rates. Even games that are not built for this architecture like Pragmata go through the Prism emulator layer and play smoothly too. And yes, both of these were on and off the charger too!

The big unanswered question here is power efficiency, which could be affected by that emulation layer. Speaking to Nvidia, they’re not giving anything away, but did give me a cheeky smile when I started talking about what all-day battery life really means. We could be in for something special here.

Outlook

Ignoring the larger USB-C port mystery (my theory is it’s a magnetic breakaway USB-C socket that replaces the missing Surface Connect), what you’re left with here is a phenomenal laptop that feels powerful.

The aesthetics are clean, the ergonomics are fantastic, the display is mesmerizing and the power under the hood is awesome! Of course, there’s a big question on price, which rumors here at Computex point to a starting cost of $3,000.

This is definitely for the pros who know how to make the most of that power, and no longer is the MacBook Pro the default option at this price. A new player has come to town.

More from Tom's Guide

• I spoke to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about RTX Spark — he tells us why this is less of a laptop chip and more like 'R2-D2,' and shares future plans on N2X and N3X
• I gamed for 250 hours on AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE — it’s a $549 nightmare for Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti
• I just tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — it leaves ROG Xbox Ally in the dust with breakthrough Intel Arc G3 power

Computex 2026 is fully underway, and besides asking Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about RTX Spark, I just tested the laptops of the future from Team Green!

But that's not all, as Intel's having a ball dunking on AMD with its Arc G3 gaming handheld chip in the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, we've been going hands-on with every Windows laptop that's facing off with the MacBook Neo (including the new Dell Xps 13), and much more.

Follow along with us for live updates from the ground, and keep us bookmarked throughout the week. You're going to want to see what we're up to!

Read the latest from Computex

• Nvidia RTX Spark is here, and it's going to 'reinvent the pc' — here's everything you need to know about this all-new laptop chip
• I spoke to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about RTX Spark — he is ‘willing to work’ on an RTX gaming handheld, N2X and N3X are already planned and the chip is 'more like R2D2’ than a laptop CPU
• All 8 laptops launching with Nvidia RTX Spark this fall — and what they can do
• I just tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — Intel Arc G3 is a breakthrough for handheld gaming, but at what cost?
• I gamed for 250 hours on AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE — it’s a $549 nightmare for Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti
• I thought Asus' massive 32-inch OLED would be my favorite Computex 2026 monitor — but I found one that was even better
• I just held the most beautiful laptop, but I’m not sure Vincent van Gogh would be happy with his name connected to AI
• I tested the Acer Predator Atlas 8, and played a game Intel told me not to — the numbers are staggering

LIVE UPDATES

Our first in-person look at RTX Spark

The big news of the conference so far is, of course, the RTX Spark and we've just got our first look at actual devices running Nvidia's chips from MSI.

They look even better in person than they did during Jensen's keynote yesterday. Hopefully, we'll be able to go hands-on with laptops, desktops and mini PCs running Nvidia RTX Spark chips soon.

• Read more: Nvidia RTX Spark is here, and it's going to 'reinvent the pc' — here's everything you need to know about this all-new laptop chip

8 laptops confirmed to launch in the fall with RTX Spark

Nvidia's RTX Spark chip is already slated to appear in a bunch of laptops arriving this fall, including a new Surface Laptop from Microsoft. Following on from the laptops, expect to see it appearing in mini PCs and small form-factor from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Acer and Gigabyte.

Powered by the new chip, these laptops are poised to deliver a thin-and-light form factor coupled with elite battery life and enough power for desktop-class AI development and heavy video editing. They'll also be pretty good when it comes to gaming, too.

The only question is what will the pricing be for these new machines?

• Read more: All 8 laptops launching with Nvidia RTX Spark this fall — and what they can do

Reporting from the show floor!

Computex is the biggest computing industry event of the year, and in among the flagship keynotes it's always fun to roam the halls and see what's on offer.

So far this year, we've spied a holographic PC that uses AI to answer your questions, a custom-built GTA VI PC that could be outdated before the game itself actually arrives and the forthcoming Wireless Touchpad Keyboard from sustainable laptop company Framework.

Intel Arc G3 steps up against AMD

Intel Arc G3 and G3 Extreme are really bringing the heat with a monstrous integrated GPU and XeSS 3, seemingly delivering some of the best handheld gaming experiences you can get.

We've checked out the Acer Predator Atlas 8 and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ here at Computex already, and both have impressed us with their smooth performance.

This is a huge win for Intel, which has, up until now, played second fiddle to AMD and its near-dominance over the handheld space.

MacBook Neo has competition from Dell

We just got to go hands-on with Dell's new XPS laptop line but one device in particular stood out: the new Dell XPS 13. Thin, light and affordable, you know where this is going. We have another MacBook Neo competitor in our midst.

The Dell XPS 13 does have a few nice extras you don't get on the Neo, like a backlit keyboard, a touchscreen and two full-featured USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 ports with one on each side. Stay tuned for our full hands-on but so far, I'm quite impressed.

A mesmerizing laptop

Laptops tend to look similar, which is why the Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Vincent van Gogh Edition stands out. Adorned with the troubled artist's work on the lid, it’s certainly a conversation starter. The fact that it’s built around a Prestige 14 Flip AI+ means you’re getting quite the workhorse here, too.

But what about the price? It’s the one question nobody can really answer, given how RAMageddon has put the whole computing market in flux.

To hazard a guess, given that the current Prestige sells for $1,299 and this is a more powerful special-edition machine, we bet it could be around $2,499. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what the actual price is.

Could Microsoft be building the most exciting RTX Spark laptop?

Microsoft will be facing down the MacBook Pro with the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year, it's one of the first eight laptops to arrive with Nvidia's RTX Spark on board and it could be seriously impressive.

Microsoft claims this will be most powerful Surface it's ever built and there are a few specs we are already pretty confident about. For starters, it has a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra display that can reportedly reach 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness. There's also a full set of ports, including HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack.

The Surface Laptop Ultra will also reportedly have “all-day” battery life and you can expect it to come in Platinum and Nightfall finishes.

• Read more: Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra packs an Nvidia Spark chip — and it could be a MacBook Pro killer

Asus' new laptops could include a MacBook Neo rival

Asus has revealed its new laptop family at Computex and while we already know about the RTX Spark-equipped ProArt machines, but another device has caught my eye.

Asus is launching the new Zenbook 14 with base-level specs that include a Snapdragon X1-26-100 processor with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage. Depending on the ongoing RAM crisis, Asus may be able to price this laptop to compete with the MacBook Neo.

For those that want a bit more power, the Zenbook 14 will also come with AMD and Intel configurations too.

MSI debuts 'Triple Mode' monitor

This right here is the MSI MPG OLED 322URDX36. It's the first 31.5-inch, 4K 360Hz gaming monitor on the market to feature the 'Triple Mode' configuration technology.

It lets gamers switch freely between 4K 360Hz, 2K 520Hz, and FHD 680Hz based on their preferences — meeting the specific performance demands of various game genres.

The monitor rocks a peak HDR brightness of 1,500 nits and integrates an AI Care Sensor that "leverages accurate human detection to provide real-time OLED panel protection without compromising user privacy." Whatever that means.

RTX Spark put to the test

We've had an opportunity to put Nvidia's RTX Spark to the test when it comes to video editing, gaming and AI and the results are...impressive. Now, the obvious caveat here is that we don't know what these machines are going to cost once they do arrive — but it should serve to make Apple and its MacBook Pro a little more than nervous.

Here's what my colleague Jason had to say after he'd spent some time with Nvidia's new chip: "With Microsoft in tow, working in lockstep to rebuild Windows 11 for Nvidia's agentic vision for the future of computing, these are going to be some truly mighty notebooks that may very well revolutionize the Windows laptop and truly stand on their own as the future of computing."

• Read the full story: I just tested Nvidia RTX Spark laptops for video editing, gaming and AI — and the MacBook Pro is in trouble

So, to start my thoughts on testing Nvidia RTX Spark laptops, some context is needed.

My daily driver is the M5 MacBook Pro for its lightning fast performance and power efficiency to be just as fast on and off the charger, but I have to carry a Steam Deck for the gaming side of it. Enter RTX Spark, and that compromise is gone.

With Microsoft in tow, working in lockstep to rebuild Windows 11 for Nvidia's agentic vision for the future of computing, these are going to be some truly mighty notebooks that may very well revolutionize the Windows laptop and truly stand on their own as the future of computing.

But even if you’re not interested in the AI features, Nvidia has created the silicon that actually can kill the MacBook. No joke. Let me explain.

Nvidia RTX Spark: Adobe Premiere Pro boost

Nvidia worked closely with key creative app developers to ensure serious speed increases with that on-board GPU. Adobe Premiere Pro is 2x faster in key tasks that you can automate with AI, like cutting down massive clips. Meanwhile, in Unreal Engine 5, a massive cityscape of trillions of polygons can be loaded and moved around with ease.

And even better? All of this can be done both while plugged in unplugged. That crucial MacBook Pro advantage is no longer limited to Apple’s notebooks.

With these big specs (128GB RAM in this economy!?) these particular variants will be limited to only the absolute pro creators, but it’s not too far of a stretch of the imagination to see lower-end versions of these chips being more than enough for putting your projects together.

Nvidia RTX Spark: Gaming

This is the main weakness of any MacBook. Don’t get me wrong, they do offer game support, and apps like GameHub can navigate the compatibility issues and give you some form of PC gaming. But none of it compares to a DLSS-armed RTX Spark system.

Whether it’s Arm-native games like Alan Wake 2 taking full advantage of DLSS 4.5 ray reconstruction for some eye-catching visuals, or games that are being emulated like Pragmata, you’re getting a buttery smooth experience across the board. Nvidia wouldn’t show us FPS numbers, so based on eyeing it, I saw both these games in excess of 100 FPS on these laptop screens (which I assume are 120Hz).

The questions I don’t have answers to yet are how much that emulation harms performance (if at all), and whether battery life is impacted. But based on early impressions, these are laptops you can work on and play on.

Nvidia RTX Spark: Going agentic

Let’s get into Team Green’s mission to “reinvent the PC” to begin with. I got to try out some demos of some of its agentic features.

First, there was a mutli-device OpenClaw situation of talking to your computer. This was done on a DGX Spark mini PC, but given the silicon is practically identical to RTX Spark (just that the latter is optimized for Windows), you can do this too. And the idea of your computer being something that you can work with from anywhere no matter what device came into view.

From complex things like coding a website landing page to simpler things like translating a menu and picking the right dish with low salt if you have high blood pressure, the long memory context that can be saved and loaded into the massive memory on tap here is significant.

Second, there was the multi-app pipeline of getting something done. I got to recreate the demo from the keynote where a griffin was AI generated in Photoshop based on a sketch, turned into a 3D model and animated via ComfyUI (the visual way of connecting AI models together).

The speed was seriously impressive, though you did see the limitations of the current local AI models, where the legs would disappear in what I assume was some hallucination madness.

Then came the developer side of things. I won’t go into the vibecoding bit of it (I don’t really agree this is the way to create sites and apps), but what I will talk about is the system taking agentic control of the website. The last time I tested something agentic on a web browser was Opera’s Browser Operator, which would take a screenshot and then send it to an LLM in the cloud to devise the next move.

All happening securely on the system, the speed difference is night and day — tearing through a site and filling in a form in mere seconds. This is a glimpse of what telling your laptop to just do something can be.

And yes, the bird creation turned into video definitely screams AI slop, but the principle is there. You can imagine the natural language prompts with an image to tweak the colors and contrast, or turning your pencilled ideas into something that can inspire a real-life idea.

Also, shout-out to the tweaks being made to Windows 11 too! Attaching the taskbar to the side of the monitor is a revelation to getting it out of the way and focusing on your work.

The Nvidia RTX Spark laptops are seriously good

Then there’s the laptops themselves. I won’t spend too much time talking about them here, as I want to rank them in a future piece (spoiler alert: that Asus ProArt P14 is calling to me). But to match that expected high price, there are some seriously sleek hardware options coming.

One thing you’ll notice is that these are very familiar shells with maybe a tweak for cooling here and there. This lines up well with what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told me about wanting users to “go on the journey at your own pace” when it comes to the agentic side of things. So to completely flip the laptop build would probably terrify some folks.

For the 2-in-1 crowd, the MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ is a seriously nice system, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra is a luxurious device, HP’s Omnibook 14X has an amazing keyboard, and the Dell XPS 16 Creator Edition gives you a nice upmarket feel. These partners have truly pulled out all the stops to provide some primo shells for Nvidia’s silicon.

RTX Spark outlook

I was speaking with our video producer extraordinaire Paul Antill in an uber around Taipei, and he asked about whether RTX Spark could beat the MacBook. To me, that question is always a bit of a poison pill, but one that is fair — every tech news outlet is guilty of saying “this laptop is good, but it’s not quite as good as the MacBook.”

But now, finally, after years and years of waiting for an Apple killer, Nvidia has stepped up and done the damned thing. AI slop laptop potential aside (lapslop?), this is a phenomenal chip that delivers big on making an extremely powerful machine both on and off the charger with serious power efficiency, while also being a peak gaming machine, too.

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So in case you’ve been living under a rock, Nvidia just changed the face of consumer computing with RTX Spark — a new all-in-one chip that Team Green aims to “reinvent the PC” with. It’s a bold mission and I wanted to know more, so I talked to CEO Jensen Huang about it in a Q&A at Computex 2026.

What does reinventing the PC actually look like? What does the future of this silicon look like? How does Huang fancy his chances against Apple silicon? And could we see Nvidia take this, pair it with its gaming handheld expertise with Nintendo Switch chipsets, and make a PC handheld? It was a long conversation, so grab a cuppa and find out what he had to say!

Jensen wants to turn your PC into R2-D2

I think the most fascinating part of this talk came down to the grand vision of where Huang and Nvidia see the world of computing going. You’ve already heard about the want to reinvent the PC with agents, but he goes into more detail here.

“I believe that today, the computer sits there waiting for us to use it. In the future, when we leave it, we’ll be talking with it all the time,” Huang expanded. “I’ll be chatting with my agent on WhatsApp. It’ll be talking back to me. It’ll even call me!

“That is the personal computer of the future. Tell me that’s not R2-D2. Tell me that’s not robotics. Tell me that’s not cool.”

And looking back to Nvidia’s keen interest and investment in OpenClaw and innovating upon it for themselves suggests just how this vision comes together. Agentic AI via the cloud is slow, whereas with the right-trained model built locally into Windows, this could be a breeze. That is what RTX Spark is capable of.

That being said, Huang did acknowledge that the transition will be tricky, when asked the question about whether this should even be called a PC at all. Nvidia and Microsoft want to keep the foundational experience familiar, and make RTX Spark systems “100% awesome at everything you expect the PC to do,” so you can “go on that journey at your own pace” with the agentic side of things.

The roadmap has already been set

To clear up any confusion, Huang was quick to confirm that N1X is RTX Spark, saying, “N1X was the project code name.”

But he went a little further into the family plans for the architecture, and its future too! “N2X and N3X are already planned, and N1X is called N1X because it has a smaller version called N1. We’re going to expand our family. We’re going to extend this architecture for a very long time.

And pointing back to Nvidia’s historical track record of taking care of its software over a long term, users can expect to keep their RTX Spark systems in their homes for 5-10 years. “Just like my home theater system,” Huang compared in probably one of the more humorous comparisons to home computing I’ve heard.

But this puts it right in line with what kind of longevity you can expect from Apple Silicon products. Speaking of…

RTX Spark vs Apple Silicon

In group Q&As like this, it’s best to make friends with the person next to you to double up on what you want to know. Shout-out to Arsh Garwal for stating the fact that RTX Spark is “basically entering Apple Silicon’s home turf,” and asking Huang what winning looks like for Nvidia in comparison.

“Apple’s ecosystem is excellent as you know, and they have a world-class silicon roadmap. But that’s not our focus,” Huang responded. “Our focus is to reinvent the PC. Windows is of course improving, but the basic architecture of a PC has largely been the same now for about 40 years, and we want to reinvent it.”

Of course, this is a subtle dodge of the question here, as Huang talks about how Apple has the ecosystem advantage (which it really does). But it goes to show the focused mission going on here.

Can Nvidia have its own Nintendo Switch now?

I got the chance to ask Huang a question about gaming — specifically handheld gaming. Besides the goal to “reinvent the PC” with Microsoft, this is an Arm chip that has the same graphical capabilities of an RTX 5070 notebook card, while being much more power-efficient.

Nvidia claims you can get 100 fps in Indiana Jones at 1440p, and with it being the full Team Green silicon, you’ve got access to all that DLSS 4.5 goodness with dynamic multi-frame generation. On top of that, Nvidia’s silicon is inside arguably the best-selling gaming handheld in the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

And with Intel Arc G3 taking PC handhelds to the next generation of performance with its beasty integrated GPU and XeSS 3 AI trickery, it got me thinking. So I asked him whether he envisions a future where some form of this RTX Spark silicon comes to a gaming handheld.

“If somebody wants to do it, we'll work with them on it,” Huang responded. “But right now, we're really focused on doing something that is just such a big deal — reinventing the PC after 40 years.” Understandable given the lofty goals, but he goes on. I’ll just put the transcript here and analyze afterwards, as he touches on a lot of details.

“This is such a gigantic project. We worked with hundreds of people that worked inside the company for years now. Remember all of these applications in the Windows world and x86 world, we have to prove that they work fantastically. And all the games, they have to have anti-cheat turned on. All of that stuff is really really hard. There's a reason why today's PCs are so fragmented — that things that are great for Adobe aren't great for gaming, or things that are great for gaming aren't great for AI. The world has a very hard time uniting that into one platform, and we felt that we had the ability to do that from a technology perspective, from a software architecture perspective, and an ecosystem reach. And over the course of the last couple years between us and MediaTek, all the PC OEMs and Microsoft, you're going to hear more about it later today [at Computex]. I mean, just the mountain of people just so that we could reshape this computer to get it ready for Agentic AI.”

Now, there’s a whole lot of talk about the bigger mission here, and it’s clear that while Nvidia is willing to work on handheld gaming, that’s not the key focus here. But he does hint at some clear hurdles here, such as making sure this is an all-in-one platform that works great across everything.

Specifically calling out anti-cheat compatibility is an interesting side point. When speaking with Team Green separate of this Q&A, the team did say that native Arm anti-cheat is “one of the biggest challenges,” and that they are “working with developers to bring support for major anti-cheats like Easy Anti‑Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo among others.”

And since it’s my birthday today, he decided to do something nice for me, as you can see!

Why now?

It’s a fair question. We heard about Nvidia entering the laptop silicon space for years and with the can getting kicked down the road every time, I honestly thought it would just subside. Plus, if we’re being real, the vast majority of Nvidia’s money comes from its data center business. So why now?

“We don’t really have to choose. The real question is can we make a contribution? If it’s only marginal, we won’t do it,” Huang responded. “If you get the chance to reinvent the single most important tool for humanity, and reinvent it in the age of AI, we’re not going to sit around and not get it done”

With physical AI only being “only a couple of years away,” he believes having a laptop primed for this will be critical to the future of computing as a whole. It’s a big bet, and the next few years will show whether it pays off.

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Nvidia has stormed Computex 2026 with the official announcement we all knew was coming: the company's first all-in-one laptop silicon called the RTX Spark Super Chip family.

Analysts are calling this Nvidia's most disruptive move in a decade, and my colleague Jason England likens it to the moment Apple unveiled its own M1 chip back in 2020. By moving beyond GPUs into integrated processors, Nvidia is throwing the gauntlet down to Qualcomm, Intel and AMD.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed RTX Spark during his keynote in Taipei, and the first laptops powered by the new chip should arrive in the fall. Beyond that, we can expect to see the RTX Spark appearing in mini PCs and small form-factor desktops from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Acer and Gigabyte.

Huang noted that Nvidia and Microsoft have been working away on this for the last three years to "reinvent the PC for the first time in 40 years," aiming to move towards a responsive, proactive AI experience. Microsoft itself is coming out of the gate with an RTX Spark-powered Surface Laptop Ultra that could be a MacBook Pro killer.

Here's the list of the first eight RTX Spark-equipped laptops, along with a few details we know about them.

Microsoft Surface Ultra

Microsoft hasn't confirmed many details about its upcoming RTX Spark-powered Surface Laptop Ultra, but we know it'll have a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen with 2,000 nits of peak brightness.

It will benefit from a large haptic touchpad and all the required ports: HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, SD card and a headphone jack.

Microsoft claims this will be “the most powerful Surface Laptop ever built” when it arrives later this year. Microsoft also claims it can run AI models locally and that the chip delivers power comparable to a mobile RTX 5070 GPU.

Asus ProArt

Asus is planning to launch two RTX Spark-powered ProArt laptops later this year: the ProArt P16 and the ProArt P14. Both laptops will feature 120Hz OLED touch panels in the 16:10 format (one will be 16-inch, one 14-inch) and be geared towards creative professionals.

Memory will be up to 128GB LPDDR5X 9400, while storage can be configured up to 2TB on the P16 and 1TB on the P14. Regardless of which model you choose, you'll get a full suite of ports: 3x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x headphone jack and 1x standard SD.

MSI Prestige N16

MSI is set to launch the 2-in-1 Prestige N16 Flip AI Plus, which, it says, will represent "a new generation of premium thin-and-light PCs.”

Sadly, we've got no further information on the specs, dimensions, or — crucially — the price. All we can say is that this will be a 16-inch laptop with a 3,840 x 2,160 OLED panel and a peak brightness of over 1,000 nits.

Dell XPS 16

Dell will launch an RTX Spark-equipped version of the XPS 16, which likely won't deviate much from the current model in terms of outward design. We can expect an aluminum 16.3-inch workhorse with three USB-C ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and a headphone jack.

Price and specifications haven't been revealed yet.

HP OmniBook and Ultra 16

HP has confirmed two forthcoming RTX Spark laptops, the OmniBook X 14 and Ultra 16, but stopped short of announcing any specific details. The company says it will create "the world’s thinnest RTX Spark, built for powerful performance" and has confirmed it will follow up on the laptops with a compact desktop in the future.

“Our expanded portfolio pairs compact, powerful hardware with pre-configured environments and open-source toolchains to eliminate setup friction and accelerate the path from idea to execution," said Samuel Chang, senior vice president and division president, Consumer Personal Systems at HP.

Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n

Lenovo's flagship 16-inch laptop will also be getting the RTX Spark treatment, but we haven't had any details about exactly what changes to expect. Like the other laptops on this list, Lenovo's creator-focused 16-inch machine boasts a durable aluminum chassis and configurable specs tailored to your needs.

One area ripe for improvement would be battery life, and we'd hope that the RTX Spark-equipped Yoga Pro 9n can surpass the 9.45-hour battery life we recorded on the Intel-powered Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i.

Bottom line

In addition to announcing that over 30 laptops will come with the RTX Spark chip, Nvidia also revealed that Adobe is rebuilding Photoshop and Premiere Pro from the ground up for compatibility.

Suffice it to say, the above laptops will kick off a silicon war in the fall that could be good news for consumers. Especially for gamers and creative video editors. The Spark's Blackwell-architecture GPU, with 6,144 CUDA cores, brings Windows-on-Arm compatibility with Nvidia's gaming suite, including DLSS 4.5. You're going to get thin, light laptops capable of running triple-A games at 100 FPS with real-time ray tracing.

Finally, these laptops will be positioned to move Windows into a truly agentic AI future, with RTX Spark delivering 1 Petaflop of local AI performance. In a nutshell, it'll have the power and efficiency to work on the user's behalf across various apps to achieve the desired outcome.

So we're potentially looking at laptops with a thin-and-light form factor, elite battery life, and the power to crush desktop-class AI development, heavy creative production, or cutting-edge gaming. The only question is: how much will these devices cost when they arrive?

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The biggest news at Computex is official, as Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang just announced RTX Spark Super Chip family — the company's first-ever all-in-one laptop silicon that takes on Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm in a big way with a GPU equivalent to an RTX 5070.

Set to release this fall, this is not your ordinary ARM chip. The RTX Spark is packed with CUDA cores, which is sure to make that integrated GPU one helluva gaming monster. Plus, Spark is set to change the way you interact with Windows PCs forever with an AI agentic twist. I will be testing the chip extensively during my time out here at Taipei, and talking to a couple of the engineers behind it.

But for now, I’ve taken a deep dive into the specs tables and found what could be a breakthrough moment similar to when Apple brought the M1 to the world back in 2020.

Nvidia RTX Spark Super Chip specs

Nvidia RTX Super Chip devices

Nvidia is expecting a huge lineup of systems to launch with RTX spark — with plans to release over 30 laptop models and well over 10 desktop variations, targeting a range of price points.

But as of now, there are a whole lot of devices launching this fall with the RTX Spark Super Chip inside. On the laptop side, we have:

• Asus ProArt P14 and P16
• Dell SPX 16
• HP OmniBook
• Lenovo Yoga Pro 9
• Microsoft Surface Ultra
• MSI Prestige N16

These devices will be as thin as 14 millimeters, and as light as three pounds — a serious upgrade over the chunky Nvidia gaming laptops you're used to.

But they're not stopping at laptops. In an announcement that probably woke up Anthony Spadafora (our mini PCs king) from his nap, RTX Spark will be coming to small form-factor desktops that are "small enough to disappear on a desk."

These will be made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Acer, and Gigabyte.

Explain it with pizza

This is partly inspired by the tasty ‘za I found while typing this, but also shoutout to Nvidia for specifically pointing out that I just “love to explain stuff with pizza.” You asked for it, and now you’re getting it!

In the laptop space, you’ve got various ways of serving pizza.

• The standard meal (an x86 SoC): This is like ordering a plain cheese pizza. It works perfectly fine for everyday eating, but if you want heavy flavor (think intense gaming or AI generation), it lacks all the necessary toppings. Don’t get me wrong, Intel and AMD have been adding some new garnish, but they’re still a little hampered by architectural limitations.
• The combo meal (x86 CPU + dedicated GPU): For that premium flavor, you have to order the standard pizza plus a massive side of premium toppings. Passing these ingredients back and forth across the table does the job, but it takes up way more space (think thicker gaming laptops) and requires a whole lot of power.
• The efficiency slice (Snapdragon X Elite): Qualcomm is already dealing in making efficient single-crust pizza using a similar recipe (Arm architecture). It’s great for saving power, but Nvidia's world-famous secret sauces (CUDA and RTX) can’t be matched.

So in this backdrop, I can only describe the RTX Spark Super chip as a “super pizza.” Instead of ordering a meal with lots of separate sides, this is the all-in-one slice baked onto a single, highly efficient crust. Half of the pizza is that custom CPU, and the other half is loaded with incredibly spicy, high-end toppings in that Blackwell GPU.

But the magic is in the cheese (the memory). Instead of dividing the cheese between the crust and toppings, Spark uses up to 128GB of “unified cheese” that the entire pizza shares instantly at blazing speeds (five times faster than standard PCIe Gen 5). And because it’s baked so efficiently, you can take this super pizza anywhere without it getting cold (all-day battery life).

…am I stretching this analogy? Absolutely. Do I regret it? No (hi Nvidia if you’re reading this).

Going agentic

With this increase in RTX Spark's brute force, Nvidia is working with Microsoft to shift personal computing on Windows from a passive tool to a proactive agent.

This is a one petaflop AI superchip... For context, some quick math I did while sitting in the keynote, the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 can do around 60 Teraflops. This thing is built differently. To go back to the pizza analogy, not only can it make a mean slice, but it can probably feed it to you, too.

It can work across apps on your device — stringing together different tools like any user would to get the job done. For example, an artist can provide a sketch and a mood board, then use Photoshop not only to generate the art locally but also to turn it into a 3D image and animate it into a video. And this is all done without ever needing cloud compute.

Or if you’re a gamer, you can use G-assist to tweak critical settings like monitor optimization, or (if you’re streaming) tell it to operate your lights, mute the mic, and turn on your be right back scene in OBS.

Essentially, it can take complete control of your system — even the mouse and keyboard to navigate as a human user would. Keeping this all secure is Nvidia OpenShell, which brings enhanced security to ensure your model use works locally and privately. It can even mask personal information before ever using a cloud-based AI model to do anything.

For the players

But of course, there are big gaming capabilities here too. This is Nvidia, after all. Team Green says this falls into the same performance class as an RTX 5070 laptop GPU but uses significantly less power to reach that level.

That means you could be playing the likes of Cyberpunk, Doom, or Indiana Jones at 100 FPS at 1440p resolution. And given its ARM, the RTX Super Chip is capable of this level of performance both when plugged and unplugged.

Of course, battery life will vary based on how much you throw at it, but when I asked Nvidia, a tweak of maximum frame rate and graphics settings can optimize this nicely for long gameplay sessions on flights.

Now, what about the emulation part of it? General apps are included in this, too, but gaming has been the big test for Windows on Arm, and that Prism emulation layer used to translate apps written for other CPUs to this new architecture. Well, Nvidia’s thought of that too.

The company is working with a large list of developers to either port games natively to Windows on Arm or ensure they run well through the emulator. And with that hefty GPU, anything that’s particularly taxing on that will have almost no negative effect on performance.

Plus, Nvidia has collaborated with all first- and third-party anti-cheat software providers to ensure competitive multiplayer games launch without a hitch.

Nvidia RTX Spark vs Apple M silicon vs Snapdragon X2 Elite

So, since I’m calling this Nvidia’s M1 moment, how does it stack up with Apple laptop silicon? While I’m at it, I'm gonna throw Snapdragon into this comparison too, as they’re all similar-ish in Arm architecture.

But the crucial differences show that it’s not about the tools you have, but rather how you use them. You see, Apple silicon isn’t just about the brute force of the hardware; it’s also about its tight integration with software that extracts that performance. In gaming, for example, the MetalFX layer has enabled MacBook Pros to do some pretty great things, like run Cyberpunk 2077.

And while Snapdragon X2 Elite is level pegging in certain benchmarks, there are still some moments where it can feel like a bit of a blunt instrument against Windows 11 — especially in that GPU department.

But with RTX Spark, this is Nvidia we’re talking about. That integrated GPU supports DLSS 4.5, so you can bet your bottom dollar that the out-of-the-box gaming performance is going to be clearly superior to Apple and Snapdragon.

On top of that, Team Green and Windows are rewriting the rules on local agentic AI, so you’re getting a heap of AI coworkers too, with those CUDA cores for the raw brunt.

Nvidia RTX Spark vs Intel Core Ultra Series 3 vs AMD Ryzen AI 400 series

Why did I put these separate from the face-offs with Snapdragon or M5? Well, it comes down to the different ways these chips compute stuff. Nvidia, Apple and Qualcomm all have Arm architectures, which do things very differently to the x86 chips from Intel and AMD.

That being said, the 30+-year-old x86 architecture does bring some material benefits over ARM — namely, zero app compatibility issues whatsoever. It’s a challenge that Microsoft and Nvidia are overcoming with a separate Arm-specific version of Windows 11, alongside working closely with developers. That could narrow the library you can play!

However, for what it may lack in this area, it absolutely makes up for in a sweeter blend of performance and power efficiency. While x86 is all about multitasking its way to doing things you ask it to (not the best on that battery), ARM tackles one task at a time very quickly. That’s easier on the power while bringing high speeds to the table, too.

Outlook

It’s been a long road since the first time we heard rumblings about this chip. In fact, I even put this in my Computex 2025 predictions! But now it’s here, I think it’s fair to say that RTX Spark is far beyond any expectations I had.

Not only is it a beastly integrated GPU for monstrous performance and impressive power efficiency (especially in gaming), but the software tie-ins fundamentally change how a Windows laptop works with you. This is going to be an interesting few months as we count down to the fall launch.

Now the wait is on for an Nvidia RTX Spark gaming handheld…that would slap so hard!

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The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is the company’s answer to the MacBook Pro. Announced during Nvidia’s Computex 2026 presentation, this laptop is among the first to feature the newly announced Nvidia RTX Spark chip. It promises to be powerful enough to handle creative workloads, development, local AI use, and gaming.

Besides the Laptop Studio, Surface devices are generally designed for average use. That won't be the case with the Surface Laptop Ultra, as it will pack up to 128GB of unified memory. Microsoft also claims it can run AI models locally and that the chip delivers power comparable to a mobile RTX 5070 GPU.

If the Surface Laptop Ultra is everything Microsoft claims, it will easily be the most powerful Surface device yet — and could give the likes of the MacBook Pro stiff competition. Here’s everything you need to know about the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Design

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra will include some of the features you’d expect from a premium notebook. For starters, it has a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra display that can reportedly reach 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness, making it the brightest display of any Surface device ever. Microsoft says it will have strong color accuracy for creative work.

You’ll also get a full set of ports, including HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, an SD card reader, and a headphone jack. The haptic touchpad is the largest Microsoft has ever used on a Surface, and the laptop is designed to run quietly even under load.

The Surface Laptop Ultra will reportedly have “all-day” battery life, which is a claim I’m eager to verify in our lab tests. Expect it to come in Platinum and Nightfall finishes.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Nvidia RTX Spark

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra announcement alone is noteworthy, but it’s even more interesting because it’s one of the first laptops to feature the Nvidia RTX Spark chip. In case you were wondering, yes, it’s the processor long known as the “N1X.” Different moniker aside, the chip should be a major boon for the Surface Laptop Ultra.

The chip packs up to 6,144 Blackwell RTX cores, 20 efficient Arm CPU cores, and up to 128GB of unified memory. That adds up to 1 petaflop of AI performance, enough to run 120-billion-parameter models right on the laptop without choking. The claimed power of an RTX 5070 laptop GPU should mean smoother 3D rendering, faster video exports, and potentially higher-end gaming.

If all those numbers went over your head, it means the Surface Laptop Ultra should feel like a legitimate workstation you can carry around. We’d need to benchmark this laptop and live with it to see what it can do, but RTX Spark should give it some serious power.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra: Outlook

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is set to launch later this year, so it might be a while until we can go hands-on with this machine. I’m certainly looking forward to that, but given how expensive electronics have become thanks to the RAM crisis, I’m not eager to see how much this thing will cost.

We’ll have more information on the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra as soon as we hear it, so stay tuned!

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So a lot has happened since I wrote this Computex 2026 preview, and a couple of my predictions have already come true (really should've put a bet on this)!

• Intel has confirmed the Arc G3 gaming handheld chip, which will launch in the Acer Predator Atlas 8, MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ and the OneXPlayer
• The fightback against the MacBook Neo is officially on with the Snapdragon C chip for cheap Windows laptops

We're just days away from the show in Taipei — happening between June 1 and June 5, with an Nvidia keynote kicking off the event, and I will be on the ground covering and testing all the latest and greatest announcements!

And while tow of my predictions have come true, there are other trends that I need to set the stage for. Because not only is this set to be the biggest Computex ever, it’s also going to be the most important. There are some huge challenges ahead for consumer computing, and we’re set to see exactly how the industry will rise to them.

And as Managing Editor of Core Tech, this is my favorite time of the year. So it's time to set the stage and tell you what I predict will be coming out of Taipei.

What to expect

Computex is my team’s Super Bowl — our season finale, setting the stage for the next 12 months (and further ahead). And what’s becoming clear from the event schedule, rumors, and leaks, four potential announcements look set to dominate the event (and the two that are already confirmed).

Nvidia enters the CPU silicon wars of 2026

Yes, I know we’ve spoken about Nvidia N1X for a while now. We predicted it for Computex 2025 and CES 2026, but it didn't happen at either event. But all the stars are aligning rumor-wise, and it’s highly anticipated that Jensen Huang will take the stage at his GTC keynote and announce the new silicon.

For those uninitiated, this is Team Green’s ARM silicon — inspired by its DGX Spark AI supercomputers but squeezed down into something that can power the latest laptops.

And yes, since it's Nvidia, you can expect some big gaming chops here, as certain leakers claim it will be the equivalent of an RTX 4070, all on integrated graphics.

And since it’s ARM, you can expect key power efficiency too, which would be significant for the future of gaming laptops. As for who’s looking to run these chips, Dell, Lenovo, and Alienware look like a lock.

But I want to pose a different prediction… Asus is celebrating the 20th anniversary of ROG, and an integrated-GPU version of the Zephyrus G14 with Intel’s Panther Lake was quietly pulled from CES. Wouldn’t it be quite a return to form if there were an N1X-armed G14? Food for thought for you!

Asus back with a new Ally!?

The rumors are beginning to mount that a new Asus ROG Ally 2 gaming handheld may be announced at Computex! News first broke by YouTuber Steam Dad, in which he spoke about a "next-gen handheld from Asus" coming to the show.

If this is true, what will we see inside? For the years it's been around, the Ally has always been on AMD silicon. That being said, Intel's bringing some gaming handheld heat to the party. Could this be one of the devices rocking Arc G3?

Speaking of...

CONFIRMED: Intel Arc G3 to rock the gaming handheld space

Intel’s been pretty clear that a retooled version of its Panther Lake chips is coming to gaming handhelds, and we’re looking ready to roll at Computex. And Team Blue has now confirmed the Intel Arc G3 and G3 Extreme chipsets are set to launch in three new gaming handhelds.

For context, this all began when we all found out that the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs had pretty beastly GPUs — paired with strong XeSS 3 scaling and multi-frame generation to deliver seriously impressive fidelity and frame rates.

Don’t expect them to be cheap, but this looks truly set to be the generational leap in handhelds we’ve been waiting for, and it’ll surely make AMD nervous.

CONFIRMED: The fightback against MacBook Neo is on for cheap Windows laptops

Of all the companies that really bring value for money back to computing, I did not expect Apple to be the one to do it. The MacBook Neo has shown that cheap laptops don’t have to be hunks of plastic with bad displays and spongy keyboards. They can actually be great and make you question whether you actually need to spend more (my time facing it off with the MacBook Pro proved that).

And if one thing is clear from asking my sources, it’s that other laptop makers were blindsided by this and rather terrified by the prospect of this premium notebook. So what's the plan to fight back? Qualcomm's shown its hand with Snapdragon C — silicon targeting laptop prices of just $300.

But what about Intel’s new Wildcat Lake chips? We've heard rumblings about this chip bring laptops with much more attention to detail on the design/build quality front in a big way, and we'll be watching closely.

AI everywhere

I mean, it’s obvious at this point, right? Last year’s show was AI-dominated, and reports say that Computex organizers are actively demoting companies that don’t have AI products to show.

From hardware fueling the AI data center explosion to new gadgets running LLMs locally for the people, you can expect this to be the biggest talking point of the show. And while you’ll see a lot of tech that just has “AI” in the name but doesn’t really offer any real benefits from having AI, there will certainly be some useful devices.

Google I/O proved just how much consumer-focused agentic AI is coming down the way, and it’s absolutely no surprise that you’ll hear a lot more about the silicon that will power these experiences. No doubt Nvidia’s GTC conference will shed some more light on this AI automation, too. Speaking of…

The robots are coming!

We’ve heard a lot about robotics and AI over the past few years, but it's all essentially been talk — maybe with some automated production lines for good measure. The idea of having your own personal robot assistant seems a bit pie-in-the-sky.

But more and more over the course of this year, we’ve been hearing about robotics finally getting the AI compute it needs, from things like Nvidia’s Jetson silicon, to make it work. And I think this may be the first moment we get a proper glimpse of what that humanoid future could look like.

Will it be a bit Black Mirror? Probably, but as a tech journalist, I can’t deny it is damn cool.

How Tom’s Guide will cover Computex 2026

So long as the tech checks off one (or more) of these boxes, you’ll be reading about it or seeing it in our coverage! These will be the criteria we use to judge the winners of our Best of Computex awards, too.

We call it “Computing for the rest of us” — our ongoing mission to not write for insiders, but so anyone can feel like the smartest geek in the room. Every year, you’ll read, hear, and see a whole lot of jargon-filled coverage with assumed knowledge coming out of Taiwan. My team and I have challenged that notion and have been rather successful in doing it!

And in our third iteration of Computex, we’re powering on with this mission but also making clear our three key goals of what we’d love to see (and tell you all about):

• Value: It’s no real surprise that this is our top priority — we have a Savings Squad after all! We want to see companies talk less about their data center hardware and more about delivering maximum bang for the buck in consumer products that are well-priced against the backdrop of RAMageddon.
• Actually useful AI: Computex’s theme this year is “AI together,” and if the past couple of years are anything to go by, you can expect these two letters to be said a lot. We don’t want to see AI stuffed into hardware just because — we want to see actually useful, thoughtful implementations.
• Fascination: Not only does the show give us a chance to test the cool stuff you’ll be able to buy, but it also gives us a sneak peek at some truly ludicrous cutting-edge tech that sets the stage for the next five years. Internally, we call it “the cool sh*t,” but a more family-friendly way to put it is that we want to be fascinated.

See y’all in Taipei

Of course, there will be much more — new PC components to talk about, new bleeding-edge silicon, new sim racing gear, new monitors and peripherals. And you best believe we’ll be covering all the best from the show floor as we see it.

So if you’re looking for a human glance at how Computex is carving out the future of computing, keep it locked on Tom’s Guide for all our written and video coverage from Taipei.

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If your Windows or Linux computer uses one of best graphics cards made by Nvidia, you're going to want to make sure you're using the latest drivers. This week, the company issued a security alert and driver updates to combat a variety of vulnerabilities.

The alert highlights 15 issues, nine of which Nvidia has marked as "high-vulnerability." The high-risk flaws run the gamut of what bad actors can do to your PC. That includes letting hackers get access to your PC kernel, inject malicious code, steal crucial data, or gain administrative access. All the stuff you don't want happening.

For both Windows and Linux, you can download the driver update directly from Nvidia. On Windows, you'll want to make sure you upgrade to driver version 569.49.

On Linux, you want to make sure you update to version 590.48.01. The new versions were released about a week ago, so most people who have automatic updates turned on should have the update. But check your driver version just in case.

According to the alert, all Nvidia drivers before version 596.36 — version 482.53 for GTX 10-series and below — are potentially at risk from these vulnerabilities.

Keep your PC safe from malware

This is a general reminder to ensure all your drivers are up to date. Most driver releases patch security flaws like the ones outlined by Nvidia.

To be fair, some driver updates can cause issues, but later this year, Microsoft will automatically roll back bad Windows drivers to the most recent stable version. Still, keeping your drivers up to date is good practice.

If you're on PC, Microsoft releases new security updates every second Tuesday of each month.

Additionally, you'll want to ensure that Windows Defender is enabled. It largely does a great job of catching threats before they do damage.

For extra protection, you should consider the best antivirus software. Paid antivirus solutions usually update regularly, plus you often get access to VPNs, a password manager and other security goodies.

New vulnerabilities crop up all the time, but if you practice good cyber hygiene you devices and data should stay safe.

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For the past few years, AI has lived "far away" or at least behind-the-scenes. We ask ChatGPT questions and giant data centers packed with GPUs do the heavy lifting out of sight.

But Nvidia, the company powering much of the AI revolution, appears to be betting on something very different for the future: an AI supercomputer inside your home.

At least, that's the idea gaining traction after viral posts claimed Nvidia wants to turn your house into an AI data center. While the idea might sound a little too sci-fi for most of us to grasp, it's actually rooted in a very real shift happening across the tech industry. Moving AI out of centralized cloud systems and directly onto personal devices is closer than we think.

So what’s actually happening?

What seems like an outrageous claim stems from Nvidia’s push into what it calls “personal AI supercomputers,” compact but extremely powerful AI machines designed to run advanced models locally instead of relying entirely on the cloud.

One example is Nvidia's DGX Spark, a desktop-sized AI system the company literally describes as an “AI supercomputer on your desk.” It’s capable of running large AI models locally and is aimed at developers, researchers and high-end AI workflows.

According to Nvidia, these systems are powerful enough that they are designed for local AI inference, robotics, edge AI applications, autonomous agents, computer vision and smart systems. Essentially, AI that runs closer to you instead of inside distant cloud infrastructure.

Why the industry could be moving in this direction

Right now, most AI tools depend heavily on giant cloud providers. That works — but it also creates some major problems such as:

• Expensive AI. Running large AI models costs enormous amounts of money and energy. Data centers are expanding at a staggering pace and putting pressure on electrical grids worldwide. Distributing some of that processing onto local devices could reduce cloud costs and ease infrastructure strain.
• Privacy is a major concern. Local AI means fewer conversations sent to remote servers, better privacy and ultimately better control over your data. This is a huge selling point as people grow more cautious about how AI companies use personal information.
• AI feels faster when it runs locally. Cloud AI always introduces some delay, but local AI can power instant voice assistants, smart glasses, home robots, security systems and offline AI tools with much lower latency.

Your future home might quietly become an AI hub

That idea may sound far-fetched, but it’s actually closer to reality than most people realize. A recent report from Inc. says NVIDIA is partnering with startup Span to test “mini” AI data center units attached to homes and small businesses. The goal is to tap into unused residential electrical capacity to help power AI workloads.

The units, called XFRA nodes, are reportedly designed to sit alongside existing home infrastructure like HVAC systems and electrical panels. Instead of relying entirely on giant centralized facilities, the idea is to distribute computing power across thousands of smaller locations.

The real reason Nvidia is pushing the DGX Spark and the RTX 50-series isn’t just for faster chatbots. It’s for Autonomous AI Agents. In 2026, we are moving away from simple assistants and toward "Agents" that can manage your calendar, handle your finances and even interact with your smart home autonomously.

To do this safely, the industry is pivoting toward Local Inference for three critical reasons:

• 24/7 autonomy: For an AI agent to monitor your home security or manage your energy grid usage, it needs to stay "awake" even if your internet goes down. Local hardware like the Grace Blackwell superchip allows these systems to run 24/7 without a constant cloud uplink.
• Zero-trace privacy: Sending your bank statements, private emails and home camera feeds to the cloud for an AI to "analyze" is a massive security risk. By using tools like Nvidia OpenShell, these agents can operate within a "privacy sandbox" inside your own four walls. Your data never leaves your house.
• The 'Digital Twin' hub: High-end systems like the DGX Spark allow you to run a "Digital Twin" of your entire digital life. This hub acts as a local brain for all your smaller devices like your phone, your smart glasses and your appliances, processing their data in one secure, high-speed location.

The takeaway

Nvidia probably doesn’t expect people to install rows of GPU racks in their basement. But your home could gradually fill with AI-powered systems that process data locally and that's a major shift from the current cloud-first AI model.

And, Nvidia isn’t alone here. Apple, Microsoft, Google and others are all aggressively pushing “on-device AI” and “edge AI” strategies.

Apple Intelligence, for example, emphasizes private on-device processing whenever possible. Microsoft is building AI directly into Windows PCs. Qualcomm is racing to create AI-ready chips for laptops and phones.

Just like gaming PCs slowly evolved from niche enthusiast machines into mainstream household tech, AI hardware may follow a similar path over the next decade. It will be interesting to watch the future of AI move from some distant server farm, to living quietly inside our living rooms instead.

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Nvidia has officially announced the GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU with 12GB of GDDR7 memory. We’ve heard rumors about this GPU for a while, but now it’s the real deal.

While the company isn’t discontinuing the 8GB model, this spruced-up 12GB variant should give vendors and customers more options. This is especially important as we’re still in the middle of RAMageddon.

Here’s what we know about the 12GB Nvidia RTX 5070 laptop GPU and why it could potentially be the most important “mid-range” laptop GPU out there.

From 8GB to 12GB of RAM

As VideoCardz and Wccftech report, Nvidia originally planned to stick with 8GB of VRAM for the 5070. Thankfully, the company reconsidered. By moving to a 192-bit memory bus and providing 12GB of VRAM, Nvidia is giving laptops with this GPU more breathing room to better run games at 1440p with high-res textures and ray tracing.

Moving from 8GB to 12GB is a wise move, since 8GB can impose serious constraints. Now, laptop manufacturers won’t be as restricted.

GDDR7

More memory is nice, but it’s the fact that we have faster memory that’s really noteworthy. GDDR7 offers higher bandwidth, which means the GPU can swap data in and out of that 12GB buffer much faster than before.

For the average gamer, this means smoother frame rates in demanding titles and a better experience with AI-driven features like DLSS 4.5. With AI now seeping into everything, that 12GB of GDDR7 should be useful for anyone seeking to run local LLMs on a laptop.

Nvidia is listening

It’s easy to be cynical about Nvidia, especially after Jensen Huang’s comment about how RAM scarcity is “fantastic” for the company. However, the RTX 5070 spec sheet suggests that the company realizes it can’t push premium prices on what are otherwise budget laptops.

By giving the 5070 12GB of VRAM, Nvidia is creating a better value for laptops in the $1,200 to $1,500 range. Hopefully, notebooks with this GPU will remain in that price range and not go up much higher.

Outlook

The GeForce RTX 5070 with 12GB of RAM should be available to manufacturers this year, so expect a fresh batch of laptops packing this mobile GPU. If they can remain relatively affordable, this could offer some welcome relief from all the price hikes we’ve had to suffer since late last year. Stay tuned for more!

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As you may have seen, we rather love Pragmata right now, and I can give all you PC gamers out there the lowdown on how well it’ll run on your rigs. Spoiler alert: just like Resident Evil Requiem, path tracing adds a night and day difference.

So I threw it at my pricey RTX 5080 and mid-range RTX 5060 Ti rigs to see how far I can stretch those fidelity settings with DLSS 4, and how well it performs with this incredibly demanding graphical tech running.

What settings should you use?

As I always say, Nvidia’s DLSS is a helluva tool for extracting more gameplay value out of your GPU — provided you use it the right way. Because sure, a game can look smooth, but if you’re adding all the AI trickery on top of a game that is running at 20 FPS, it will not feel smooth to play.

That’s why you’ll need to go into the settings to tinker the base rate a little before overlaying DLSS features. Just as a general reminder:

• If your game is a slower-paced single-player title, aim for 40 FPS
• Need quick reflexes? Aim for 60 FPS
• For competitive multiplayer, either don’t use it or aim for 120 FPS

From mine and Tony’s time playing Pragmata, you can safely put it in that 40 FPS target category. There is combat that requires you to dodge attacks and shoot, but with plenty of time to telegraph enemy moves, the really fun puzzle elements and button-based quick-time events, you’ll still get a game that feels good to play at this level.

By the numbers

So allow me to introduce you to the machines that will be taking this on (quite proud of my rebuilds):

• Remember that PC I built for myself at Scan computers? I’ve done a transplant into the gorgeous Micro ATX case you see in the top image — doing some space saving while preserving power. It packs an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RTX 5080 and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. You can watch the whole big build here.
• The second is a modified RDY Element 9 Pro R07 — sporting an Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) and 32GB of DDR5 RAM.

Same rules apply as my Requiem testing, so I’m stress testing at resolutions fair to each card (4K for the 5080 and 1440p for the 5060 Ti) at maxed out path tracing settings. Of course, as I said above, you can tweak some graphical settings to squeeze even more frames out of the base rate.

And as you can see, the multipliers really start to pile on the additional frames nicely here — making the game look silky smooth.

Latency checker

So there’s big frame rates happening up above, but that’s half the story. As I said up above, the game’s got to feel smooth too, and in this stress test (just like what happened with Requiem), this is where it becomes clear that DLSS 4.5 performance is your go-to option if you wanna go all-out in the settings.

DLSS always comes with a small penalty to that base frame rate, as the GPU’s attention is turned to the AI background work. And while these are mostly playable, Quality or Balanced upscaling does lead to some noticeable latency. Performance is your sweet spot.

Path traced sci-fi fun

If you follow my advice from up above, you’ll have a great experience with what has become one of my personal surprise favorite games of 2026. Path tracing really does make a material difference to the visual fidelity here and draws you into the immersion of this fascinating sci-fi world.

I demoed this game a few months ago and immediately fell in love with the hybrid shooter/puzzler gameplay, but I did feel a little nervous about how far this could go before it becomes tiresome. Turns out the answer is it never gets old! New layers of complication are added over time and discoverable elements keep things fresh. Oh, and the boss battles are epic.

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The war for your face is heating up. Meta and Snap are betting big on cameras and bulky frames, but Viture is preparing to take a very different path. As the No. 1 ranked company in XR glasses shipments in the U.S., the company is taking its talents to a whole new category — laying a path to merge the worlds of AR and AI glasses in the future.

In an exclusive interview with Tom’s Guide, Viture’s CMO and co-founder Emily Wang revealed that the company is officially stepping into the "connected lifestyle" category — named Vonder, and set to launch in Q4 of this year.

But unlike the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, VITURE is prioritizing two things the current market lacks: true fashion and absolute privacy.

Viture’s taking on Ray-Ban Meta with something Vonderful

This is the biggest takeaway from my conversation with Viture, so let’s start here. We all know that the future of smart glasses is going to be when AR and AI collides (more on that later in our chat), so it pays to be developing on both sides of this specs chasm now.

I brought up this gap in Viture’s lineup — the daily carry AI wearable like the Ray-Ban Metas, and following a couple of potential leaks and the company’s Series B funding announcement mentioning a “new category of connected lifestyle technology,” I asked whether Viture had plans to fill it?

Well, I had asked the right question, because Emily had an ever increasing smile on her face. “I think you’re picking up on exactly what we’ve been hinting at,” Wang commented. “With all the display technology, software and AI integration we’ve built over the years, we’re in a unique position to bring that philosophy to a new category — where the glasses are not only smart and capable, but something you’re genuinely proud to wear.”

So to have Viture enter the AI glasses space with Vonder is incredibly exciting. With this category ever-expanding, I asked what were the key pain points they see in the industry today that the company plans to tackle.

“The most obvious one is privacy — current AI glasses have cameras pointing at the world, and people around you know it,” Wang responded. “We believe smart glasses should feel invisible, not intrusive, and that technology should disappear into a timeless design, not the other way around."

And this conversation went exactly in the direction I was hoping for. In all the smart glasses I’ve tested, it always feels like there’s an awkward battle between tech and fashion. For something so present on your face, making them look good almost has to come first followed by the tech.

“There’s a deeper issue we’ve cared about since day one at Viture: the tension between technology and fashion,” Wang continued. “With AI glasses, you have the freedom to make them as fashionable and personal as you want. That’s a huge unlock because at the end of the day, glasses live on your face — if people don’t want to wear them, none of the technology matters.”

The Beast is (almost) ready for primetime

Moving to the here and now, you may know that I’ve been testing the Viture Beast for a while now, but also elected to not review them. Simply put, the hardware was sound, but all the features were not present.

However, as you may have seen on Viture’s subreddit, it’s a very different story now — several rapidfire updates have brought them to the level where I will be reviewing them very soon. The only feature that’s left is a 1200p picture, which the company confirms will be released “this month.”

“Our philosophy has always been to build hardware that’s future-ready, delivering a polished experience than rush it,” Wang explained. “The recent firmware updates for image stability, color tuning and 3DoF tracking have been a huge leap forward in the everyday experience.”

And I have to say I agree. It’s a night-and-day difference in the experience using these glasses now compared to the drifting images I saw back in January. Viture’s bought my AWE awards winners back to the primetime, and they’re lining up for a big launch.

“On April 27, the Beast will be fully available on Best Buy, Amazon and our own website simultaneously,” Wang confirmed. “Stay tuned, because what you’ll see is a mature, refined version of the beast, and for the first time, everyone will be able to easily grab what we believe is the best on the market.”

Those words — “mature” and “refined” — are signaling that the early-adopter era for these XR glasses is over, and the confidence to put them into Best Buy is a positive sign (one that I can vouch for after testing them the past few weeks).

The gaming monitor killer

As someone with one eye on the future, I wanted to see where this vision for the Beast goes. This turned my attention to the Asus ROG Xreal R1 glasses I tried back at CES 2026: seemingly a prototype (unless they do become a reality — I only say that because the companies have gone real quiet about them ever since January), which brought a 240Hz refresh rate to take on the gaming monitor.

And then I thought about Viture’s partnership with Nvidia, which is in the AI space at the moment (more on that in a minute), but gearing up with the gaming side of Team Green to provide the kind of glasses that could replace a bulky gaming screen would be hype.

“We believe AR glasses can and should be a viable gaming monitor alternative — high refresh rate, immersive and private,” Wang elaborated. “It’s definitely a space we’re exploring, and I think you’ll see some exciting developments from us on this front.”

But, this is the part where the company dropped an incredibly intriguing nugget — saying that “the Beast’s display engine was designed with headroom for exactly this kind of use case.” No, that doesn’t mean you’ll see 240Hz in these current gen Beast specs, but it shows a mighty promising future for these glasses if you’re a PC gamer.

The future of ‘seeing’

So for context, Viture teamed up with Nvidia and Stanford medicine for a “truly meaningful” partnership — bringing XR together with AI in healthcare to streamline lab workflows, make it agentic and provide hands-free data.

“As Professor Cong (of Stanford University School of Medicine) shared, years of research work can be compressed into months, and millions of dollars in costs can be reduced to thousands,” Wang explained.

I asked further as to whether this is an agentic sign of the consumer direction for AI glasses. “The next evolution is exactly what you described: glasses that don’t just show you things, but understand what you’re seeing and act on it,” she responded. “The glasses become the interface layer between the user and an AI that’s always contextually aware.”

Where this all goes in the next few years

So let’s go back to what I wrote about at the beginning: the merging of AR and AI glasses into one product. Tech like waveguide displays and the AI to make it possible are developing at a rapid rate where we could see this become a reality over the next few years (pending the compression of said tech into something fashionable).

In my mind, the first real test of whether they are ready for primetime will be Snap Specs — set to launch this year. Emily agrees, but acknowledges the challenges of jumping straight in.

“The convergence is inevitable, but I want to be thoughtful here — the path to that all-in-one form factor isn’t as straightforward as it might seem,” Wang continued, bringing up how Waveguide tech is advancing, but field of view, brightness and power demands are challenges. “What you see with products like Snap Specs is exciting, but they're still limited in display capability and daily wearability.”

My take after seeing every company’s innovation at AWE last year is that this challenge won’t be solved by one mega product from one company, but rather lots of small ingredients from companies coming together into one eventual dominant pair of specs. And Emily is on the same track here.

“Our view is that this won't be a single leap — it will be a journey. And the companies that will lead aren't necessarily the ones who rush to cram everything into one device first,” Wang explained. She mentioned the real secret ingredient will be making “the right ecosystem, user base and software foundation” along the way. This means that when the optical tech is ready for the all-in-one form factor, Viture is “not starting from zero.”

“The biggest challenges between now and then? Optical efficiency in a lightweight frame, thermal management, battery life, and — coming back to what I said earlier — making sure the design is something people actually want to wear every day,” she continued. “Technology alone won't win. It has to be beautiful, it has to be comfortable, and it has to feel like you. That's the bar we're setting for ourselves.”

It’s going to be an interesting 2026 for smart glasses, as Viture makes its first big foray into AI glasses, and marks a path towards that final form every company’s been hunting for! And with Apple rumored to be introducing its own glasses too, competition could get fierce.

More from Tom's Guide

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Nvidia has just dropped DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and I’ve been testing it for the past week. This takes the idea of multi-frame generation and adds automation to it, so AI only generates the frames you need rather than going over the top, and in my time using it, Team Green has created a far smoother experience with lower latency because of it.

It’s a better balance of making sure your GPU’s raw rendering skills and AI trickery work hand-in-hand to deliver more consistently stable gameplay. But while you’ll hear a lot about this being big for 4K 240Hz monitors, I found that this is the missing piece to using your PC as a games console replacement — a dream I’ve had for years. Let me explain.

What is Dynamic Multi Frame Generation?

Up until now, Nvidia has dabbled in Multi-Frame Generation — you can think of this like the manual transmission in a car. Each gear has its benefits for more speed, but if you slow down at these higher gears, it’s hard to get back up to speed. This can be felt in the form of latency if you poorly optimize your game from the jump.

Dynamic Multi Frame Generation switches that out with an automatic transmission, which changes gears (frame multipliers) based on the intensity of the scene — ensuring you’re at the max speed of the display you’re on at all times. This ensures you only get the frames that you need, and produces a far smoother experience with less latency.

In this beta, you’ll see two presets in the Nvidia app:

• Preset A: The brute force option. This will take a look at literally everything on screen as one frame and generate. Much wider compatibility, but can come with some issues of smearing in-game UI elements with the background.
• Preset B: In this model, DLSS is able to look at both the in-game visuals and the UI separately. This can help keep your on-screen text razor sharp, but compatibility is limited as it requires developers to isolate the layers.

But as I always say (following on from poorly optimizing your game), it’s critical that you use this the right way. I’ve got a full guide on my resolution scaling and frame generation preferences, but to summarize real quick, it’s important that your base frame rate before turning on any AI trickery is strong.

Because if your game is running at 20 FPS, slapping on this DLSS coat of paint will make it look smoother, but it’ll still feel like 20 FPS.

• If you’re in a single player game with slower pacing, 40 FPS is enough.
• Need faster reflexes? Start at 60 FPS.
• Competitive multiplayer? Don’t use it or build from 120 FPS.

Got it? Good. Let’s get into the results of my testing.

By the numbers

So let’s test what Nvidia has here — starting with its main focus upon making the most of a 4K 240Hz monitor. I’ve got my RTX 5080 rig that I built with Scan computers here in dear old Blighty, and the Alienware AW2725Q monitor. If you want to see how to build a PC like this for yourself, the guide is just below.

Anyway, let’s get into it. Put simply, monitors of this caliber are no longer just future-proof hardware — RTX 50-series is able to fully utilize them and get 100% of the experience you pay for.

In games like “Dragon Age: The Veilguard,” you’re seeing a base frame rate of 53 FPS get effectively upshifted heavily to saturate the monitor’s refresh rate. On the opposite end of this, “God of War Ragnarok” already has a strong base performance, so DFG essentially downshifts to a lower multiplier for the smoothest possible image quality.

Another way to look at it is those 1% Lows. This is the lowest frame rate you see 1% of the time (as the name suggests), and it’s a good way to track whether the game will visibly stumble at any dramatic rate.

On average (including some loading scenes, so data is a little bit off), you’re looking at an average of 115 FPS across all my tests, which is an excellent floor of the performance — well above the variable refresh rate threshold and eliminating visible judder.

The beauty of this restraint is fully realized in the latency, though. Multiple generated frames are often criticized for adding a floaty input lag. Of course, this comes down to how to tame the technology in many ways. But with an average of 33-45ms, my data proves Nvidia has overcome this hurdle.

To put it in perspective, Cyberpunk 2077 with everything turned up and maintaining only 45ms of latency is a landmark achievement to squeeze up to 240Hz gaming.

To my eyes

As for the visual element of it (numbers are good, but it’s got to look good too), same as I found when going eyes-on back at CES 2026, You’ll struggle to notice when the multiplier shifts — there’s no identifiable switch up or stuttering at all in all the games I tried.

There are some small ghosting issues I did spot. The most prominent one being in “Hogwarts Legacy” around this teacher’s hair, but most impressively, none of this impacts the UI. One of the most common problems with frame generation is that it can make on-screen elements like a health bar or button prompts smear into the background of the game.

And that’s the magic of Preset B isolating static elements from the game visuals. Menus in “Spider-Man 2,” “Hogwarts Legacy” and “Forza Horizon 5” remain perfectly clear even as the 3D world is being interpolated at a 4-6x rate.

TV time

Now, you’re going to hear Nvidia talk a whole lot about making the most out of high refresh rate hardware, which Team Green absolutely does here. But I wanted to see whether it could fix one problem I’ve always had — playing PC games on my TV.

It’s been my dream to have a cheaper RTX 5060 Ti rig plugged into my big screen to replace my console setup. A lot of these single-player games that Dynamic Multi Frame Generation is perfect for usually run at 30 FPS on Fidelity mode and 60 FPS on performance.

While a PC can smash that barrier already (and latency issues are felt much less with a controller), there are two key issues:

• UI smearing: The brute force frame generation option has viewed the entire game and its UI as one picture. When blown up to a massive TV, that means you can see the UI elements start to smear and ghost — especially when the picture behind it is moving fast (think like a racing game).
• The VRR stutter: When framerates can change quite dramatically on a PC game, most HDMI 2.1-armed TVs can suffer from gamma flickering. Without the variable refresh rate of a gaming monitor, the locked refresh rate of the big screen behaves a little weird with this.

With Dynamic Multi Frame Generation (and Preset B), it was my hope that beyond the marketing messages, this could be the key to having my PC become the all-in-one gaming desk machine and TV setup.

And you know what? It absolutely nails it. Of course, if you're looking at this from a keyboard and mouse/your face close to a monitor perspective, some of those latency numbers could be a problem. But for the couch gaming side of things (average response time on a PS5 or Xbox Series X sits between 100ms and 150ms), these numbers are actually a win for the TV rig.

Of course, it's worth noting that this is a stress test. I wanted to see how far I could push this on an RTX 5060 Ti rig with settings turned all the way up — lowering the base frame rate target to what a console hits at 30 FPS and seeing how it fares.

If you want something more responsive, you can tweak those settings down a tad. But for my time playing with a controller, I certainly didn't notice any input latency at all.

The UI remains mostly rock solid thanks to preset B isolating the in-game visuals from the on-screen elements, and generating only the frames I need keeps things feeling responsive while eliminating any flickering.

Verdict: a console killer?

So the main thing I want you to take away from this is that Dynamic Multi Frame Generation is not just for the enthusiast with the 240Hz monitor. It’s for the rest of us gamers who want their PC to act like a polished, reliable appliance in the living room.

For years, my “PC as a console” dream died at the hands of micro-stutters, UI ghosting and the constant need to babysit settings. While the latter of those three could do with some work (looking at you, Microsoft), Nvidia has finally automated the two headaches away.

It’s the first time that AI hasn’t felt like a “more frames” button, but rather a “better experience” brain. By letting it decide when to push and when to pull back, your PC stops feeling like a hot rod and starts feeling like a refined supercar of a high-performance console.

Put simply, if you’re on an RTX-50 Series GPU, this isn’t just a toggle — it’s the new standard.

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For the past few months, buying a PC has felt like trying to buy a house in a hurricane — prices are up and supply is down. The RAM price crisis has been hitting us hard, and while it’s easy to see how bleak the situation is (I see it too), I want to talk about how in March 2026, I believe the atmospheric pressure is finally shifting.

I looked on PC Part Picker and found that the average price of DDR5 had dropped slightly. Yes, it’s the smallest of margins compared to the lows before this all kicked off, but I’m looking for any good news from anywhere. This got me going down a rabbit hole of research and what I found gave me hope.

Thanks to a perfect storm of a massive legal victory for importers and a sudden pivot in Washington trade policy, this hyper-inflation that defined the hardware dark age of early 2026 is showing its first real cracks. We aren’t out of the woods yet, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical (some I’ll go into here). But I look around and I see a hardware thaw beginning.

Uncle Sam owes Big Tech $130 billion — and you might get the change

On March 4, 2026, Judge Richard Eaton of The U.S. Court of International Trade issued a sweeping ruling after the Supreme Court found tariffs to be unconstitutional — saying that “every single cent” of the roughly $130 billion to $175 billion collected must be returned to importers.

This would be a massive injection of money from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to companies like Asus, Dell, Nvidia and HP. The CBP is currently building an automated mass-refund tool, which the court was told should be ready by mid-April 2026.

On paper, that could mean companies that were pricing in these taxes to protect their margins will have a massive cushion of cash returning to their balance sheets — potentially leading to lower prices.

🤔 Skeptical take: Lower ceiling, but higher floor?

Now before you go thinking that refund check is in the mail, the Department of Justice is already setting up to appeal the scope of this ruling. The argument being that only companies who filed individual lawsuits (not every importer) should get paid.

And even if this automated mass-refund tool goes live and companies line up to use it, legal experts warn that these requests could be tied up in courts for up to four years.

Plus, there isn’t a legal requirement for a company to pass a tax refund down to the consumer. As Asus’ Director of Technical Marketing, Sascha Krohn said when we asked about the memory inflation: “nobody wants to be the first one to lower prices.” Maybe companies simply use this to pad their bottom lines after a rough year.

Oh, and that’s before even mentioning the administration invoking Section 122 — a temporary 10-15% global surcharge to address the balance-of-payments here.

So while 10% is certainly better than 25%, and I do think that will lower the ceiling of high-end prices, that floor of lowest prices won’t be lowered back to the beforetimes.

The AI Tax is getting a divorce from your gaming rig

This goes to the Presidential Proclamation 11002 — signed on January 14, 2026. On the face of it, the headline you’ll have probably read was about a massive 25% tariff on high-end AI silicon. But scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll find a loophole in new White House policies under Section 232.

This exemption covers “Non-Data Center Consumer Applications,” and it’s a big one. A “get out of jail free” card for gaming PCs, laptops and consoles, which could lead to a significant K-shaped correction.

Do you see what this means? Enterprise and Consumer Computing are getting a silicon divorce, so while the enterprise side of things remains at premium prices, a carve-out of the consumer end could prevent the total disappearance of cheap laptops and mid-range GPUs.

🤔  Skeptical take: A technicality?

So that consumer shield sounds great on paper, but the technical definitions are rather thin — exempting products based on Total Processing Performance (TPP) and DRAM bandwidth. For full context, here are the triggers for a 25% tariff:

• Tier A: A Total Processing Performance (TPP) between 14,000 and 17,500 AND a DRAM bandwidth between 4,500 and 5,000 GB/s.
• Tier B: A TPP between 20,800 and 21,100 AND a DRAM bandwidth between 5,800 and 6,200 GB/s.

For anyone keeping track, the RTX 5090 isn’t just “close” to these triggers, it has actually smashed through the floor of the restricted category of TPP. Of course there’s a memory bandwidth buffer and vastly lower interconnect speeds — saving it for not.

But the real risk here is of performance creep breaking that consumer shield. Let’s take Nvidia for example. The RTX 50-series is the first generation where the gaming GPU and the AI GPU are technically the same level of power.

If the next versions (be it RTX 50 SUPER or RTX 60 series) increase memory bandwidth or add even better AI-specialized Tensor cores that push that TPP higher, they could meet both criteria for the hit list. And at that point, the likes of Nvidia and AMD have two choices:

• “Nerf” the cards: Intentionally slow them down to stay under the limit (think like the Nvidia RTX 4090D that was released for the Chinese market).
• Lobby aggressively: Petition hard for that TPP ceiling to be raised as technology advances.

Put simply, while your gaming rig is safe right now, we could be one breakthrough away from the government deciding your GPU’s path tracing capabilities are a national security asset.

The DeepSeek effect continues

The reason why DeepSeek R1 shocked the entire market early last year is not because of capability, it was efficiency and low cost. Google recently announced TurboQuant, which is being called the “Pied Piper moment” for AI (“Silicon Valley” is basically real-life now).

Basically, TurboQuant is able to compress AI’s working memory by at least 6x and make it 8x faster — all with no accuracy loss. On paper, this should ease the overwhelming demand on fast memory processing (which companies have been trying to solve by hoovering up all the DRAM it can possibly get) by making the very thing they’re trying to do so much smaller.

You saw the impact as memory company stocks fell immediately following this announcement. There’s of course a lot more technical information to this, but I’m just summarizing the impact here.

🤔  Skeptical take: Jevons paradox

In economics, Jevons Paradox argues the opposite of this. When a resource becomes more efficient to use, demand actually increases rather than decreases. So if TurboQuant compresses AI memory by over 6x, every company on earth could very well want to run over 6x more of it.

Instead of thawing high prices, ruthless efficiency like this could very well trigger a second, even larger wave of hardware buying and keep prices high well into next year.

OK, time for Plan B

I found this out while speaking to Acer’s EMEA Marketing Director, Manuel Linning, earlier this year, and the switch is incoming.

“Since this is an industry issue, we're all dealing with it in some different ways,” Linning commented. “What we're doing is we're looking at multiple smaller vendors, and also new vendors.”

These are Chinese memory producers CXMT and YMTC, and sources told UNN that Acer, alongside Asus, Dell and HP have been testing their silicon for the past few months.

And in talking to other experts in the area, I’ve found out that these companies are close to certifying these vendors. The transition is happening sooner than you think, and it’s going to change the 'Made in' sticker on your next laptop.

🤔  Skeptical take: The quality lottery

When alternative supply chains are brought in to keep prices low, the consumer can often pay in reliability. There’s a restaurant near me that has managed to keep their prices the same amid inflation, but over time the quality has fallen off. The same could very well happen here with higher memory failure rates and shorter life spans.

So sure, that laptop price could be $499, but we may be entering an era where you enter a lottery of which factory your laptop’s RAM came from.

An omen, not a guarantee

That being said, this is the first slither of good news that we’ve had in months, and the idea of a hardware thaw is definitely real. However, the path from a courtroom to a price tag in Best Buy is long and riddled with inventory that’s already been priced in at 2025’s peak rates, inevitable appeal battles over that $130 billion refund, and the looming shadow of Jevons Paradox.

My advice is simple: hold until August 2026. If you can wait until the end of back-to-school sales, do it. By then, we’ll know if refunds are happening, the RAM bypass has been successful, whether the consumer shield is holding up, and most importantly, whether the manufacturers are willing to share those wins with you.

We aren’t seeing a fire sale just yet, but the fever has officially broken.

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I get it. Saying “Gaming PC” and “deal” in the same headline is kind of like saying “DDR5 RAM prices are totally normal.” The RAM price crisis is claiming a lot of victims, but one is beating the odds, and it just so happens to be my top-ranked best gaming PC you can buy.

Right now, you can get my top pick — the iBuyPower RDY 9 Pro R07 with Radeon RX 9070 XT for $1,949. That’s a massive $400 off which brings it down to the kind of price you’d see for a pre-built like this before the RAM price crisis kicked off!

Who should buy this?

As any gaming PC, the more money you put into it, the more performance you get on the other end.

But you’ll be surprised at just how much performance you can get out of this mid-to-high tier level without needing to break the bank completely and go for something with an RTX 5080 or higher. That's definitely what I found out in my RDY Element 9 Pro R07 review.

So let’s take a closer look at gaming performance, which is mightily impressive. The numbers on that RX 9070 XT rival the much more expensive RTX 5070 Ti and in raw rendering performance, you’ll get some stellar smooth frame rates at 1440p.

When you go up to 4K, it can still more than handle its own in certain titles, and when something like Cyberpunk 2077 at Ray Tracing Ultra bogs it down, you can rely on FSR resolution scaling to get you back up to that 4K 60+ FPS sweet spot.

And that’s before even speaking about FSR Redstone and its DLSS-esque capabilities of handling ray tracing and smoothly scaling games without any of that telltale smearing or ghosting.

But on top of that, you’re getting a great 3-year warranty with the deal, which covers any defective components, diagnostics and repair should you ever need it. I even put that to the test by slightly unseating a RAM stick and contacting their support, who were quick to pick up and spotted the problem almost immediately.

Not the only deal

Of course, this is a sale across more than just this particular spec of iBuyPower’s prebuilts. A huge range is being discounted right now, and with the code CLEARANCE, you can get:

• $200 off Prebuilt systems over $2,999
• $100 off systems over $1,999
• $50 off systems over $999

This code can be used between now and until the end of March 31st, so whether you want to sit more in the mid-range below the spec of the PC I’ve tested, or you want to push your rig further with a more expensive system, you can still save.

Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang have been in the news a lot lately.

Gamers haven’t been too kind to the massive tech company, with negative reactions flooding the comments section underneath the Nvidia DLSS 5 reveal video. In response, CEO Jensen Huang pushed back during a press Q&A at this year’s GPU Technology Conference, saying gamers are “completely wrong” about the backlash. Huang doubled down in a later interview with “Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer and championed the open-source autonomous AI called OpenClaw, calling it “definitely the next ChatGPT.”

Huang has popped up on everyone’s tech-themed timelines again to make another bold assertion during an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast. And as expected, it speaks to an evolved stage of AI that could even do his job and run an entire multi-trillion-dollar company.

Huang believes artificial general intelligence has finally arrived

When asked when AGI (artificial general intelligence) might arrive, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t hesitate: “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

Put simply, AGI refers to AI that can match — or even surpass — human intelligence across a wide range of cognitive tasks. It’s not just about answering questions or generating text; it’s about systems that can learn, reason and apply knowledge the way humans do.

Huang suggested this shift could show up in unexpected ways, pointing to the possibility of a breakout app or digital personality. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some social thing happened — like a digital influencer or some kind of app that suddenly becomes an instant success,” he said.

Still, he stopped short of claiming AI is ready to fully replace human decision-making. Huang acknowledged that today’s AI agents aren’t capable of running a company like Nvidia on their own. “A lot of people use it for a couple of months, and it kind of dies away,” he said. “Now, the odds of 100,000 of those agents building NVIDIA is zero percent.”

That stance marks a shift from his earlier timeline. At the 2023 New York Times DealBook Summit, Huang said AGI was still about five years away and would eventually be able to outperform humans on intelligence tests.

Bottom line

Huang is obviously all-in on AI. With his most recent support of OpenClaw, Nvidia's reveal of DLSS 5, and the company’s overall implementation of Agentic AI, it’s clear that he is looking to further modernize and evolve the trending technology.

Whether or not AGI is truly here and capable of handling the lofty responsibilities that humans are usually entrusted with is not known. Seeing as how Huang walked back his major statement about AGI a bit, it seems that even he thinks we’re not quite there just yet.

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AI is not just a chatbot you talk to — it’s the primary driver of modern PC gaming performance. Leading this charge is Nvidia’s DLSS, which can unlock high-end fluid visuals without needing top-tier hardware (provided you use it right).

And that’s why I’m here to break it all down. What is DLSS? How does it work? How can you make the most of it? And what is the deal with the DLSS 5 controversy? Let’s get into it.

What is DLSS?

Deep Learning Super Sampling (or DLSS for short) first debuted in 2018, and it’s a combination of AI tricks to boost a game’s performance — allowing players to prioritize either high-end visuals, faster frame rates or a balance of both. Neural networks have been fed millions of hours of gameplay and trained on Nvidia’s supercomputers to deliver this.

Back in 2017, Nvidia saw an AI revolution coming and introduced Tensor Cores into its GPUs. These are engineered to be the bedrock of deep learning and inference, which can essentially allow your graphics card to work smarter not harder in rendering games

Over the years, many layers have been added onto this AI-fueled cake. But at it’s core, DLSS does business in two ways:

• Super Resolution: Rendering a complex AAA game at full resolution is a taxing ordeal — especially when you throw things like ray tracing into the mix. So with Super Resolution, the GPU renders the game at a lower resolution, uses AI to look at the picture and upscale it to look like native quality. This can massively reduce the hardware strain.
• Frame generation: To smooth out the frame rate, DLSS is able to analyze every frame generated by the GPU and fill in the gaps with AI frames. With DLSS 4.5, Nvidia is able to inject up to six additional frames.

Beyond that, there are additional things Nvidia has thrown into the mix, such as:

• Dynamic Frame Generation: Proactively adjusting how many frames it adds to adhere to the maximum refresh rate of your monitor
• Ray Reconstruction: Instead of having the GPU brute force all the light and reflection calculations in path tracing (a crazy intensive task), Nvidia’s AI model replaces this with a neural network trained on how light works in the real world to do all those calculations instead.
• Nvidia Reflex: We’ll talk more about latency in the next section, but Reflex is a key technology Nvidia introduced to keep games feeling responsive even when stuffed with AI frames.

And that in a nutshell is DLSS. But just like any technology, you’ll only get the best results if you use it right.

How to use DLSS the right way

If you’re looking at this thinking “I’ll just turn everything up to max, slap DLSS on it and call it a day,” stop it. That’s like trying to win a F1 race in a minivan just because you put high-performance racing tires on it.

And as the guy who has tested all the best GPUs, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to tame this beast.

My Super Resolution preferences

Yes, DLSS 4.5 super resolution is capable of some bonkers things (like upscaling a 240p picture to a better-than-expected 4K image). But as a general rule of thumb in real-world gaming, the more “input pixels” the AI has to work with, the more aggressive you can be with upscaling.

Here are the four DLSS modes you’ll see in your game settings:

• Quality: This renders the game closest to native resolution (normally around 66-70% of resolution).
• Balanced: Finding the mix between getting the best possible textures and frame rates, this will render the game at 58% of your targeted resolution.
• Performance: One step down to maximize frame rate, this will often go for 50% of the resolution.
• Ultra performance: If you want to go all out on frames, ultra performance will target 33.3% of the total resolution being rendered by the GPU.

Now I’m about to start talking about three presets here that you can access from the Nvidia app settings. These presets are three different neural networks Team Green has made to fuel its resolution scaling. Here’s a breakdown of them:

• Model K: This is DLSS 4 and much better-built for quality and balanced DLSS modes
• Model M: This is DLSS 4.5 with a model tuned for performance mode
• Model L: This is an offshoot of DLSS 4.5, which is meant for ultra performance mode

Got that? Good. Now let’s break down which ones are best for you by the resolution you want to play at.

• Gaming at 4K? Use Performance (or Balanced) Mode: In the Nvidia app, this is labeled as Preset M, and in my own testing, I’ve found it to be the sweet spot at 4K. This will typically render a game at 50% of the resolution (1080p), and given how good this model has become over the years, the difference between this and Quality mode is nearly invisible in motion (unless you’re seriously pixel peeping). But at the same time, the FPS gain is massive.
• 1440p or 1080p? Stick to Quality: Turn on Preset K and stick with Quality (or Balanced at a push). Performance or Ultra Performance can lead to some losses of finer details in complex textures like hair or grass — leading to a soft image. For example, Ultra Performance at 1080p would be trying to upscale from as low as 480p.

Chances are you can get away most of the time with just sticking to Balanced mode. But there are finer tweaks you can make to get even more out of it.

My Frame Generation preferences

So this is where I get into latency — the difference between how smooth a game looks and how it feels. Let me break it down.

Let’s say you’ve got a game playing at 30 FPS before you turn on any AI trickery. If you take that number and divide a thousand by it (1,000 ÷ 30), you’ll get the gap between frames which is 33.33 milliseconds.

Now if I turn on multi-frame generation at 4X and up that to 120 FPS, it’ll look smoother, but game inputs are locked at that 30 FPS, so it won’t feel as smooth. That’s why it’s incredibly important to start with a solid base rate for the game you’re playing before turning on frame generation.

Over my years of PC gaming, I’ve broken it down into three targets in my mind based on what I’m playing to find that right starting point:

• If your game is a slower-paced single-player title, start at 40 FPS: Think like linear story-driven games where twitch reflexes are not needed. RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 are great examples of this, and if the game you want to play falls in this region, you don’t need a lightning fast base frame rate and can focus on upping the graphics settings.
• If your game requires faster reflexes, aim for at least 60 FPS: Whether it’s racing in Forza Horizon 5 or needing to perfectly time parries in Black Myth: Wukong, if faster reflexes are needed, you’ve gotta close that gap between frames rendered before stuffing more AI frames in between them. This would reduce frametime to 16.67 milliseconds — a nice base to build on.
• If you’re in seriously competitive multiplayer, either don’t use it or aim for 120 FPS: A sub 10 millisecond gap between frames is a critical helping hand to being competitive in online lobbies. If you’re particularly clutch and don’t want a single bit of AI trickery getting in your way, don’t use frame generation and focus on turning your settings down instead. But if frame gen is OK, start with a 120 FPS base.

DLSS 5 controversy explained

So now that you’ve got a grip on how to best use DLSS in its current form. Let’s look at where Nvidia’s AI tech is going, because DLSS 5 has caused quite a stir!

Coming this fall, the fifth generation goes beyond the “predictive” modeling of resolution scaling and frame generation, and fuses it with the “probabilistic” elements of generative AI. CEO Jensen Huang calls it the “GPT moment for graphics,” and this comes down to real-time neural rendering.

Basically, DLSS 5 looks at a game on a frame-by-frame basis, and rather than trying to “show you the game better,” it’s now aiming to “show you a better version of the game.” And the results of this pursuit for extreme photorealism is a bridging of the uncanny valley that has the gaming community worried.

Of course, we’re only looking at very small slithers of demos of an early build, but as you can see from certain screenshots, it looks as if the model is adding details that weren’t there originally — like additional hair, fuller lips or a sharper jawline.

There’s changes being made to the cinematic lighting and material depth too, which all contribute to another breakthrough, but one that developers are going to have to figure out the right way to use. Nvidia confirms this is an early build of DLSS 5, and probably with sliders turned all the way to max. So between now and the fall, devs will tune it however they wish.

Outlook

It’s not been the smoothest of rides for Nvidia’s DLSS. With each new version, there’s been a backlash of some sort. But every single time, it becomes the default and if you use this technology the right way, it can unlock gaming experiences unlike anything you’d see elsewhere.

Because more and more, it’s becoming abundantly clear that we’re reaching the limits of how many transistors we can stuff on a chip to make these things work through hardware. So in a moment like this, AI is being used to continue the march forward.

Is DLSS 5 going to be a moment of overreach? Potentially, but then again this is completely controllable by developers who will hopefully find that right balance. But for the PC gamer of today, DLSS is an essential tool in your arsenal that when tamed can be a breakthrough.

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James Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, has been the focus of attention at this year’s GTC conference, which centers on AI.

Nvidia’s unveiling of its DLSS 5 AI software, which relies on generative AI to upgrade the visual fidelity of characters and environments, has gotten a ton of blowback from gamers who think it makes games look infinitely worse. Besides that, Huang has provided some comments about the popular open-source autonomous AI agent called OpenClaw and marked it as the next major evolution in how people interact with the growing technology.

According to Huang, OpenClaw should be recognized by everyone as something as monumental as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Huang sees OpenClaw as the next breakthrough in AI

During this year’s GTC conference, Huang took some time to speak with “Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer about OpenClaw and championed it as a major AI tool that everyone should keep an eye on. “It is now the largest, most popular, the most successful open-sourced project in the history of humanity,” Huang said. “This is definitely the next ChatGPT.”

For the uninitiated, OpenClaw is an autonomous AI agent that allows users to create their own AI assistants that can then carry out actions such as checking their calendar, answering texts, accessing files, etc. What’s interesting about OpenClaw is how its AI agents don’t need much input from its users to act — it behaves just like humans after being told how to by their programmers, as evidenced by those same AI agents engaging in their own dating service and even creating their own religion.

Huang spoke more about OpenClaw and noted that it could transform into something grander and greatly expand what humans can do with AI. “In one line of code, you can create for yourself your own agent. Then after that, just ask the agent to do whatever you want,” he went on to say. “They’ll go off and learn how to design a kitchen. It will come back with a design and reflect on that.”

Huang also stated that OpenClaw will benefit humans’ individual expertise across many talents as they work with their AI agents to create. “Every carpenter can now be an architect. Every plumber will become an architect. We are going to elevate the capabilities of everyone,” he noted.

Nvidia has worked with OpenClaw

Nvidia is already working closely with OpenClaw to make its AI agents easier to command and more secure.

The tech giant recently announced NemoClaw, a new and improved version of OpenClaw that incorporates Nvidia’s software tools onto its platform. A press release described how it works: “NemoClaw uses NVIDIA Agent Toolkit software to optimize OpenClaw in a single command. It installs OpenShell to provide open models and an isolated sandbox that adds data privacy and security to autonomous agents. This provides the missing infrastructure layer beneath claws to give them the access they need to be productive, while enforcing policy-based security, network and privacy guardrails.”

In that same press release, Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, expressed his excitement over Nvidia’s software stack helping his AI tech improve. “OpenClaw brings people closer to AI and helps create a world where everyone has their own agents,” he said. “With NVIDIA and the broader ecosystem, we’re building the claws and guardrails that let anyone create powerful, secure AI assistants.”

With Nvidia now working closely with OpenClaw via NemoClaw, it’s good to know that Nvidia is employing high-grade security measures to make sure the abundance of AI agents that are created can be deployed safely.

More from Tom’s Guide

• OpenClaw is the viral AI assistant that lives on your device — what you need to know
• OpenAI hires the developer behind OpenClaw — this is how agentic AI grows up
• The 6 weirdest things to come out of the viral OpenClaw AI assistant

Take-Two Interactive has millions of gamers eagerly anticipating the launch of arguably the biggest game of the year, Grand Theft Auto VI. While the video game publisher has a long line of equally major IPs under its belt (NBA 2K, WWE 2K, and Borderlands, among them), the massive open-world experience known as GTA stands above them all.

And according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, the notion that generative AI will be able to produce games on the level of GTA is simply “laughable.”

Creating assets but not hits

During an extensive sit-down interview with The Game Business Show, Zelnick discussed several topics related to the use of AI in video game development.

The unveiling of Google Labs’ Project Genie tool, which has the power to generate interactive worlds simply by inputting text and image prompts, resulted in major AAA gaming companies like Take-Two’s stock prices dipping—it’s clear that video game investors feared that anyone would be able to make AAA games thanks to AI and begin putting them out at a faster rate compared to major development studios.

Zelnick made it clear that he’s not worried whatsoever about Project Genie or any other generative AI tools that promise to generate virtual worlds in mere minutes. “These tools may help you create assets, but that won’t help you create hits,” he stated. “There are loads of assets out there now. It doesn’t matter if you push a button to create an asset, or it takes you six weeks, at the end of the day, you have an asset. And thousands of mobile games are launched every year, and there are only a handful of hits.”

Zelnick also pointed out that AI can assist developers in their creation of standout gaming experiences, but the ever-evolving technology doesn’t have the power to produce anything on the level of interactive entertainment that humans make. “The notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit and bring it to many millions of consumers around the world, it’s a laughable notion,” Zelnick pointed out. “It’s just never been the case with entertainment.”

When presented with the idea that Project Genie could increase your everyday AI prompt writer’s capacity to create something on par with Rockstar Studios’ open-world epics, Zelnick recognized that AI could create assets “that might look like NBA 2K or EA Sports FC.” But at the end of the day, he believes that the development of mega franchises like those three "require human engagement [and] human creativity."

DLSS 5 backlash

Speaking of AI’s continued involvement in the video game industry, Nvidia isn’t getting the most positive feedback for its introduction of AI software that’s meant to improve the visual fidelity of characters and environments. During a Q&A session with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at this year’s GTC conference, Huang downplayed the criticisms of gamers who weren’t too thrilled with the way DLSS 5 alters the visual fidelity of their favorite games.

When asked about the negative comments from gamers online, by Tom's Hardware editor-in-chief Paul Alcorn, Huang had this to say: “Well, first of all, they're completely wrong. The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI.”

AI in video games: Outlook

Zelnick is stern in his belief that human involvement in game creation is far more valuable than generative AI, and the majority of gamers believe that to be true. While major gaming companies such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Square Enix are implementing AI into their video game development workflow, human creativity and technical know-how are still greatly emphasized in the creation of their AAA projects.

Zelnick’s statements point to Take-Two still placing importance on experienced human developers having what it takes to craft major hits like GTA and not the latest model of generative AI software.

More from Tom’s Guide

• Palantir CEO: Why 'thinking differently' is the secret to winning the AI race
• Spotify is finally letting you 'talk' to its algorithm to fix your music recommendations — here's what's new
• Oversight Board slams Meta's 'inadequate' deepfake rules — calls for a total AI overhaul

During the Nvidia GTC 2026 keynote, CEO Jensen Huang debuted DLSS 5 calling it the "fusion of 3D graphics and artificial intelligence." The announcement was met with immediate backlash across social media.

For the unaware, DLSS is a "deep learning super sampling" feature on Nvidia graphics cards that is used to upscale the resolution of video games. We went eyes-on with version 4.5 recently and my colleague Jason England said it was "the final piece of the puzzle that brings the vision of smooth, responsive AI fueled gameplay to life."

DLSS 5 takes those engines and uses AI and neural rendering to infer how games would look in more photorealistic environments, or as one colleague put it, "They added more light."

Huang faced questions over the criticism of DLSS 5 during a Q&A at GTC 2026. Our friends at Tom's Hardware were able to ask about the backlash.

"Well, first of all, they're completely wrong," Huang said.

"The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI," Huang added.

To be fair to Huang, he was clear about this during the keynote and said nearly the same thing.

"DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics — blending hand-crafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression,” Huang said in his introduction.

Between the introduction and the Q&A, Huang had been adament that DLSS 5 and its generative capabilities "doesn't change the artistic control."

"It’s not post-processing, it’s not post-processing at the frame level, it’s generative control at the geometry level," he said.

The video does no favors

Part of the problem is that the demonstration video shows DLSS 5 with its max sliders turned on. And as critiques pointed out, just about every "upgrade" from DLSS off to DLSS 5 turned on looks like someone slapped a terrible Instagram filter on top of the game.

In some cases, as with Hogwarts Legacy, everything received more of a cartoon-y look. The Resident Evil: Requiem differences seemed to turn Leon and Grace into looksmaxxing influencers.

I would argue the best use of DLSS5 is actually shown off in EA's FC26. That game is going for a more photorealistic look with the players. The lighting and skintone improvements look particularly impressive on the Netherlands' Virgil van Dijk.

Again, Tom's Guide's Jason England was able to take a look at more images that show off DLSS 5 not just on AI faces but also in environments. "DLSS 5 is absolutely a breakthrough," he said. However, he noted that he has questions, and just running DLSS 5 on its own can take away what may have been intentional shading or lighting.

Huang says it's a tool that developers can choose to use. We'll know more this fall when DLSS 5 is set to launch. And I'm certain more demos will be provided between now and release.

More from Tom's Guide

• Nvidia says PC gaming will ‘look like a film’ — GTC 2026 could herald 1 million times better path tracing for GPUs
• Nvidia GTC 2026 LIVE — Jensen Huang reveals DLSS 5, OpenClaw partnership, and an Olaf robot
• Nvidia won't release new gaming GPU for 'first year in three decades' due to RAM shortage — and it's also slashing RTX 50 production

For the first time in a long while, Nvidia GTC 2026 gave us some huge PC gaming news. CEO Jensen Huang introduced DLSS 5: the “fusion of 3D graphics and artificial intelligence” in his own words, and the response has been…mixed to say the least.

From outlets calling it the most impressive tech they’ve seen in a long time to people throwing out AI slop critiques and comparing it to those face filters you get with certain smartphone cameras, opinions are all over the place. And honestly, I didn’t know how to feel at first — like that damn dress meme in 2015, my mind changed every time I looked at the comparison videos!

So I did what I always do. I followed my late Grandad’s advice to “sleep on it, because you’ll know how you feel in the morning.” And in short, DLSS 5 is absolutely a breakthrough, but game developers have until the fall to find the sweet spot for it in their games. Let me explain.

What is DLSS 5? Let’s explain it with pizza

It feels literally like yesterday that I was talking about DLSS 4.5, but we’re already marching onto the next iteration — and it’s a big one we’ve known was coming for a while now.

“DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics — blending hand-crafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression,” Huang commented.

It’s a fusion of the “predictive” model that’s fueled DLSS for a while now with the “probabilistic” elements of generative AI to bring photorealism to games with cinematic lighting, enhanced material depth, real-time neural rendering and temporal consistency. And all of its capabilities are controllable by the game developers, as they can tune the intensity, color and masking to find an enhancement balance that is right for them.

To break this down, I’m feeling hungry and you know what that means… Back to the pizzeria I go!

Think about previous versions of DLSS as a magic magnifying glass. I love that 8-inch pizza, but I want more of it, so DLSS takes that pizza and stretches it to look like a 16-inch XL — making it bigger without the crust getting too thin or the cheese burning more easily (this is resolution scaling).

Then every now and again, the chef slides an extra few slices into the box between every real slice you actually order, so it feels like you’re eating more at a faster pace (frame generation).

Now, with the fifth generation, there’s an AI master chef that doesn’t just stretch the pizza, it re-imagines it. With settings turned up to max, the chef looks at that cheap pepperoni slice and says “I know what you were trying to do here, but I can do better,” and swaps it with artisanal, hand-cured salami and fresh buffalo mozzarella — even though you didn’t order those things.

Basically, DLSS 5 has stopped trying to “show you the game better,” and is now resorting to “showing you a better version of the game.”

Bridging the uncanny valley

We can’t say any of us didn’t see this coming. Jensen himself talked about it at CES 2026 in a behind-closed-doors Q&A session and shot his shot at a growing “fusion between rendering and generative AI.”

“In the future, it is very likely that we'll do more and more computation on fewer and fewer pixels. By doing so, the pixels that we compute are insanely beautiful, and then we use AI to infer what must be around it.” Huang said. He talked about the “utterly shocking and incredible” results he saw in the labs that looked like “basically a photograph interacting with you at 500 frames per second.”

And now we have our first glimpse at it. In some of the game videos it’s a significant improvement, but in others you can start to spot some creative challenges that will surely be worked out as we close in on an official launch.

Let's start with the faces (yep, we’ve got to talk about Grace’s face in Resident Evil: Requiem). There was a recent brain scan study that showed our brains process “hyper-realistic AI faces” differently than real faces. A sudden spike in activity around 600ms after seeing an image that triggers an internal uneasy mismatch feeling.

That’s what I believe is happening here, and a lot more of it comes down to the cinematic lighting than I initially thought. Based on my time pixel peeping videos and image comparisons, I’d say about 60% of Grace’s face tweaks here can be explained by lighting and material depth.

The remaining 40% is neural rendering — there are definitely fuller lips and sharper jawlines (not that Leon Kennedy needs it, being the smokeshow he is).

In some places, this photorealism really shines — games like EA Sports FC and Starfield truly benefit from this upgrade. But I can appreciate the view around creative interpretation vs AI creating a jarring effect.

There are some other things I noticed, too. Surfaces and textures have been given a serious upgrade, but with DLSS’ reinterpretation of lighting, some of it feels less stylized or moody.

Take this scene from Nvidia's Zorah Demo, for example. Before, there was a warmer hue and intentional shadowing to add depth, but that is re-interpreted with the cinematic lighting in a way that I feel loses the vibe a little.

All-in-all, DLSS 5 is a diamond in the rough. I can see what the intention is, but this is all completely in the hands of devs to use however they wish. Maybe Capcom rolls back on the face tech, or Warner Bros. alters the cinematic lighting. It will take time to find the right balance.

I’ve got some questions

But of course, this is one PC gamer who’s tested all the best GPUs and the tech that enables them — pixel peeping videos and screenshots. I think it’s something we all have to interact with to get a fuller understanding of DLSS 5.

And if Nvidia’s reading this (hi btw), before I (hopefully) get some hands (and eyes) on time with it, I do have some questions to get a better understanding of what’s going on under the hood:

• What is that real-time neural rendering and what has it been trained on?
• How big is the DLSS 5 model now, and what is the goal for it by fall? Currently demos showed on 2 RTX 5090s — so optimization/compression is key.
• What are the controls for more stylized games? Titles that don't necessarily benefit from photorealism with cel-shaded or more artistic graphics.

DLSS5 outlook

The timing of these announcements always makes me chuckle. I know it may be unintentional, but it just feels like once another GPU company announces an update to its upscaling/frame generation tech, Nvidia just says “hold my beer” and takes another giant step ahead of the pack.

Intel XeSS 3 with multi-frame generation? How about a little DLSS 4.5. AMD FSR Diamond? Well, here’s DLSS 5. And honestly, it is a breakthrough — but I can totally understand the mixed response.

In some titles, it is a generational leap forward. In others, it can feel like an AI veneer. But ultimately, the tech is here and devs can turn it up or down however they want. Nvidia isn’t adding slop to games, that team is marching forward to photorealism with another feather in the cap of developers to bring their visions to life.

More from Tom's Guide

• I went eyes-on with Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation launching March 31 — and it’s a game-changer
• Nvidia just revealed 3 big upgrades to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service — here's what's new
• Testing the MacBook Neo: Can an iPhone chip really run Cyberpunk 2077?

Nvidia isn't a company content to sit back and enjoy its wins. Instead, it's always looking to push graphics technology forward, and at its GTC 2026 event, the company revealed DLSS 5, a new technology designed to deliver a significant leap in video game graphics.

"Twenty-five years after NVIDIA invented the programmable shader, we are reinventing computer graphics once again," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, in a press release. That's exciting for gamers looking for the best visuals, which is why the CEO called it a "GPT moment for graphics."

What is DLSS 5 and should you care?

According to Huang, DLSS 5 is about "blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression."

Essentially, it's using AI to enhance game visuals by infusing scenes with photorealistic lighting and materials. It sounds like game artists will still make characters, scenes and other aspects of the game by hand and DLSS 5 will come in and make everything look nicer.

Nvidia claims that its AI technology "uses its deep understanding to generate visually precise images that handle complex elements such as subsurface scattering on skin, the delicate sheen of fabric and light-material interactions on hair, all while retaining the structure and semantics of the original scene."

That sounds like the stylistic choices made by developers won't change — everything will just look more realistic.

It sounds like big game publishers are excited to use the technology in their games, with Nvidia touting brands like Bethesda, Capcom and Vantage Studios as using it. Other games that will include DLSS 5 support include AION 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Delta Force, Hogwarts Legacy, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Sea of Remnants, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Where Winds Meet and more.

“Bethesda has such a rich history pushing graphics with NVIDIA, going all the way back to Morrowind, with that incredible water,” said Todd Howard, studio head and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, talking up the technology. “When NVIDIA showed us DLSS 5 and we got it running in Starfield, it was amazing how it brought it to life. We’ve played it. We can’t wait for all of you to do so as well.”

When will we DLSS 5 arrive?

While Nvidia didn't provide an exact release date, the company said it'll be available in the fall of 2026, so we won't need to wait too long to see how it affects games going forward.

And with new game consoles on the way from Sony and Microsoft, it'll be exciting to see how this technology comes into play.

More from Tom's Guide

• I went eyes-on with Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation launching March 31 — and it’s a game-changer
• Nvidia just revealed 3 big upgrades to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service — here's what's new
• Nvidia is bringing a killer app to the Apple Vision Pro — and it's good news for sim racers

It’s officially that time again — GTC 2026 is kicking off in San Jose, and the energy is already through the roof. Jensen Huang is taking the stage today at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 6pm GMT, and if history is any indication, Team Green isn't planning on holding back.

We’re looking at a massive shift toward agentic and physical AI, but let’s be real: we’re all eyes and ears for more details about Vera Rubin (an enterprise-level sneak peek at RTX 60-series). Oh, and let's not forget that glimpse of "the future of real-time rendering" in PC gaming!

Stick with us from the pre-game hype all the way through the final reveal. We’ll be breaking down every announcement to show you exactly how this tech is going to land in your day-to-day.

How to watch Nvidia GTC 2026

You can watch the keynote here.

Nvidia GTC 2026: Every big announcement

• DLSS 5: DLSS 4.5 just dropped a few months ago, but DLSS 5 is already in the works. We won't know how good it is until we see it in action but online reactions have definitely been in the negative calling it a "Snapchat filter" and worse.
• IBM Watson X and Nvidia: Nvidia's platforms can "refresh global operations data in minutes" as shown in a partnership with IBM and the company's Watson X.
• Vera Rubin Ultra: Nvidia's AI data center platform gets a major upgrade that can connect up to 144 GPUs. Its "vertically integrated completely with software" and designed for AI agent systems.
• NemoClaw: Nemoclaw is an open source partnership between OpenClaw and Nvidia dubbed Nemoclow. Jensen described it as an "opensourced operating system of agentic computers." OpenClaw is shows the future of personal AI agents, Jensen promised.
• Self-driving cars and robots: At the end, Huang showed off several "physical AI models" that power things like Nvidia's Alpamayo for self-driving cars, warehouse robots. It ended with an Olaf from Frozen robot wandering the stage like a lost child.

Nvidia GTC 2026: Latest updates

Welcome back!

It's been a while since the last GTC event back in October of last year (and the CES 2026 keynote in January). But Nvidia is back and this looks set to be a big one — with CEO Jensen Huang looking set to lay out the next few years of hardware and AI breakthroughs.

But one thing we're particularly excited about is a glimpse at "the future of real-time rendering" for PC gaming. These events are usually super focused on the AI factories of the future, and given the lofty promises made by Team Green back at GDC 2026, we may be seeing a preview of a generation of neural rendering that exceeds even what DLSS is capable of.

Previously at GTC (and CES)

Each GTC follows a pretty reliable playbook for the year — with March being the event where all the big new stuff is announced. This is what happened last March.

• Nvidia Isaac Groot N1: A new model for robotics, Groot N1 is set to be "the world’s first open Humanoid Robot foundation model."
• "Blue," Robotics and AI collaboration: Powered by a new physics engine to simulate robotic movements, Newton was introduced, showcasing a little robot named Blue. It's a collaborative robotics project with Disney Research and Google DeepMind. An open-source model of Newton will arrive later in 2025.
• Blackwell Ultra AI chips: New chips to be released later this year, aimed at meeting the growing demand for computational power in AI.
• Vera Rubin Architecture: The next step beyond Blackwell, Vera Rubin will increase bandwidth and perform even faster. It's set for release in late 2026, with Vera Rubin Ultra expected in 2027.
• Nvidia Dynamo: Nvidia's new open-source software system designed to scale AI models effectively, and it's able to customize a data center far more effectively.
• Self-driving cars: Nvidia is teaming up with GM to create autonomous cars, developing custom AI systems for autonomous vehicles and putting "AI in the car."

And you saw these evolve over the year, including Groot N1 making it into more robotics, an Uber partnership for self-driving AI, and Vera Rubin showed in much more detail at CES 2026.

More vera rubin?

We got a whole lot of info on Vera Rubin at CES 2026, including stats on just how much more powerful this is than the Blackwell GPU tech you see in the RTX 50-series. Namely, 5x more powerful to drive the AI data centers of the future.

While speaking about data centers can be kinda dull, the main thing to look at is the architecture and what it's capable of from a GPU perspective, because it's looking very likely that the RTX 60-series will tout the Rubin stylings on the die.

Will we see Nvidia N1/N1X?

These chips keep appearing in random spec sheets here and there, so why am I only saying it's a "maybe?"

Well, the answer comes down to two things. First, I'm not hearing much about it after the swell of reports last month. And second, this show's always been very AI-centric. Of course, we're getting that gaming preview on the keynote stage, which is definitely a change from the norm.

So it's anyone's guess really, but I hope we do get something here!

Ready to pre-game?

No, I'm not talking about the kind that involves beer, but rather conversations about "accelerated computing beyond AI." We'll be watching with you, so jump in for talks about "one of teh largest infrastructure build-outs in history."

Why Path Tracing is important

So I tested path tracing in Resident Evil Requiem, and it's truly capable of some spectacular things — really adding immersion to a scene while keep frame rates fast and fluid thanks to DLSS 4.5 AI trickery.

Path tracing is all about physical accuracy. It’s not just a reflection in a puddle, it’s how light from a neon sign bounces off a wet pavement, hits a character’s chrome jacket and subtly tints their skin red. It’s not just the ray traced shiny surfaces of old; path tracing calculates how light interacts with literally everything in a scene in a realistic way.

This can be super testing to do entirely through calculations on the GPU itself, but with a neural network trained on billions of surfaces and light sources, it's more efficient to do through AI, as you can see from our numbers.

Nvidia is bringing a killer app to Apple Vision Pro!

I'm a sim racer, and race often in VR. One of the obstacles has always been the mess of cables for high quality wired VR racing, or the lower picture quality when going wireless.

But now, Nvidia's CloudXR software is compatible with Apple Vision Pro, and iRacing (and a flying sim game) are going to be fully playable wirelessly at 4K 120FPS!

This is a significant development, and a huge step forward for PC VR (and it's tempting me to burn $3,500 on an AVP!)

Current lowest prices on Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs

While we're watching the pre-amble and interviews with key AI and infrastructure companies that rely on Nvidia, let's bring this back to you. As you may know, the RAM price crisis has sent costs spiraling.

On top of that, Nvidia did confirm that stocking consumer GPUs was going to be a struggle this year, as the focus goes on data center rollout. That has sent prices a little out of control (to say the least).

If you're committed to getting one, here are the cheapest prices we've found! The UK isn't as hard hit (especially at the mid-range). But prices have gone up across the board.

"AI is creating better, safer jobs"

In speaking with an exec at CAT about autonomy in the machinery space, this quote just came out of one of the presenters... Tell that to the 45,000 people who have lost their jobs in the tech space so far in early 2026.

What is the mystery chip Jensen will 'surprise the world' with?

So back in February, CEO Jensen Huang started hyping up the conference by saying we will see "several new chips the world has never seen before." What are these going to be?

Well, we have seen the Vera CPU and Rubin GPU that will drive 5x more performance through AI data centers (and probably coming to RTX 60-series) — announced at CES 2026. But we're anticipating that Nvidia could be throwing us a curveball by revealing its Feynam architecture for next-gen GPUs.

This (if ever it came to a consumer GPU) would be way further down the line at RTX 70 or RTX 80-series. The specs are crazy on it — built on a 1.6 nanometer process (smallest at the moment is 3nm), so this would be a real trailblazer in bringing some serious speed boosts.

There were 4 sunglass'd CEOs sitting in a row

Perplexity, Mistral, Black Forest Labs and Cohere all here to talk new features... But the shades, guys. Did you all talk backstage about the look you all wanted??

Will this year's GTC buck an unfortunate trend?

Sherwood has found something interesting. Whenever Jensen Huang speaks at a keynote, the stock price goes down. To clarify, this is probably because of the sky-high expectations people have heading into events like this, rather than the show being disappointing.

Stock price check!

A quick glance suggests it may not happen this year. Stock did take a bounce this morning when markets opened, but we'll see what happens when the keynote starts!

Watch the jacket...

I have a theory — the shinier Jensen's jacket is, the more significant the announcements are. There have been more muted leather jackets that have brought smaller announcements with it. But this shiny number came out at CES for Vera Rubin!

If we ever end up with rhinestones, expect AGI (or RTX 60-series).

Expect Agentic AI to be the biggest talking point

Nvidia itself says "you can expect 10 million digital workers" to work alongside humans in the future — calling it a revolutionary technology. And the OpenClaw revolution has hit GTC too — Peter Steinberger is here in appropriate attire and talking to Nvidia's CEO!

A-minus agentic intelligence

In the pre-show, the Top Gun crew are discussing AI agents at scale and the level of intelligence they are possibly close to achieving.

Right now, Sam Rodriques predicted that they're at an A-minus grade-wise while they're looking for A-plus grades. Specifically, this is in reference to scientific studies and medicinal studies.

DLSS 4.5 might get some shine

Nvidia launched DLSS 4.5 in January, but it's been missing Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation. That should launch in beta on March 31.

I'm not expecting Nvidia to spend much time on the frame gen evolution, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets touched on during today's presentation.

Once it's actually available, you should see a massive leap in frame rate generation and graphical power.

30 minute countdown

As a new batch of CEOs swap in, we're 30 minutes away from the GTC 2026 keynote. It starts at 2 pm ET/11 am PT.

We're expecting a lot out of the nearly 2-hour presentation including agentic AI, the new N1X chip, a mystery AI chip, potentially a new GPU and more.

Viture announces partnership with Nvidia and Stanford Labs

As part of GTC 2026, Viture announced a partnership with Nvidia and the Stanford School of Medicine.

The "solution" combines Viture's Luma Ultra glasses, an upgraded version of the Luma Pro, in combination with LabOS that brings "hands-free clinical guidance and experimental workflows into real-world research and medical environments."

LabOS lets researchers use XR smart glassses to interpret experiments and workflows and provide guidance. Nvidia comes into play via GeForce NOW, letting them use the cloud gaming service as an immersive screen to experience 2D content in 3D and help identify spatial relationships.

The memory crisis is partly Nvidia's fault: will it be acknowledged?

At the end of February, Nvidia execs admitted during an earnings call that GPU supply could be constrained specifically because of AI data centers.

Nvidia has been a major part of the push toward AI and AI data centers, propping up companies like OpenAI through heavy investment.

That boom has created a global RAM shortage with downstream effects on everything from phones and laptops to the availability of helium and aluminum.

It'll be interesting to see if Jensen acknowledges this today, skirts around it, or ignores the RAM crisis completely.

5 minute countdown

We are entering the final countdown to Jensen Huang's keynote.

What are you interested in seeing today? Let us know in the comments or shoot me an email at scott.younker@futurenet.com.

Starting soon

As a reminder, you can follow along with the keynote on YouTube, linked above and here.

Enjoying the music?

While we wait for Huang to make his appearance, are we enjoying the music?

It kind of sounds like AI-generated pop, which says more about the pop industry than AI, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I'm in, as my son says, my "sadboy guitar" era, so enjoy some new Noah Kahan while we wait.

Honestly, the wait screen makes a great wallpaper

If you're looking for something to refresh your PC wallpaper, maybe check out the light mode and dark mode versions of the wait screen on Nvidia's keynote.

It does look pretty slick.

These are 4K versions, if you decided to save them.

...and we're off!

Here we go. Things are starting now.

Tokens in everything

The show is starting with a video about tokens and how they're impacting science, medicine, agriculture, space travel, robotics and more. But also how producing tokens is more "eco friendly."

And it starts with Nvidia, of course.

Jensen Huang is on stage now

Jensen is on stage. He notes they will be discussing AI factories, CUDA, and thanks the pre-show panels.

20 years of CUDA

GTC covers the "5 layer cake" of AI. Infrastructure, chips, platforms, models and applications.

20 years of CUDA from ecosystems to developers and customers. The chart describes "100% of Nvidia's strategies."

It's taken 20 years to build up millions of GPUs that serve just about every industry.

Lifecycle is incredibly long

CUDA is accelerating, the downloads of Nvidia libraries is speeding up.

Enables infrastructures to have "extraordinary useful life." We support every phase of the AI lifeycle, Huang says.

Every Nvidia GPU is architecturally compatible, Huang asserts. Lets it expand its reach and growth while driving down computing costs.

"This is the house that GeForce made"

25 years ago we invented the programmable shader, Huang says.

Let the company explore further and led to CUDA. 13 generations has CUDA installed "everywhere."

10 years ago, introduced RTX, complete redesign of the architecture. GeForce enabled acceleration of deep learning.

DLSS 5!

First look at DLSS 5! Fusion of structured graphics and generative AI.

A trailer shows off DLSS 5 over games like Resident Evil Requiem, FC 26, Starfield and more.

What do you think? Some games looked better, while I thought a few looked more cartoon-y, which was worse than the previous look.

DLSS 5 altered games

Here's how several games look after being hit with DLSS 5.

It's one we'll have to see in action once we're able.

Structured Data is the Ground Truth of AI

Huang is noting that structured data will be the future of AI as platforms turn AI into actionable structures.

IBM Watson X and Nvidia

Nvidia and IBM are partnering to bolster IBM's Watson X AI platform that allegedly lets companies refresh their data multiple times a day at 83% lower costs.

The goal is to reduce the cost of computing by accelerating data processing.

"We integrate into the world's cloud services"

Jensen Huang says that Nvidia is an algorithm platform company, which helps it bolster platforms like Google Cloud, Azure and AWS.

He says it will expand the compute at AWS and through them, OpenAI.

Currently, the speech is directed at enterprise customers. However, as Nvidia undergirds cloud platforms, that means that systems you use that are cloud-based will be shifted through Nvidia platforms.

AI and the world

As you can see, Nvidia and Huang view its platforms as integral to multiple areas of the world.

From automotive and healthcare to quantum computing and robotics.

These include autonomous vehicles and AI physics and AI biology for "drug discovery." Healthcare is going through its "ChatGPT moment."

For gaming and media that means translation support, live games and live media.

Retail means AI agents would take over customer service. Robotics of course is robotic systems.

Telco systems, Huang says, that AI will completely reinvent telecommunications infrastructures.

Simulation of a robotic future

Nvidia is showing off a simulation where robots and AI control everything from warehouse infrastructure to medical labs and manufacturing.

In other cases, AI models the world for autonomous driving, weather mapping and understanding elements like fire and aerodynamics.

The platform is called CudaX.

AI natives

Huang is discussing small companies that are built solely in AI or utilize AI to tackle different things.

Consequential companies will arise from this "platform shift," he says. The "Big Bang of AI."

Tokens and the generation of "accelerated" AI in the last two years has increased exponentially.

It will change "what is the meaning of computing altogether."

"Everyone should use ChatGPT"

Huang says everyone should be using ChatGPT every day andthat he used it this morning.

"Computing demand has increased by 1 million times in the last 2 years"

Here's a hint at the AI greed that created the current RAM shortage. Huang believes that AI usage and computing has exploded since 2023.

OpenAI and other companies are saying they need the compute power to deal with the massively increased usage and data processing.

Computing demand will be higher than $1 trillion dollars in growth, Huang says.

"We are now computing platform that runs all of AI"

60% of Nvidia's business are hyperscalers. That's everyone building data centers requiring AI GPUs.

40% is everything else, clouds, enterprise, robotics, gaming, supercomputing, etc.

Tokens per watt

Data centers are constrained by power and power consumption.

Huang is promoting Nvidia AI GPUs that can quickly get through more tokens than the competition.

"This is your revenue," Huang tells companies. "Our cost per token is the lowest in the world," he claims.

Nvidia is the token king, Huang implies.

New Vera Rubin program

The Vera Rubin platform is Nvidia's latest AI platform for AI data centers that is "vertically integrated completely with software." It's designed for AI agent systems.

It will affect how AI platforms function going forward.

Cooled by 45 degree water, which supposedly takes the pressure of the data center. However, rather than reducing water usage it just shifts it to the Rubin architecture. Not exactly eo-friendly.

Rubin Ultra

Another system designed for data centers. Rubin Ultra can connect up to 144 GPUs.

Increased tokens

I can extrapolate that the expansion of the ability for AI datacenters to provide more tokens and data processing will increase thanks to the new Rubin GPU, but that may not actually solidify until next year as the new system gets installed and running for AI platforms.

For now, Huang is selling Nvidia's latest system.

What about N1X or gaming?

While Jensen goes on about AI factories and Nvidia's architecture. Yes, as he mentioned, AI is 60% of Nvidia's business these days, which is worrisome if you believe we are facing a bubble that will pop.

My question is, will we see anything about the N1X chip or gaming GPUs? What is left for the everyday consumer?

Nvidia going to space?

Apparently, Huang plans to start data centers in space and already has a Vera Rubin system being design for space.

Nvidia and OpenClaw partnership

OpenClaw has taken the AI world by storm in the last few weeks. And now, the developer has entered a partnership with Nvidia.

Huang calls it an operating system. "It opensourced the operating system of agentic computers."

"The implication is incredible"

Every company in the world needs to have an OpenClaw strategy, Huang insists. Similar to a Linux focus or an HTTP/HTML focus.

OpenClaw is shows the future of personal AI agents, he says. Post-OpenClaw will turn IT from SaaS into GaaS with AI acting as service.

Nvidia promotes open models

Nvidia makes OpenClaw more secure for enterprise. It's not clear how that would actually reflect for customers. It mostly makes it safer for businesses to use.

Through OpenClaw, Nvidia is making open models for specialized AI models including Groot, Earth 2, deep learning and more.

They're calling it NemoClaw.

Nemotron Coalition

On a practical level, this is a coalition to create AI models across the globe from enterprise to sovereign agents.

The coalition is made up of companies like Mistral, Perplexity, and Cursor. Several companies like Adobe and IBM are integrating earlier versions of Nemotron.

The name makes it sounds like they're trying to build Voltron.

Self-driving cars

Speaking of Voltron, Nvidia is partnering with car manufacturers like Nissan, BYD, and more to add them to Nvidia's Robotaxi platform.

Plus, other "physical AI models" that are being deployed in robots from T-Mobile, Caterpillar, and others.

Robotic AI models

Nvidia is promoting its physical AI models for robotics including Groot, Kamino and Isaac labs.

The big reveal is how Disney uses the platforms for its characters in animation and imagineering. With the reveal of an Olaf robot from the movie Frozen.

That appears to be it

A strange recap is playing now with robots and an animated Jensen sitting around a campfire playing a country song about the keynote.

The song is probably AI-generated.

In tech, a 2x improvement is great and 10x is generational. So for Nvidia to claim its future gaming GPUs will be 1,000,000x better at path tracing sounds like pure science fiction. But that’s exactly what the company said at GDC 2026, and what’s even crazier is that I think it’s closer than any of us think.

Because today, Nvidia has confirmed you will see the “future of real-time rendering” in CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC 2026 keynote — I think a sneak peek is possible. The obstacle to this at the moment is current GPU hardware is hitting a physical wall where we can’t just throw more electricity at the problem. And the fix? Well, it’s Nvidia’s bread and butter: AI.

What is Path Tracing?

This has been the new hotness in PC gaming. I tested it in Resident Evil: Requiem, and it’s rather incredible. But what it is and how to get there is an impossible-level challenge if using the old ways.

Put simply, it’s physical accuracy. It’s not just a reflection in a puddle, it’s how light from a neon sign bounces off a wet pavement, hits a character’s chrome jacket and subtly tints their skin red. It’s not just the ray traced shiny surfaces of old; path tracing calculates how light interacts with literally everything in a scene in a realistic way.

The end result is probably going to be subtle in some games, but in others (like Requiem) where the finer details really matter in building up the fear, it can be a game changer.

The death of brute force

Like I said, it’s an impossible challenge through raw hardware power. If you had your GPU just brute force full path tracing, your PC would probably melt before it rendered a single frame of Cyberpunk 2077. But as you may have seen reading my Requiem test, Nvidia bridges that gap with DLSS 4 — AI trickery with Ray Reconstruction.

Basically, instead of making the GPU seriously sweat trying to track a single ping-pong ball thrown in a room filled with a billion mirrors, these neural rendering technologies bring in an expert who has seen billions of balls thrown into that maze. They can just look at where you threw it and draw exactly where it’s going to land.

By offloading that demanding task to AI, path tracing becomes much more efficient to do, and then that 1 million time jump starts to sound more possible.

Neural rendering is the whole thing

In our time speaking with Jensen Huang, it’s clear that DLSS is just the start of AI’s impact on PC gaming. The limits of how much more complex GPU hardware can get are starting to be reached, and neural rendering will be the thing that fills in the gap — turning your graphics card into less of a calculator and more of an imagination machine.

“In the future, it is very likely that we'll do more and more computation on fewer and fewer pixels. By doing so, the pixels that we compute are insanely beautiful, and then we use AI to infer what must be around it.” Huang said.

And the results in his words are “utterly shocking and incredible.” He talks about it looking like “basically a photograph interacting with you at 500 frames per second.” And this ties in with what John Spitzer, vice president of developer and performance, said when talking about the future of PC gaming graphics at GDC 2026.

"We're still not where we want to be. We want the real-time images to look indistinguishable from reality. We want them to look like a film,” Spitzer commented.

GTC 2026 is the starting pistol

And as these stars align around everything Nvidia is saying, that brings me back around to this “future of real-time rendering” promise for Huang’s keynote today. To be clear, this is not going to mean new gaming GPUs.

We already know that much from the supply issues around the current RTX 50-series, as Nvidia’s attention is being turned to building the picks and shovels for the AI gold race (or bubble…whichever way you look at it). But Team Green continues to march on in the gaming space, and this announcement should get PC players hyped.

I don’t think it’ll be a finish line, it’ll be a look at the next steps where we could go. After all, Vera Rubin is an architectural glimpse of what gains we may see in RTX 60-series, and that could fuel these big ideas.

More from Tom's Guide

• I went eyes-on with Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation launching March 31 — and it’s a game-changer
• Nvidia just revealed 3 big upgrades to its GeForce Now cloud gaming service — here's what's new
• Nvidia is bringing a killer app to the Apple Vision Pro — and it's good news for sim racers

Nvidia’s going big at GDC before going even bigger at GTC. But there’s one quiet announcement amidst DLSS 4.5 dynamic multi-frame generation and GeForce Now upgrades that could be a massive one for anyone who owns an Apple Vision Pro — looking for reasons to use it.

Team Green’s CloudXR technology is able to stream PC VR games wirelessly from your gaming PC to the Vision Pro in glorious 4K 120 FPS, and their first target is the ultimate sim rig experience with support for iRacing and X-Plane 12.

Obviously, good news for sim pilots (shout-out), but as you may already know about me, I’m the sim racing guy on the Tom’s Guide team (my bachelor party is literally dedicated to it). One thing is clear: this is a breakthrough for VR drivers like me. Let me explain.

What is Nvidia’s CloudXR?

One thing I have to make clear here is that CloudXR is a very different thing to GeForce Now. Both are game streaming, but while GFN is from Nvidia’s cloud servers, CloudXR streams directly from your own hardware. You’ll need a beauty tower too, because its capabilities are significant.

Think of CloudXR as me vs a strong person taking in a bunch of groceries from the car. I can handle two bags, but if I try to handle more, it becomes a struggle. So my muscly friend comes in and takes the remaining eight bags. We’re technically working together, but let’s be real — they’re doing the heavy lifting (literally).

It’s GPU-accelerated VR delivered wirelessly to a headset with low-latency, which brings a serious graphical turboboost of that Nvidia GPU that you wouldn’t be able to do on the silicon of that standalone set.

And while some people have been talking about beta testing this new feature on the Vision Pro subreddit, this is the first time Nvidia’s officially letting the cat out the bag.

The big win here is foveated PC streaming. Basically, thanks to Apple Vision Pro’s eye-tracking capability, Nvidia’s CloudXR tech can see where you’re looking and render that part of your vision in full glorious detail — while leaving stuff in your peripheral vision and beyond less so. PSVR 2 does something similar with rendering graphics on the PS5, but it doesn’t hold a candle to this.

It’s a huge efficiency gain for your GPU, and provides much more headroom to be able to achieve up to full 4K gaming at 120 FPS in VR.

The Vision Pro’s killer app?

That question is a tricky one to answer — it’s a $3,500 headset after all. But any new features are warmly welcomed to try and get more value from what has quickly become the beta test device for the version of visionOS that will run on a future pair of smart glasses.

But take it from a VR sim racer: there’s no experience quite like it (…except maybe actually driving a race car, but there’s no risk factor here).

I know we’re all quick to talk about the “immersion” of something, and don’t get me wrong, it absolutely is. But there’s something here about it that actually makes you a better driver.

Take trail-braking for example (instead of hammering on the brakes to slow down for a corner, using a more gentle combination of brake and acceleration to maximize corner speed). It’s a tricky technique to learn and while I’m absolutely getting the feedback I need from my sim rig to ensure I’m not over-driving, being able to see the path of a corner is also critical.

Now, on the flat screen of a TV or monitor, that can be next to impossible on long-swooping turns or oddly-angled hairpins that disappear off the side. In VR, I can look to the apex and corner exit and aim my car for it.

Yes, I know this sounds small and that I’m getting really geeky here (sim racing is extremely my thing). But it’s oh-so critical to extracting the slight performance improvements that are the difference between a win and a loss.

Not the only XR upgrade

For the other update, we look over to Nvidia GeForce Now, where on March 19, Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest headsets are getting a streaming upgrade to 90 FPS. It’s great to see these platforms continue to get supported — nothing quite like throwing on my Quest 3S in bed and playing PC games on a gigantic screen on my ceiling.

And as the subreddit community seems to confirm about beta tests, CloudXR is something that can be used across multiple games, which would be huge for the future of PC VR gaming. Getting those cables outta the way is a step towards true plug and play simplicity that can be the biggest thing holding potential players back.

More from Tom's Guide

• 2026 is the year smart glasses will finally stop being cringe, but has their moment come too late?
• I sim-raced an F1 season and dethroned Verstappen — thanks to the ultimate sim seat
• I felt like I was driving a real racing car when testing this sim racing rig — this is next-level simulation tech

Nvidia launched DLSS 4.5 back in the middle of January and (spoiler alert) I’ve been really impressed with just how much detail is AI-infused upscaler is able to get from a rendered picture from just 25% the resolution. It feels like a real value booster for mid-range GPUs!

But there’s one feature that we’ve all been waiting for — Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation — the evolution of the frame gen we have right now. Basically, instead of just packing an arbitrary amount of AI-generated frames in between frames rendered by your GPU, dynamic frame gen is able to see what the max refresh rate of your screen is, and only generate the frames it needs to max that out.

We now have a launch date of March 31st (starting in beta), and I got some eyes-on time with the tech. And I gotta be honest with you, this feels like the frame gen tech that tackles the problems PC gamers have head on. Let me explain.

How does Dynamic Multi-Frame Generation work?

Think about it like driving up a steep mountain, and you’re in a car with a manual transmission. To maintain speed, you’ve got to manually shift your gears (like shifting between the different multi-frame gen options), and those gear shifts can cause a clunky pause in your momentum.

Dynamic multi-frame gen works like a car with automatic transmission — intelligently monitoring how hard the engine is working (your system load) and automatically shifting gears (the frame multiplier) up or down depending on what the terrain demands.

And when the road flattens out and the workload lightens, the frame multiplier seamlessly downshifts so your system computes exactly what is needed in every scenario. The end result of this in my testing is an uninterrupted gaming experience, where you’ll really struggle to notice when that multiplier changes, and virtually eliminates any tiny hints of latency.

Gamesmaxxing

So I saw Black Myth: Wukong running on an RTX 5080 machine with multi-frame generation cranked up manually to 6X, and then The Outer Worlds 2 with RTX 5060 Ti with that dynamic frame gen turned on.

The first observation when it comes to Black Myth is just how minimal the latency impact is at full 6X. We are talking only a few milliseconds here, which I didn’t feel at all in the controller inputs — all while showing off exactly what DLSS 4.5 is able to do here.

For example, while toggling to DLSS 4 shows that some of the finer particle details and distant textures are smoothed out/removed, switching to 4.5 really brings these intricacies back to life. You can see it just by looking at the sparks of light around your weapon.

Then, here comes dynamic frame gen, which targets the max frame rate (240Hz) of the monitor. I got the help of an Nvidia rep to hide the stats in the top corner of the screen with his hand — so I can try to guess when the frame multiplier changes based on feeling alone.

Because visually, I could take an educated guess, right? Like, when the screen is not so busy, that multiplier would go down, but when there’s much more textures and characters to render, it’ll go back up. But the transitions felt oh-so-smooth that I didn’t notice a change to the speed of my inputs whatsoever.

That comes down to three key things:

• Eliminating wasteful latency: Let’s say you’ve got a 144Hz monitor, and you’ve got DLSS running a game at 240 FPS. Those extra 96 frames are never seen, but the GPU still spends time computing them. This can create an interpolation gap — you’re over-exhausting your GPU with AI tasks it doesn’t need to do. By aiming for the max frame rate, the backlog is cleared and waste is eliminated.
• Smoother frame pacing: Another side-effect of aiming squarely for your monitor’s exact frame rate is a consistent delivery of said frames. If you manually set to a certain multiplier, there can be a jittery feeling as you go between GPU-intensive levels and calmer ones. This stops the over-delivery of frames in those quieter moments and has it all running at the same pace.
• Prioritizing the base frame rate: Any AI game frame generation is only as good as the base rate of how fast your GPU can render a game. Sometimes your game can look fast, but feel slow, and sometimes that can be exacerbated by clogging it with AI tasks. With Dynamic MFG shifting from 6X down to 2 or even 0X (native), this ensures that the card focuses more on rendering real frames faster.

The end result is a more tamed DLSS frame generation — only using its AI witchcraft when it’s absolutely necessary and making a game feel smoother and more responsive for it.

Outlook

So ahead of its March 31st debut (launching as part of an opt-in Nvidia app beta that you can turn on as an override), should you use it? Based on my time testing it, the answer is “absolutely,” but results may vary.

Of course, this is going to start life as a beta, so there’s that disclaimer out the way. Plus, I tested it in a very specific space ship environment in The Outer Worlds 2 — what would happen if I was to be in the throws of combat on a planet? How will results change across different games?

The answer, as we all explore this tech together, will change on a game-by-game basis — as more and more optimizations are made to work around it.

That being said, if this is what we can look forward to across the over 200 titles that support DLSS 4.5 (and the 20 native integrations currently in the works for upcoming games), this is the final piece of the puzzle that brings the vision of smooth, responsive AI fueled gameplay to life.

More from Tom's Guide

• It’s been 25 years since Nvidia GeForce 3 — and I think gamers accidentally built the AI era
• Resident Evil Requiem turned me into a path tracing believer — and Nvidia's DLSS 4 made it terrifying
• DLSS 4.5 wins big: 48% of gamers pick Nvidia over AMD FSR (and native) in blind gaming test

I’ve been covering Apple’s MacBook Neo all week, and it’s great being able to tell folks about such an affordable laptop. Unfortunately, I can’t do the same with PC gaming. Thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis, it seems the days of the budget gaming rig are officially numbered. While Apple has found a way to bring costs down (at least with the Neo), the world of PC gaming is heading in the opposite direction.

If current trends continue, PC gaming enthusiasts who love building, tweaking, and upgrading their kits could be priced out in the next couple of years. We’re not just talking about a slight bump in inflation — we could see a future where an “entry-level” gaming PC starts at $2,000 or more.

Here’s why PC gaming could become an even more exclusive club.

RAMageddon strikes again

As Gartner reports, surging memory costs are already choking the market. The firm predicts that skyrocketing DRAM and NAND flash prices will lead to a significant reduction in global PC and smartphone shipments throughout 2026.

This is a double-whammy for PC gamers. Not only do we need memory for our system RAM, but we also need it for our GPUs and high-end NVMe drives. With the cost of raw materials rising, manufacturers pass those increases directly to consumers.

We’re already seeing "budget" GPUs ship with less VRAM just to keep prices somewhat stable, and Gartner’s data suggests that even those compromised cards are about to get a lot more expensive.

Scarcity is “fantastic”

Don’t expect any of the big manufacturers to come in and save the day. Speaking at a recent conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the current supply scarcity is “fantastic” for the company (via VideoCardz). While that’s certainly true from a corporate perspective, it’s not good for the ordinary gamer.

Huang was discussing this in the context of AI infrastructure rather than gaming products specifically, but it’s still disheartening to hear. It could be viewed as confirmation that high prices aren’t a temporary fluke and may reflect a business model that prioritizes high-margin enterprise and AI markets over consumers. You need only look at Micron’s decision to leave the consumer RAM market as an example.

While this benefits Nvidia's enterprise focus, it highlights the growing tension between AI demands and consumer accessibility.

A bleak future for PC gaming

Based on the Gartner report, Metro UK has a grim prediction: by 2028, gaming PCs will be “too expensive for ordinary people.” Based on Gartner's report and the reality on the ground, I agree with this assessment.

Metro UK believes we’re moving toward a bifurcated market. On one side, you’ll have low-power devices and consoles for the masses. On the other hand, you’ll have the enthusiast PC market, where the barrier to entry could rise from $800 to nearly $2,500.

By 2028, the components required to run the latest AAA titles at 4K, let alone 8K, will be so specialized and in such high demand (thanks to the AI boom) that the average consumer may simply be priced out of the DIY market entirely.

While there has always been a divide between low-end and high-end gaming in the PC world, that gap could grow even wider. And that’s the best-case scenario. The way things are going, budget or entry-level rigs and components might just cease to exist.

Outlook

If $2,000 becomes the floor for a functional gaming PC, where does that leave the average gamer?

The only choices might be the upcoming PS6 or Xbox Project Helix. It’s also possible that those who prefer the PC experience might gravitate toward cloud gaming services like GeForce Now. While I’m not a fan of subscription services, paying a monthly fee could be more affordable than shelling out thousands for a gaming rig.

Building your own PC has always been one of the most rewarding (and empowering) parts of being a PC gamer. However, with Gartner’s memory warnings, Huang’s statement, and 2028 price predictions, it seems that era may be winding down. I don’t see PC gaming going away, but it’s rapidly shifting from a relatively mainstream hobby to a luxury pursuit.

More from Tom's Guide

• The RAM crisis is out of control: Here's the most alarming tech products affected
• RAM prices are rough right now, but I found 5 DDR5 kits that beat the crisis
• Analyst predicts bleak future for RAM crisis

If you’re looking for the best all-around PC gaming experience, Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are the way to go — touting the widest game support, the best AI trickery to enhance game performance in DLSS 4.5, and superior ray tracing.

But two problems: Nvidia’s a bit busy fuelling the AI data centre boom, which has caused strain on supply. Then on top of that, retailers know these are the best options, and we’re left with ballooning prices.

I may be the PC gaming guy on the Tom's Guide team, and I get super hyped when I see the breakthroughs in graphical fidelity like neural-driven path tracing in Resident Evil Requiem. But I’m not blind to the prevalent price gouging, and as someone testing the best GPUs, it’s a little depressing to be in the situation where my mates ask, “Which one should I buy?” And my answer is “don’t…just don’t.”

HOWEVER, Nvidia is fighting back, and in the UK, there are nine 50-series graphics cards (all that I’ve personally tested and recommend) that are either back down to their retail price or close enough to it that my answer to my friends is “snag one now.”

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080

For those looking for a 4K monster without having to remortgage the house for a 5090, the RTX 5080 is the right choice. It’s the GPU in the daily driver I built late last year, and it’s the central nervous system to all my gaming (strapped up to my 4K gaming monitor and the TV too for a console-esque experience).

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

After putting this card through its paces, RTX 5070 Ti is my favorite of Nvidia’s latest lineup — nailing 1440p gameplay, along with shockingly good 4K performance too.

Packing enough video memory for even the most taxing AAA titles, a ton of CUDA cores for impressive rendering speeds, and Tensor cores for all that DLSS 4 goodness, it’s the sweet spot of the family. And while the discounts bring it down to around £40 over RRP, that cost is offset with a free copy of Resident Evil Requiem!

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, 5060 Ti (16GB), and 5060

Did I call the RTX 5070 an awkward middle child back on my Birthday in 2025? Sure, and my answer would’ve been to go for the RTX 5060 Ti with more video memory (GDDR7) — a crucial number for ensuring your games run smooth and stable.

However, this was back when the pricing was a mess last summer. Now, the 5070 and 5060 Ti are (finally) only £10 over RRP and are now solid mid-rangers for 1440p gameplay.

And for those getting into PC gaming for the first time, an RTX 5060 is a good place to start, with stellar 1080p performance and access to the full DLSS 4 suite. Plus, doesn’t hurt that it’s £30 below RRP.

Nvidia GTC 2026 kicks off on March 16 and promises to deliver some big announcements from Team Green. While this is sure to be an AI-heavy show, we’re also expecting important hardware announcements, as CEO Jensen Huang recently teased that his company will unveil "several new chips the world has never seen before."

You may be wondering why you should tune into GTC, since it’s not as consumer-focused as CES. Even though there will be plenty of talk about data centers and AI, Nvidia is likely to drop hints or announce technology that could end up in the devices you use every day, like the best gaming laptops.

We’re covering all things GTC to keep you updated on Nvidia’s plans. Here are some of the biggest announcements we anticipate.

Nvidia’s mystery chip

Given Huang’s comments about a potentially revolutionary AI chip, we can expect a major reveal of a new inference-focused chip, possibly related to the Feynman architecture designed for faster AI tasks. This wouldn’t be a typical GPU, since it’s built for “agentic AI,” where systems act autonomously.

What does this mean for us? Imagine your phone or laptop running AI apps that can edit photos, summarize emails, or plan your day almost in real time. While these features exist, they can feel slow or unreliable. A chip like this could make AI more useful for everyday tasks, and do it all on-device instead of through the cloud. For gamers, it could lead to better upscaling tech, especially for lower- and mid-range PCs and laptops.

The Arm-based N1X CPU

Speaking about chips, there have been rumors about Nvidia’s N1X, an Arm-based CPU for the best computers and best laptops. But with N1X delays reported, GTC might only offer a sneak peek rather than a full launch. If this processor appears, expect discussions on integrated graphics that could challenge Intel’s Panther Lake.

Windows on Arm is now viable, thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips, so an Nvidia Arm chip would be huge. It could create a four-way race between Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm, and Apple for who can make the fastest, most energy-efficient laptop chip. We might not get much N1X news, but it’s what I’m most excited about as a laptop reviewer.

Next-gen GPU tease

As we recently reported, Nvidia won't release new gaming GPUs in 2026, as they’re focusing on making chips for AI data centers rather than consumer GPUs. However, we might see some architecture teases.

I expect detailed looks at the Rubin GPU, which aims to provide five times the power of Blackwell for AI workloads. Feynman could be a significant leap and might use TSMC’s advanced 1.6nm process.

If you’re a PC gamer, pay close attention to what gets announced, as Nvidia’s data-center tech often influences what runs your PC. For example, Rubin could mean GPUs capable of 8K gaming or ray-traced worlds without overheating your system. Feynman’s efficiency could also improve laptop battery life. Plus, any new tech could lead to an upgraded version of DLSS, making games look and run better.

Physical AI and robotics

I expect Nvidia to also focus on “physical AI,” which combines simulation with real-world robotics. We saw some of this at CES, and I expect the company to expand on it at GTC. Look for sessions on AI factories and multimodal systems that combine vision, language, and action.

It sounds like sci-fi, but if you’ve seen videos of robots doing coordinated dancing, you know we’re getting closer to a Jetsons-like world. Maybe one day we’ll see affordable home robots that can clean, cook, or help those in need, all powered by Nvidia’s Omniverse platform. Nvidia will certainly paint an exciting picture, and I’ll be curious to see if any of it becomes real products.

Agentic AI

You’ll hear about agentic AI, where models go beyond chatbots to multi-agent systems that work together on complex tasks. GTC will likely include workshops on LLM augmentation, prompt engineering, and deploying inference at scale. Essentially, making AI more proactive rather than reactive.

While current LLMs like ChatGPT are useful, they’re not perfect or truly “intelligent.” Agentic AI could deliver genuinely smart AI systems that learn instead of just predict. We’ve heard promises of AI serving as virtual assistants, but these often need a lot of guidance, which defeats the purpose. I remain skeptical about seeing true agentic AI soon, but GTC might start changing my mind.

Outlook

Although Nvidia GTC 2026 will focus heavily on AI, it’s worth tuning in to see what Nvidia is working on and how it could benefit our work and gaming experiences.

Nvidia GTC runs from March 16 to 19, and we’ll be covering it all. The “GTC Live 2026” pregame show starts on March 16 at 11 am ET (8 a.m. PDT), before Jensen Huang delivers his keynote speech at 2 pm ET (11 a.m. PDT). I’ll be watching to admire his leather jacket and hear his insights on Nvidia’s latest plans. Stay tuned for more!

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• It’s been 25 years since Nvidia GeForce 3 — and I think gamers accidentally built the AI era
• Resident Evil Requiem turned me into a path tracing believer — and Nvidia's DLSS 4 made it terrifying
• RAM prices keep going up — what is RAMageddon, and why is it getting worse?

Nvidia GeForce GPUs have been around since 1999, but it was with GeForce 3 that changed the rules of the game forever. Today is the 25th anniversary of the third generation GPU tech, and you can draw the past quarter of a century of generational leaps in gaming back to this one pivotal moment.

And that change? Programmability. Instead of just feeding data to the chip, people were able to run small programs directly on the GPU — giving birth to the rampant progression towards the incredible fidelity we see on PC games. But in an ironic twist for gamers in 2026, it’s that very programmability that makes it impossible to find the best GPUs at MSRP.

Plus, you can also see how the sheer size of GPUs have grown over time too… Yes this is technically the GeForce 210 that I picked up at Guang Hua Digital Plaza last year. But this is roughly the same dimensions of a GeForce 3 GPU back in the day (around 6.5 inches in length).

‘Your world, programmed’

So let’s look back. In 2001, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked about GeForce 3 as a way to “unleash cinematic realism,” all by moving away from “fixed-function” chips and giving creators a blank canvas to make with.

This came down to the introduction of Programmable Vertex and Pixel Shaders. Think of a 3D video game like a movie set. To get a character on screen, the computer has to figure out where things are and what they look like.

Before GeForce 3, these jobs were hardwired into the chip and developers were stuck with them. If you wanted to draw water in a harbor scene, you were stuck with the water Nvidia’s engineers gave you.

Now, with this increased programmability, the Vertex shaders (the “where”) are able to be controlled by the coder — like a construction worker moving the scenery around. And on top of that, the programmable pixel shaders (the “what color”) was also able to be controlled.

You could start telling the lighting crew what to do, figure out whether that floor is supposed to be wet, dusty, bumpy, or whatever you want it to be!

And it was this that gave birth to those moments of cinematic realism. I stared at the water in “Elder Scrolls: Morrowind” for far too long, and “Doom 3” was utterly terrifying. Plus, with GeForce 3 architecture powering the original Xbox, there was a night and day difference between it and the PS2.

Paving the way

Fast forward to today and you can see how that programmability of GeForce 3 paved the way for CUDA and Tensor cores. This is the age of neural rendering, and Jensen said as much in my Q&A panel with him back at CES 2026.

“In the future, it is very likely that we'll do more and more computation on fewer and fewer pixels. By doing so, the pixels that we compute are insanely beautiful, and then we use AI to infer what must be around it.” Huang said.

And the aim seems to be moving beyond the architectural limits of GPU silicon, looking past cinematic realism and producing extreme photo realism: “basically a photograph interacting with you at 500 frames per second” in his own words.

You can see just how much neural work goes into something like “Resident Evil Requiem” — using a combination of DLSS 4.5 and Ray Reconstruction AI trained on millions of hours of gameplay to make a game run smoother and look prettier.

It’s the difference between a developer in 2001 saying “I will write a program to tell this pixel to look blue,” and one in 2026 saying “I’ll let an AI model look at the scene and decide what the pixel should look like, based on billions of previous examples.”

And it’s that very breakthrough that has made Team Green the belle of the AI ball, and that’s come at a bit of a detriment to gamers.

The cost of intelligence

You saw it in Nvidia’s recent earnings and the ominous warning that RTX 50-series GPUs were going to be hard to come by because of the RAM price crisis. While the company still makes billions of dollars on gaming tech, it makes hundreds of billions fueling the AI factories you see popping up all over the planet.

The silicon that once lived in our towers is being diverted to build the future of autonomy, and while I don’t fault the decision (I’d make the same one too in Jensen’s leather jacket), you can’t help but feel like as the GPU figured out how to learn, the world now wants it for everything except games.

The legacy

“Without GeForce, there would be no AI today. Without AI, there would be no DLSS today. It's harmonious," Huang said back in January.

While it’s a little tricky to see the harmony with GPUs far exceeding their MSRPs, I think it’s even more than that. In 2001, the programmability of GeForce 3 was initially thought to be a way to give us nicer water effects in games.

But Jensen’s long-term bet was that if you make a chip programmable enough, the world will find a use for it beyond games. And boy did they, looking at the most valuable company on the planet.

We are now living in the world that GeForce 3 built. 25 years ago, it delivered on the promise of “infinite effects” so well that the technology outgrew the toybox and the world realized that the most powerful tool for the future of humanity was sitting inside our gaming rigs all along.

And with Vera Rubin being essentially a sneak peek at what the RTX 60-series architecture will be able to do, this train isn’t stopping. But we may have to wait a while for the stock alerts to catch up.

More from Tom's Guide

• DLSS 4.5 wins big: 48% of gamers pick Nvidia over AMD FSR (and native) in blind gaming test
• Europe’s DDR5 prices are finally falling — the glimmer of hope we’ve been waiting for
• Nvidia's N1X chip could make every laptop a gaming laptop — but will the Arm gamble pay off?

Nvidia recently released its latest earnings report, and as expected, the tech giant broke records. Although its gaming division made a healthy profit year-over-year, the company reported a noticeable double-digit decline quarter-over-quarter.

According to the earnings report, total revenue reached $68.1 billion, up 20% from the previous quarter and a significant 73% year-over-year. As anticipated, the biggest growth came from AI data centers, which soared to $62.3 billion, up 22% sequentially and 75% YoY. This now represents 91% of Nvidia’s business.

But what about gaming, the segment that’s most important to PC gamers and RTX fans? Gaming revenue was $3.7 billion, up 47% from the same quarter last year and contributing to a record full-year gaming total of $16 billion (up 41% YoY). However, it declined 13% from Q3's $4.3 billion, missing analyst expectations of around $4 billion.

Nvidia attributed this to the usual post-holiday “channel inventory moderation,” meaning that retailers and partners managed excess stock after a strong holiday season. While that might have been true before, the current supply-chain issues have changed the situation. In short, RAM shortages are prompting Nvidia to focus more on AI infrastructure rather than consumer GPUs.

What this means for you

If you’re looking for a new GPU, you may find it difficult to find one now and in the coming months. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress warned that upcoming quarters will be “very tight” due to the RAM shortage, with shortages possibly becoming “more aggressive” and retail prices remaining high or rising further. As we recently reported, don’t expect next-generation launches from Nvidia any time soon.

My advice is to wait until the market stabilizes. Even if Nvidia is prioritizing data centers over gaming, the latter still generates $16 billion annually, and GeForce RTX cards remain the most popular GPUs among PC gamers. Stay patient and take advantage of any deals that come your way, which we'll do our best to highlight when we come across them ourselves.

More from Tom's Guide

• I tested Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 beta update
• Nvidia N1X and N1 CPU: Everything we know so far
• Nvidia's N1X chip could make every laptop a gaming laptop

So I’ll be honest. I’ve been a path tracing doubter for a while now. The idea of slightly more realistic-looking textures, shinier lights and better reflections just felt a little bit unnecessary in the games I had tested so far on Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs.

But then I got my hands on Resident Evil Requiem, and I’ve been converted. The difference is night and day with path tracing; a new level of fear and tension is added in the subtleties of light and dark, and the immersion is taken to new heights I’ve never seen before.

What is path tracing?

This is like the gold standard of computer graphics — a generational leap over ray tracing that is able to calculate how all direct and indirect light in a scene bounces off surfaces.

In the past, this effect was done through rasterization, which is to paint these lighting effects onto the scene itself. Then, ray tracing was the next step to calculate how direct light sources interact with one another (like a reflection in a window).

Now, path tracing is able to handle both direct light and indirect illumination, while calculating where that light will bounce multiple times in a scene. This is, of course, incredibly demanding on a GPU, and in Resident Evil Requiem, DLSS is required to turn it on.

And on top of that, Nvidia’s Ray Reconstruction tech helps things along by using an AI model to recognize those traced rays of light in real-time and enhance the image quality.

By the numbers

With that in mind, let’s get straight into the testing. I ran Resident Evil 9 on three different machines:

• The first I built myself at Scan computers, which packs an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RTX 5080 and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. You can watch the whole build here.
• The second is an RDY Element 9 Pro R07 with AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Typically, this prebuilt comes with an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, but I switched the GPU for this test.
• The third is a Quoted Tech Frontier, a prebuilt sporting an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, RTX 5070 and 32GB of RAM. It’s a PC that can muster up solid 4K performance when pushed to its limits.

To make this a stress test but fair to each card, I targeted each one’s preferred resolution — RTX 5080 at 4K and RTX 5060 Ti at 1440p. While an RTX 5070 is generally better suited to 1440p, I decided to turn this up to 4K to see how far I could push it. All have their graphics settings turned up to the max with path tracing turned on.

Latency checker

Now, I take frametime from each baseline test without frame generation because this is important to measure any potential latency. It’s a technical explanation, and there is low-latency tech Nvidia uses to tackle this. Put simply, your computer is “blind” to your mouse movements between frames, so the longer that is, the more prominent the latency can feel.

Throw frame generation on top of that, and while you’ll have a game that looks smooth, it may not feel smooth. But, that rule doesn’t apply with the same level of importance across the board, and Resident Evil Requiem is the peak example of this.

I normally follow a golden rule: start with a base rate of 60 FPS and build from there. That way you get much better responsiveness in your games. However, given the slow, methodical gameplay in Resident Evil, I didn’t feel that latency impacted gameplay — even at the higher end of 26.1 milliseconds.

If gameplay were fast and furious (like a multiplayer shooter that required twitch-like responses), this would be a different story. But as I’m about to show you, the pace of Resi 9 means you can turn up that fidelity and not break your immersion. This is a real masterpiece.

Turning down the difficulty

Yes, that’s not just a cool subheading. That literally happened. I’ve always been a bit of a coward when it comes to horror games, but with path tracing, I noped out at my first monstrous jump scare after a pitch-perfect build of tension and turned down the difficulty. It’s seriously a huge noticeable uplift.

Whether it’s light dancing on floor tiles covered in blood, your terrified face staring back at you in the glass of a fire extinguisher case or the shadows being so accurately cast on a bunch of zombies shuffling towards you, this is the first time I looked at path tracing and thought “I get it now.”

And when it comes down to the differing levels of DLSS 4 to 4.5 — moving from a balanced AI upscaling to one leaning towards performance and ultra performance — there are some telltale signs like a little bit more fuzziness, especially in the rain-soaked intro.

However, it is quite the achievement to have the game looking this good from such a small picture. For context, DLSS 4.5 ultra performance takes an image rendered by the GPU at a third of the size. That means a 720p picture blown up to 4K, and a measly 480p image up to 1440p.

Yet another example of how Team Green runs this town when it comes to AI trickery to extract better bang for your buck from your GPU.

A new level of fear

I will never doubt path tracing again. While it is the case that in some titles that sport it, the difference is small, when used intentionally, like what we see here, it makes for a huge upgrade.

Not only is Resident Evil Requiem a visual tour de force through-and-through (thanks to Nvidia’s tech) with frame smoothness and no noticeable impact to latency, it’s a great game, too — even for scaredy cats like me, I had a great time.

If you’ve been looking for titles to both show off what your gaming tower is capable of, while also actually getting an all-immersive single-player experience out of the deal, this is the one to get.

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• Nvidia's Jensen Huang says it will ‘surprise the world’ with a new mystery chip — here's what to expect
• ‘RTX 5070 is the sweet spot’: Scan CEO reveals what Nvidia GPU PC gamers actually want

Nvidia RTX 60-series graphics cards won’t be making an appearance this year but Team Green is returning to its PC hardware roots, just not in the way you’d expect.

At a time when the ongoing memory and storage crisis or RAMageddon has made PC building just as or even more expensive than it was during the crypto mining craze, there now appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. While we aren’t getting new GPUs anytime soon and building a PC still costs a small fortune, Nvidia is giving PC gamers another option: vastly improved integrated graphics.

Just like we saw with the release of Intel’s new Panther Lake chips, Team Green is also planning to give integrated graphics a major boost while simultaneously giving the best gaming laptops a run for their money. The company’s upcoming N1 and N1X chips may be Arm-based but if the latest rumors are to be believed, they could pack the same CUDA core count as an RTX 5070 GPU.

If you’ve been following our Panther Lake coverage, you’ll know that the days of integrated graphics being a joke compared to a discrete GPU are over. Sure, you’re not getting dedicated graphics level performance but being able to play Cyberpunk 2077 at close 60 fps at 1080p on a device like the new Dell XPS 14 (2026) is incredibly impressive. Now imagine that same experience but on a chip designed by Nvidia.

We already know that laptops featuring Nvidia’s new N1 and N1X chips are in the works from both Lenovo and Dell. However, could this mean you might soon be able to leave your bulky gaming laptop at home and get some serious playtime in with a device that’s significantly lighter and much easier to slip into a bag?

Personally, I’m optimistic but first Nvidia will have to overcome the hurdles that come with gaming on an Arm-based CPU. Here’s how Team Green might just be able to pull off this impressive feat.

No VRAM, no problem

Even with a top-of-the-line gaming laptop, there’s one obstacle that will always hold back its performance and that’s VRAM. Dedicated laptop graphics chips like those found on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and the Razer Blade 16 will always be limited by the amount of VRAM they have. Fortunately with the N1X though, Nvidia may have found an answer to this problem.

Just like Apple’s M-series chips in the best MacBooks, the N1X won’t use separate RAM and VRAM for memory. Instead, it will use a unified memory pool where memory is shared between the CPU, GPU and NPU. Not having dedicated memory just for graphics might seem like a downside at first but in this scenario, it’s actually an advantage.

In my time testing the best mini PCs, I’ve reviewed gaming-focused ones with dedicated graphics like the AtomMan G7 Ti but more recently, I had a chance to check out the Framework Desktop. It too uses unified memory and while my review unit came with 64GB of LPDDR5x, I wasn’t stuck just using all that memory for the CPU. When it was time to play games, I allocated a full 32GB of RAM just to its built-in Radeon 8060S graphics which really made a difference while playing through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Based on leaks and die shots, we know that Nvidia’s N1X chip is a consumer-tuned version of its GB10 Superchip which powers its DGX Spark AI workstations. With 6,144 CUDA cores on board, this is identical to the core count of a desktop RTX 5070.

More importantly, the N1X reportedly features a massive 256-bit memory bus — the kind of "firehose" bandwidth usually reserved for high-end dedicated cards — allowing those thousands of cores to pull data from the system RAM at over 300 GB/s. Now combine that with the fact that like the GB10 Superchip, Nvidia’s upcoming N1X chip will also have unified memory and you’ve got a perfect recipe for supercharged integrated graphics.

Like on my Framework Desktop, you’ll be able to allocate a certain amount of its unified memory just to playing games. If RAM prices do come down — we’ve seen signs they might be starting to — and you get a new laptop with an Nvidia chip on board and 32GB of RAM, you could then set aside up to 16GB of memory for gaming.

This is due to the fact that by default, Windows 11 on Arm usually allows an integrated GPU to access up to 50% of system memory on its own with no intervention on your part. With a 256-bit bus, that 16GB of memory doesn't just sit there; it acts with the speed and responsiveness of a dedicated card.

Speaking of Arm, that’s the final piece of the puzzle Nvidia will need to crack if it wants to make thin and light laptops that can also deliver significantly improved gaming performance.

From emulated to native graphics

As it stands now, when you want to play the best PC games on a Windows laptop running an Arm-based chip, you need to do so using Prism. The reason for this is that most games are written for x86 (which Intel and AMD both use) and first need to be translated so that they can run on Arm.

Back in December, Microsoft updated Prism and this is what allows demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 to run on Arm-based devices. However, since your device is translating the game from x86, you lose about 10 to 20% of the power from your laptop’s CPU.

With its new N1X chips, Nvidia will reportedly bypass Prism altogether with a full ARM64 version of its GeForce Game Ready Driver. This driver works hand-in-hand with the new Windows 11 version 26H1 (codenamed "Bromine"), which launched earlier this month.

Unlike the standard version of Windows, 26H1 features a specialized "Arm-first" scheduler designed specifically to help chips like the N1X prioritize gaming performance without the usual emulation stutters.

Nvidia is taking things a step further by utilizing the N1X’s NPU (or Neural Processing Unit) to add its DLSS frame-gen tech to the mix. DLSS 5.0 will run entirely on the N1X’s NPU and if you’ve tried frame-gen tech on a less capable device before, you know how much of a difference it can make. In this case though, when games running on Arm are slowed down because they need to be translated first, DLSS can help make up for that performance loss and bring their frame rates back up.

While you’ll still be able to use Prism for older games, when playing newer titles on N1X laptops, you won’t have to thanks to the combination of Nvidia’s ARM64 driver and Microsoft’s new Windows architecture. Of course, we’ll have to test this out for ourselves once laptops with N1X chips are released but what I’ve heard so far is almost enough to convert me from an Arm skeptic into a believer, especially when it comes to gaming.

Hurry up and wait for your next laptop

Between the ongoing RAM crisis and a slew of newer, powerful laptops on the horizon, playing the waiting game is likely your best move right now. If you can hold off on upgrading from your current laptop, then you’ll likely be in for a big surprise when you do so later this year.

Imagine being someone who bought a new Intel-based Mac right before Apple released its M1 chip. With Nvidia entering the laptop market in a big way with its own chips, I think we could be in a similar situation right now.

Based on a leak from Lenovo’s own online store — which briefly listed a Legion 7 "N1X Edition" — we could see laptops sporting Nvidia’s new silicon as early as the second quarter of this year.

By playing the waiting game just a bit longer, you could get a whole lot more bang for your buck. In fact, instead of getting a laptop for work and one of the best handheld gaming PCs to satisfy that gaming on the go itch, you could effectively get both devices in one.

There are even whispers that some of these N1X laptops will feature "detachable" designs similar to the ROG Flow, allowing them to transform from a productivity machine into a high-powered gaming tablet.

Although Intel got a head start with its new Panther Lake chips, the future of integrated graphics has never looked more promising now that Nvidia has thrown its hat into the ring. If the N1X can truly deliver RTX 5070-level performance without the bulk of a dedicated GPU, the "gaming laptop" as we know it is about to change forever.

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• The RAM crisis is out of control: Here's the most alarming tech products affected (so far)
• Lenovo is planning another PC price hike in March — and I’m all out of patience with this AI bubble

RAMageddon is in full effect. With memory chip manufacturers prioritizing AI data centers, what we're left with is price hikes, shortages and delays on all the tech that we value the most.

Just how bad has it got? Well, before the memory shortage officially kicked into gear a few months ago, this 32GB DDR5 RAM stick could be picked up for $87. Now, it costs $484. That's just over a 450% increase, and that's still not the worst of it — DRAM and NAND storage memory prices have skyrocketed by over 600%.

For PC makers and enthusiasts, that's a tough blow. But if you're thinking you're in the clear, just because you don't buy RAM sticks yourself, I've got bad news: nothing is safe. Phones, laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and yes, even Wi-Fi routers, will all be impacted by the RAM crisis. In fact, it's already taken effect.

Companies are already scrambling to scoop a dwindling supply of memory chips, with prices set to surge even higher going forward. The problem is, there's no end in sight anytime soon, as analysts and even Micron itself are claiming we won't see any improvements until 2028. Yikes.

We're in for the long haul, and we're already seeing the consequences of the biggest memory companies (SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung) pivoting supplies for an AI future. From shortages on our favorite products today to delays on the most anticipated devices, here are the biggest victims the RAM crisis has claimed (so far).

Valve's Steam Deck (and more)

Who would have thought that a still-popular gaming handheld that released in 2022 would be so hard to get a hold of today? Valve's Steam Deck is out of stock, and it's officially due to (you guessed it) “memory and storage shortages.”

Head over to Steam in the U.S., and you'll find that the Steam Deck OLED, along with the OG Steam Deck, can't be purchased. As Valve's support page notes, stock will be out "intermittently in some regions," although we've been tracking restocks, and Valve's gaming handheld hasn't shown up yet.

At the very least, every model is still available in the U.K., but who knows when stock will dry up in other regions, or how long the drought will last in those areas already affected.

While the Steam Deck has had its moment to shine before shortages kicked in, this spells doom for everything else Valve has coming — the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller.

In a blog post, the gaming giant revealed that its console-like PC, VR headset and gaming controller have been delayed to the “first half of the year,” as opposed to Q1 of 2026. And yes, it's due to “memory and storage shortages.” The RAM crisis is already delaying the biggest releases from Valve in years (and maybe even the mythical Half-Life 3?), but what's even more concerning is the price.

The cost of the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame is still up in the air, and while Valve may have already had a fixed price for its upcoming tech, the company will "revisit" the price because of the memory shortage. This can only signal one thing: a price hike.

Many were already guessing the Steam Machine and Frame would be expensive, more so than the gaming consoles and VR headsets we see today. But now? We may have to add an extra $100 (or more) to what we imagined. As in, $999 for the Steam Machine and $799 for the Steam Frame. These are all just predictions, but considering the Steam Deck has already been affected by the RAM crisis, this only raises concerns about Valve's anticipated hardware.

Nvidia skips gaming GPUs

Even Nvidia, the juggernaut that is all-in on AI, is struggling with the memory shortage. For the first time in three decades, Team Green won't release a new gaming GPU this year.

There had been a lot of talk about when we'd see RTX 50 Super GPUs, with rumors even pointing to a release of the RTX 5070 Super, RTX 5070 Ti Super, and RTX 5080 Super in late 2025. That didn't happen, but even at CES 2026, when Nvidia usually makes its big announcements, there were no new GPUs to be seen.

Instead, we got a first look at Vera Rubin chips, which are gearing up to power AI data centers and the like. It's expected to use HBM4 (High Bandwidth Memory 4), which is exactly what manufacturers are prioritizing over DRAM.

So, instead of giving more previous VRAM to its anticipated set of RTX 50 Super graphics cards (which we'd love to see in the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti), Nvidia shift gears to fuel the AI train.

As it turns out, Nvidia has indefinitely delayed "Kicker" — the code name for the incremental RTX 50-series refresh, likely the Super cards that we expected to see this year. Even though the designs were reportedly finished, the company decided that it couldn't justify the memory costs.

So, what does this mean for the inevitable RTX 60-series GPUs? Well, a leak indicated we could see these debut in early 2027, but with the ongoing memory crisis already taking its next Super-series off the list this year, there's good reason to believe we won't see these anytime soon.

PS6 pushed back?

We've already seen the price of every PS5 model increase by $50 last year, due to a "backdrop of a challenging economic environment" at the time, but so far, we haven't seen Sony's console be largely affected by the memory and storage shortage. As for its next-gen model? It could be further away than we first thought.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Sony is considering pushing the launch of its PS6 back to 2028 at the earliest, all the way to 2029. And all signs are pointing to the RAM crisis. While rumors have claimed we may see the PS6 in 2028 anyway, some indicate a late 2027 release, which would line up with AMD's hint that a next-gen Xbox is landing next year.

To put this into perspective, the PS4 launched in November 2013, while the latest PS5 arrived in November 2020. The console cycle is generally seven years, and RAMageddon appears to be disrupting the flow already — possibly by two years.

With rumors suggesting the PS6 is expected to come equipped with 32GB of DDR7 RAM to power the next generation of gaming, which is double what the PS5 has (16GB GDDR6), we can start to piece together why Sony would delay the launch of its new console.

During the Activision Blizzard trial back in 2023, documents revealed that the next Xbox and PS6 were set for 2028. But times have changed, and the scarcity of RAM to power these consoles is making it harder for companies to know when the right time is to release their fresh products.

Remember how hard it was to get a PS5 when it launched? Now imagine Sony releasing its PS6 with a limited supply of RAM; the wait for restocks would be never-ending.

Nintendo Switch 2 price hikes?

The Nintendo Switch 2 already had to deal with U.S. tariffs, and many weren't happy with its price tag. Unfortunately, the RAM crisis may make matters worse.

Despite a successful launch, becoming the fastest-selling console of all time, Nintendo is considering raising prices this year. Many had already expected this to happen, following in the footsteps of PlayStation and Xbox raising the cost of their consoles last year, but the memory shortage (and tariffs) appears to be accelerating this.

Analysts believe the Switch 2 will receive a $50 price bump, taking it from $449 to $499 (the price for the Mario Kart World bundle). And this year, during an earnings call, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa raised concerns about the "pressure" caused by surging memory prices.

"The market environment is indeed challenging. But we are engaging in long-term discussions with our suppliers to ensure we maintain a stable intake of chips,” Furukawa noted. That's a promising outlook, but many companies are vying for memory these days, so it only seems inevitable that Nintendo will eventually bump up the price of its Switch 2.

My advice? If there's a particular product you're interested in (in this case, the Switch 2), buy it now. With the RAM crisis already affecting the biggest products on the market, prices are only going to soar, and it will be a while before we see next-gen products come to shelves. Even if they do arrive, don't expect a huge supply.

More from Tom's Guide

• Lenovo is planning another PC price hike in March — and I’m all out of patience with this AI bubble
• 'Someone asked me today how long the DRAM supply shortage would last...I may need to revise that answer': analyst predicts bleak future for RAM crisis
• AMD just hinted the next-gen Xbox could ‘launch in 2027’ — here’s why I’m not convinced

The choice of which GPU to buy for your PC isn’t really about just the hardware anymore — it’s also about the AI trickery to make your games look better and run smoother too. And there are two key players at the moment: Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 and AMD FSR 4 (a core component to FSR Redstone).

But which one looks better? Well, In a blind PC gaming test conducted by ComputerBase, 48% of players chose Nvidia DLSS 4.5 over AMD FSR and even native rendering — signaling a strong lead in AI upscaling.

By the numbers

ComputerBase’s study took the total of 6,747 votes across six games — all of which are pretty well-optimized for both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. To test this, three systems were shown to gamers:

• One with Nvidia DLSS 4.5 running (set to quality mode)
• One with AMD FSR 4 running (set to quality mode)
• One with neither — running at native resolution with Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA — more on this later)

And here are the results.

What is abundantly clear here is that while AMD has made some significant steps forward with its new FSR tech, Nvidia still holds a commanding lead with DLSS 4.5 and all of its AI tech.

FSR 4 still falls for some of the classic things you see with AI upscaling like fizzling jaggedness on finer geometry, ghosting around fast-moving objects, and some shimmering around brightly-lit scenes.

But, interestingly, while there were huge gaps between DLSS 4.5 and FSR 4 in “Satisfactory” and “Horizon Forbidden West,” many users (23%) couldn’t see much of a difference between Nvidia and AMD in “Cyberpunk 2077.”

So while Team Green has a fairly large lead on average, in certain circumstances (like 4K high-fidelity environments in this particular game), that gap is narrowing.

The biggest surprise?

The one that shocked me the most was to see DLSS 4.5 so handily beat native resolution too! But there is a logical reason for this, because the idea of “native” is almost never raw pixels.

You’ll see most games use something called Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) to smooth out the jagged edges by blending the current and previous frame together — no AI required. But in smoothing them out like this, it can often create a blurry image during movement.

Because DLSS replaces this native TAA with its own AI-trained transformer model, which uses a massive training dataset to “know” what specific objects should look like, it can produce a much sharper and stable image.

What is a little odd, though, is how AMD’s FSR 4 came in third, because surely this should land above Native + TAA. But ComputerBase did have an answer for this, saying that the results don’t show “what is perceived as the second and third best.”

The question asked was to rate what had the “best image quality,” so to say that “FSR Upscaling looks worse than native” would be wrong given the skewing of the data based on how the study was done.

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Nvidia GTC 2026 is gearing up to be quite the show, with CEO Jensen Huang now hyping up the annual AI conference with "several new chips the world has never seen before." But what chips can we expect?

During an interview with media site Korean Economic Daily, Huang expressed that GTC 2026, taking place from March 16, will unveil "a chip that will surprise the world." While there's no indication of what this chipset could be, it's easy to think the upcoming Nvidia N1X for PCs is a likely candidate. However, this may not be the case.

Huang is teasing something big from Team Green next month, and while it's looking to be next-gen chips to power future AI data centers, it could be the beginning of the architecture that we'll see in RTX 60-series GPUs.

A mystery chip to 'surprise the world'

During the interview, Huang notes that "nothing is easy because all technologies are at their limits," but with the partnership between Nvidia and SK Hynix, one of the three semiconductor companies, "nothing is impossible."

This only makes Huang's statement of revealing "several new chips the world has never seen before" at GTC 2026 more bold, and while the long-anticipated Nvidia N1X and N1 chips for desktops and laptops are a good contender, looking to take on Intel's Panther Lake CPU lineup (especially in terms of integrated graphics performance), we've heard N1X is rumored to be delayed.

As with past GTC events, Nvidia generally focuses on the expansion of AI-driven software and chipsets, and we've heard about Team Green's new Vera CPUs and Rubin GPU that offers 5x more power than Blackwell to drive the AI data centers of the future at CES 2026.

This indicates we could see its new Rubin GPUs for AI take the spotlight at the show, as they've been in full production as of January 2026, as announced by Huang during CES 2026. However, Nvidia could throw a curveball by revealing its Feynman microarchitecture for next-gen GPUs.

That's considering Huang stating, "this team has worked incredibly hard to meet the great challenge of Vera Rubin and HBM4," referring to SK Hynix and its development of HBM4 (High Bandwidth Memory 4), designed for AI data centers and cutting-edge computing.

This remains to be seen, of course, but if Nvidia is set to unveil a world-surprising chip, then we can expect Team Green to bring the next evolution of implementing AI in the entire tech industry.

A glimpse of RTX 60-series?

With reports of Nvidia not releasing a new gaming GPU this year, this not only pushes back RTX 50 Super GPUs, but also RTX 60-series. And this is due to the RAM crisis. For consumers, this is disappointing, and having a new chip for AI data centers likely being the big surprise at GTC 2026 isn't ideal.

However, consider this. Nvidia Blackwell architecture (what you'll find in the latest RTX 50-series GPUs) was first designed for data centers, and then for consumer GPUs, around a year or two later. With this in mind, with the developments of Rubin now in place, we may see how this architecture comes to Team Green's next-gen graphics cards.

For now, we'll have to wait and see what Huang has up his (leather) sleeve, and it won't be much longer, seeing as Nvidia GTC 2026 is kicking off on March 16. Don't expect all-new RTX GPUs or N1X, but do expect a big reveal that could deliver a taste of Nvidia's consumer graphics cards lineup down the line.

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AI has been a driving force in evolving PC gaming for a good while now, most notably with Nvidia DLSS 4.5 upscaling resolution and delivering frame generation. But how about in the games we actually play? Enter: Nvidia ACE.

Nvidia's suite of AI tech is made to bring another level of immersion to in-game characters, effectively bringing these non-playable characters (NPCs) to "life" using small AI models — instead of pre-written or recorded scripts. So, less repetitive "and then I took an arrow in the knee" and more dynamic, natural conversation.

Team Green has been working on AI NPCs in gaming for a while, and it's already being implemented in games like inZOI for unique, real-time decisions and PUBG with AI-driven Co-Player Characters (CPCs) that actually act like a "human" teammate. But there's plenty more usability of ACE to come.

Now, Nvidia ACE could turn out in one of two ways. First, we could see it being used in games like Where Winds Meet for real-time, free-text conversations with NPCs (with it talking itself into a loop), or in more creative, subtle ways. It's up to game developers, and that's what makes Team Green's set of AI tools interesting — and it could redefine more games as we know them.

So, let's take a look at Nvidia ACE and how it's already being used.

What is Nvidia ACE?

Nvidia ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) is a set of real-time AI technologies designed for game developers to build autonomous game characters. It's divided into a collection of AI microservices (Nvidia NIMS) to help developers provide speech recognition, reasoning, animation, and body language to in-game NPCs, and this can be used in a variety of ways.

So, instead of relying on pre-recorded scripts and static animations, ACE allows characters in games and applications to hear, understand, and respond to players dynamically using natural language. This is done through cloud and on-device AI models, but on a smaller scale (so it doesn't set any GPUs on fire).

In fact, it's not unlike Nvidia Project R2X, the RTX-powered AI avatar that helps developers and enthusiasts with PC tasks autonomously. But instead of on-device tasks, ACE is used to power characters in games.

A fine example of this is when I saw it in action during a demo of developer Creative Assembly's Total War: Pharaoh. This turn-based strategy real-time tactics game uses an in-game AI advisor to aid you in commanding armies, managing economies, and dealing with diplomacy. Using AI models, this "advisor" can retrieve key information to help with whatever question you ask.

With this in mind, you can ask the AI advisor what to do in certain situations. As pointed out in the demo, this includes questioning why a rebellion has broken out in a province. In this case, the advisor noted that it was due to "Happiness" levels falling.

As someone who is completely useless at strategy games such as these, that's a quick, intuitive way to know exactly what's happening, especially while you're dealing with every other task in the game. What's more, you can then ask how to restore these "Happiness" levels, with the AI advisor guiding you towards the solution.

Of course, if you don't need to use it, you don't have to. In the case of games like Total War, developers integrating Nvidia ACE can not only help players who are stuck, especially if they're picking up where they left off after a couple of months not playing it, but also for those who aren't familiar with this genre of gaming.

Use with care

Nvidia ACE is a handy set of tools that, when used correctly, can change how we approach different games. No, I don't think it will completely take over gaming as we know it; there are single-player titles like the ground-breaking Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Death Stranding 2 that have a particular story to be told, and changing dialogue through AI wouldn't deliver the same emotional impact.

However, when it comes to titles like Total War and other upcoming games like Dead Meat, a murder mystery game that uses ACE so players can interrogate suspects about anything, it's a whole new level of immersion. It's not AI trying to force its way into titles where it doesn't fit — on the contrary, it's simply adding to it.

That is, of course, if developers incorporate Nvidia ACE in a way that benefits a title. We're seeing AI in action in more games these days, including getting roasted by an AI Snoop Dogg in Amazon Luna's Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg, and so far, they've been a heap of fun.

How else will Nvidia ACE be used in gaming? That's for developers to decide, and hopefully, having AI NPCs (used correctly) will elevate the games we play — not detract from them.

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Gaming laptop deals are getting harder and harder to come by — probably because of the RAM price crisis we find ourselves in.

But I’ve just found huge savings on my two favorite OLED gaming notebooks that are the perfect high-performance upgrades for any players out there. Right now, you can get the 2025 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with RTX 5070 Ti for $500 off, and the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI with the same GPU for $350 off at Best Buy.

Make no mistake about it. These are massive savings, and after spending months testing these laptops (and loving them a lot), I can’t recommend them enough for gaming on-the-go.

The ultraportable monster

Every year, the Asus Zephyrus G14 just gets better and better. I almost missed my flight back from Barcelona because I turned my Starbucks table into the ultimate gaming station because of it!

From the outside, you wouldn’t really think this is a gaming laptop — if anything, its premium aluminum body screams “MacBook Pro.” In fact, it’s the only gaming notebook that my fiancée has looked at and said, “Nice laptop.” Every single other model, she rolls her eyes at the blazing RGB.

Asus has also paid real attention to sound ergonomics here, with a top-notch keyboard and massive touchpad. But of course, you’re here for the games, and that RTX 5070 Ti absolutely shines. DLSS 4.5 is the AI trick up the sleeve to bring unmatched smoothness.

Cyberpunk 2077 at full-res ray-tracing ultra with all the DLSS trickery on (ray reconstruction, multi-frame gen) can take full advantage of that mesmerizing OLED panel at a buttery smooth 120 FPS.

And whatever game you’re playing, be it blasting through the colorful streets of Mexico in Forza Horizon 5, or the deep, dark depths of the isolated Romanian village in Resident Evil Village, the stunning color and contrast ratio of this Pantone-validated display shines.

Throw in AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, a spacious 32GB of RAM (in this economy!?), and a 1TB SSD, and you’re onto a winner that’s not just good for gaming but a serious workhorse for power user productivity too.

The big one

But what if a small size doesn’t matter to you? What if you want a big-screen gaming experience? That’s where I introduce the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI — another go-to daily driver that I got addicted to fast in the months I tested it.

The S stands for slim, and while this is indeed a bigger laptop, that doesn’t compromise the thinness. This is a slender system in the hands, and with that extra space, Acer’s able to run this at a higher wattage.

That’s super ideal for running DLSS 4.5 and really ramping up that frame rate to make the most of that 240Hz refresh rate (double that of the Zephyrus G14, though the resolution is slightly lower at 2560 x 1600).

And as every frame matters in competitive multiplayer (plus a bigger panel too), I’d recommend this one to anyone who wants to be at their best in online shooters. Aside from the RTX 5070 Ti, you’ll find an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD — pretty similar to Asus’ offering.

If ergonomics are your thing, I’d point you to the G14, as the keyboard does feel better. However, if you can get over the ever-so-slight sponginess of the keys, you get a bigger board with a number pad here, and a far bigger touchpad that comes in clutch for creative work.

Buy now because prices will go up

Yes, both of these have 32GB of RAM. Yes, we are in a RAM price crisis. These deals exist because of the available stock, but once Best Buy sells through them, you can expect these prices to slowly but surely creep up.

The likes of Acer and Asus do have plans to bypass the rising prices by going to smaller RAM manufacturers, as I found out when talking to an Acer exec. But this will take time, and the best advice I can give anyone on the fence about buying a gaming laptop is to buy now before things get worse.

And out of all the deals I’ve seen, these two offer the best bang for your buck.

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For the first time in three decades, Nvidia is reportedly taking a year off from the gaming GPU market.

According to a new report from The Information, Team Green has scrapped its plans for any new graphics card releases in 2026. The reason? As you might have guessed, the ongoing global memory shortage, or what we at Tom’s Guide refer to as “RAMageddon,” has become so severe that Nvidia is being forced to choose between gamers and feeding the AI beast.

Unfortunately, AI is winning. Here’s everything you need to know about this latest development in the ongoing RAM crisis saga

The end of a 30-year tradition

NVIDIA has released at least one new gaming GPU every single year since the early 90s. Even during the height of the crypto-mining craze and the pandemic supply chain collapse, the company managed to get something onto store shelves.

But 2026 is different. RAMageddon has hit a point where AI data centers are simply gobbling up the raw materials for memory.

According to The Information’s sources, Nvidia has indefinitely delayed "Kicker"—the code name for the incremental RTX 50-series refresh, likely the "Super" cards that we expected to see this year. Even though the designs were reportedly finished, the company decided that it couldn't justify the memory costs.

RTX 50 production slashed

It’s not just about the lack of new cards, either. The report also states that Nvidia is slashing production of its current RTX 50-series GPUs. With memory supply this tight, Nvidia seems to be prioritizing its limited stock for AI chips.

This is obviously bad news for gamers. We’re already seeing RTX 50 prices spike at retail due to scarcity, and these production cuts mean that mid-range favorites like the RTX 5070 and 5060 Ti are going to be even harder to find at MSRP.

Don’t expect the RTX 60-series any time soon

If you were hoping to skip this generation and wait for the RTX 60 series, you're likely going to wait longer than you expected.

The delay in the 2026 refresh has reportedly pushed mass production of the next-generation "Rubin" gaming GPUs to the end of 2027. If that’s the case, then we are looking at a nearly three-year gap between major GPU generations.

On a related note, since we’re discussing delays, Moore's Law is Dead reports that Nvidia's N1X CPUs are experiencing bugs and software issues, delaying when we'll see Arm-based Windows laptops. Apparently, neither Microsoft nor Nvidia is rushing to ensure the SoCs (System-on-Chip) are fully supported on Windows.

Outlook

This latest news, unfortunately, validates everything we’ve been saying: the PC market is effectively in survival mode. When Apple CEO Tim Cook and Nvidia's own leadership are sounding the alarm on memory prices, you know things are serious.

If you’re currently building a PC, my advice remains the same: stop waiting for the next big thing and grab what you can find now. Whether that's an existing RTX 50 card or building around a DDR4 platform to save cash, the goal for 2026 is to create a rig that works, even if it doesn’t have the latest and greatest components.

As always, we’ll monitor this situation and anything else related to the RAM crisis, so stay tuned!

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DLSS 4.5 is officially here, and I’ve been testing it for a while now. Simply put, it’s Nvidia’s top piece of AI trickery that extracts better performance from your games by rendering the game at a lower resolution using the GPU and upscaling it with a neural network trained on the game itself.

It’s almost shocking how effective it is — watching it upscale a game from looking like a pixelated potato to something actually playable is insanely cool, and a real demonstration of how impressive DLSS 4.5’s Performance (Model M) and Ultra Performance (Model L) are in piecing together details.

But while I’ve been testing DLSS 4.5 on desktops mostly, I wanted to see what it does for the best gaming laptops. So I fired up my Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI and put it to the test. Spoiler alert: it’s an absolute beast.

By the numbers

Deep Learning Super Sampling can come with a compromise to the visuals, such as telltale ghosting (faint outlines around fast moving objects), jagged edges to surfaces and shimmering (brightly lit objects being a little blown out).

And while that is the case when blown up to a big screen for a desktop (though DLSS 4.5 does reduce it significantly), on the 16-inch OLED panel of the Helios Neo 16S AI, you’d be hard pressed to spot any of it.

Then when you turn to the numbers, it starts to feel like you’ve unlocked secret performance with a cheat code.

That is a near 50% jump across the board for all of these, while maintaining that detail you’d see in more quality-driven modes of DLSS!

Make sure you use DLSS 4.5 right

Quick PSA on DLSS 4.5. Nvidia itself has provided a handy guide on when to use these models you can pick between in the app.

• Model K: This is DLSS 4 and much better-built for quality and balanced DLSS modes
• Model M: This is DLSS 4.5 with a model tuned for performance mode
• Model L: This is an offshoot of DLSS 4.5, which is meant for ultra performance mode

Using DLSS 4.5 in quality or balanced DLSS modes can be a little more taxing on the GPU, and result in reduced performance, as I found out when putting it to the test across both desktop and laptop systems.

But if you make sure you pick the right model for the right purpose, you can extract the highest possible performance from your games. Smoother-running multiplayer titles are the difference between winning and losing critical battles after all.

Bottom line

So what did I learn from this experiment? Well, DLSS 4.5 is showing its strength in desktops for sure, but it really comes into its own in gaming laptops like the Helios Neo 16S AI.

The performance jump is significant, while you don’t lose any noticeable fidelity or detail thanks to that 16-inch OLED display. Blown up to a massive gaming monitor, you may spot the imperfections, but in something like this, your eyes won’t catch it.

And the point stands — this is near-esports levels of frame rates in a portable system with great ergonomics and all the I/O you’d need. Team Green just introduced a turbocharger to its V8 engine.

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It's been a long wait for Nvidia's N1X and N1 CPUs, which have recently been confirmed by CEO Jensen Huang as a joint project with MediaTek. But we may be standing by a while longer until we see these chips finally arrive on PCs.

According to reputable leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), Nvidia's N1X CPUs are suffering from bugs and software issues, leading to a delay in when we'll see Arm-based Windows laptops. Apparently, neither Microsoft nor Nvidia is rushing to make sure the SoCs (System on Chips) are fully supported on Windows.

Last year, rumors pointed to the N1X and N1 chips arriving in early 2026, but the recent development indicates that Team Green's CPUs won't launch on laptops until the second quarter of 2026, or even the summer.

Moreover, a previous leak claimed Microsoft's next-gen OS had caused an N1X CPU delay, so there may be ongoing compatibility issues with Team Green's Arm-based chip and Windows that both tech giants need to solve.

For now, this leak may specify why we haven't seen the launch of Nvidia's next-gen chip yet, especially during CES 2026. Initially, it was believed Team Green and MediaTek would announce the CPUs during Computex 2025. Now, it's looking like the reveal may happen during Computex 2026.

Nvidia N1X laptops are coming

While it's still unconfirmed when Nvidia will finally unveil its N1X and N1 chips in upcoming PCs, we at least have an idea of what laptops will come equipped with the all-new CPUs — if leaks are to be believed.

So far, we've heard that Dell's gaming brand Alienware will be among the first to launch new gaming laptops featuring the Nvidia and MediaTek CPU. The chips are expected to deliver the same performance as an RTX 4070-equipped laptop, after all, and we may see Alienware's new ultra-slim gaming laptop come with an N1-series chip.

According to tipster Huang514613 on X via VideoCardz, we should also see Nvidia N1X and N1 SoCs in upcoming Lenovo laptops, with product coding pointing to the launch of the chips. This includes the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5, Yoga Pro 7, Yoga 9 2-in-1 and Legion 7.

Not only does this indicate Team Green's N1X and N1 chips are both for laptops (previously, the N1X was indicated to be a CPU for desktops), but it also shows Nvidia's SoCs are for gaming and productivity laptops alike.

Of course, we'll have to wait and see when Nvidia and MediaTek's AI chips arrive, and the PCs we can expect them in. In the meantime, it's looking like we'll have to wait until summer before we see Nvidia enter the CPU market for consumers, and that gives more breathing room for Intel's Core Ultra 3 CPUs.

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After months of Nvidia's N1X and N1 chips rumors, CEO Jensen Huang has finally confirmed its Arm-based CPUs designed for AI PCs in collaboration with MediaTek — and it's already taking aim at Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and AMD Ryzen AI 400.

In an interview during Nvidia's year-end party in Taiwan, Huang commented on work with MediaTek for the hugely anticipated next-gen N1X and N1 chips, which have been tipped to power AI-based desktops and laptops, respectively. According to Taiwan media outlet UDN, Huang states these CPUs have been specifically geared for PCs with "powerful AI capabilities."

The report notes that Nvidia's collaboration with MediaTek will offer a System-on-Chip (SoC) with "low power consumption but excellent performance," which recent rumors back up. Leaks indicate that N1X will be closely tied to Team Green's GB10 Superchip found in the DGX Spark, while the N1 for laptops may come in the form of a cut-down version of GB10.

With the joint project with MediaTek confirmed, Nvidia's N1X and N1 SoCs already look to stir up the CPU competition. We've heard that the N1 series will reportedly deliver the same performance as an RTX 4070-equipped laptop, but with improved power efficiency, taking integrated gaming performance in PCs even further.

While Jensen doesn't comment on when we'll see these Arm-based chips in upcoming PCs, reports have suggested an early 2026 launch, with wide availability later in the year. Other rumors believe the N1-series chips were delayed, pushing back the release to late 2026. We've heard that Nvidia's Arm-based SoC may power Dell's Alienware laptops down the line, and it could match the timing for Alienware's new ultra-slim gaming laptop.

However, with Computex 2026 coming up, this may set the stage for Nvidia and MediaTek to reveal their AI-focused CPUs.

Nvidia is coming for the CPU crown

Since benchmarking the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, Team Blue's flagship laptop processor, we've been hugely impressed by the performance and power efficiency gains the chip delivers. Especially when it comes to Intel XeSS 3 and its integrated graphics for gaming — seeing Cyberpunk 2077 at High settings reach 217 frames per second is a highlight.

Without XeSS and its multi-frame generation or super resolution, Intel's CPU is closer to the performance of an RTX 4050. Still impressive, considering this comes from Arc B390 integrated graphics on the chip, but if rumors ring true and Nvidia's N1-series reaches RTX 4070 levels of performance, that's a significant gap to beat.

Rumors indicate that the N1 chip is expected to use 65W power to match the performance of a 120W RTX 4070 gaming laptop, and another source suggests the chip would offer a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 80W to 120W. Intel's Core Ultra 3 chips have shown they thrive on low power consumption, too, with the Asus Zenbook Duo we tested hitting 45W.

For now, it's guesswork on what the N1X and N1 CPUs will deliver, but it appears to take the fight to Intel's impressive offering, along with AMD's Ryzen AI 400 series, according to the benchmarks we've seen in the Asus Vivobook 14 we tested.

The CPU wars are heating up this year, and if the ongoing RAM shortage doesn't get in the way, your next laptop or desktop is looking to see a significant upgrade.

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Just when I thought Intel Core Ultra Series 3 couldn’t get any better, Team Blue just dropped XeSS 3 multi-frame generation in a new graphics driver. And after testing it on my Asus Zenbook Duo with Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, my mind is blown.

While Nvidia maintains a comfortable lead in terms of performance and fidelity with DLSS 4.5, Intel's adopted the same AI trickery to scale the resolution and fill the space between rendered frames with AI-generated frames. And that leads seriously impressive gaming on ultraportable notebooks.

Of course, raw horsepower-wise, Team Green keeps a commanding lead — it has a dedicated GPU after all. But for most players, what you’re getting here is more than enough, and you get that additional benefit of vastly improved battery life, too!

So rather than rant on, I’ll answer the questions you have about it: how good are the frame rates now? Any latency worries? Any telltale signs of AI at work (like jagged edges and ghosting around objects)?

I decided to do this by putting it in one helluva mismatch of a competition — facing it off against the Acer Predator Triton 14 AI with RTX 5070. And the results? Well, there’s a lot here for Nvidia to get nervous about. Let’s get into it.

What is XeSS 3?

Think DLSS, but Intel’s version. XeSS (Xe Super Sampling) 3 brings frame generation and resolution scaling together to make games run a lot smoother than you could’ve done on just the GPU itself.

Nvidia, AMD and Intel all learned a while ago that instead of stuffing graphics cards with more and more transistors to work harder in rendering computer graphics directly on the card, they could work smarter and introduce AI into the mix to bring more efficient generational performance gains.

In Intel’s case, two things are at play here:

• Multi-frame generation: For every one frame of gameplay rendered by the GPU, AI can generate up to an extra three.
• Super Resolution: Your GPU will render the game at a lower resolution to save power, and then use AI to upscale that image to the resolution you want to play at.

XeSS 3 vs DLSS 4: Features

Intel's worked hard to bring backward compatibility to XeSS 3 with previous XeSS 2-supported games. But the list of supported games is completely dwarfed by Nvidia's DLSS.

On top of that, Team Green's been busy building out the capabilities of DLSS 4/4.5 around that new Transformer-based AI tech — with new features coming down the line like dynamic frame generation.

By the numbers

Running around Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 was already decent enough at our initial results of 67.1 FPS with XeSS 2. To watch that number increase to 217 FPS with one flick of a switch in Intel’s Graphics software is frankly mind-bending.

And don’t get it twisted — this is on an Asus Zenbook Duo running at a total power of 45 watts. There is a “burst” option that can go up to 80 watts for short durations, but for gaming, it stays largely at 45.

For context, the Nvidia gaming laptop I’m running these comparisons against (the Acer Predator Triton 14 AI with Intel Core Ultra 9 288V and RTX 5070) goes up to a combined power of 140W. So with that in mind, here’s what I was getting out-of-the-box with no tweaks to power settings.

Testing conditions and one thing to note: These games were set to the same in-game settings (1080p High), and DLSS/XeSS settings matched on parity. In some situations, this could cause potential CPU bottlenecks (the Intel Core Ultra 9 288V is more limited in performance than the Ultra X9 388H). Once we have Intel Core Ultra Series 3 gaming laptops with RTX 50-series GPUs, then the testing will be more on an even level. Consider these results a frame of reference.

As you can see, the Predator Triton 14 AI takes a clear lead here — turning on multi-frame generation brings the integrated GPU a lot closer to RTX 50-series than I expected. And at these high levels of frames, only the most enthusiastic of esports competitors need to really worry about that higher number.

Of course, I anticipate this gap between an RTX 50-series gaming laptop and an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H system would widen once you start to raise the resolution (think 1440p). In all the gaming tests Team Blue has shown me at CES 2026, they've all been at 1080p. That is for another test in the future, though!

But ultimately, this is the key to jumping ahead of AMD, but that’s an unfair comparison given the Ryzen AI Max silicon is definitely stronger than Intel. That being said, though, this does put AMD way on the back foot, and given the rumors that Team Red could be stuck on RDNA 3.5 iGPU architecture until 2029, it could stay that way for years… Yikes.

Visual impressions

OK, so the frames are good. Let’s pixel peep it (of course, these images are compressed a bit — you've gotta love the internet for that). Let me put some comparisons up with no names:

Now, for a question for my fellow gamers.

Got your answer locked in? You best not have been peeping at the answer!

…answered? OK, click to reveal the truth below.

That’s right — the first of all the images is the Predator Triton 14 AI with RTX 5070, and the second is the Zenbook Duo. Could you tell the difference?

So to my eyes, the answer is “yes.” XeSS 3 is still a step behind DLSS 4. There’s noticeable ghosting around fast-moving objects, small details like chain fences can warp the image behind it a little, and there’s some jagged edges.

But in the midst of gameplay, it doesn’t discount what Intel has done here. For the ultimate fidelity, a gaming laptop packing an Nvidia GPU is still the way to go. But with what Intel's managed to do, it’s clear that integrated graphics have taken a monster leap forward.

What about latency?

Multi-frame generation may be a bit of a breakthrough to many reading this, but it’s not all rosy. Fitting additional AI-generated frames in between rendered frames can introduce latency. And if your GPU is already chugging along at a slow frame rate, you’ll feel that latency more when the gameplay is smoother.

That’s why I’d always recommend tweaking your game’s graphics settings to ensure you’re getting 45-60 FPS before fiddling with multi-frame generation. With this base level, your latency should be low enough that you won’t feel it impact your gameplay — particularly in single player titles. In competitive multiplayer, where every frame counts, I’d keep it turned off.

That being said, though, Nvidia has improved DLSS quite a lot in this area, and Intel’s just rocked up with something mighty impressive. On average, you’re getting about 2ms more latency than you’d find compared to DLSS 4 MFG’s 42ms (4X mode).

So 44ms on average, and at these levels of latency, the vast majority of you are going to have a perfectly fine gaming experience on this system — which I should remind you is INTEGRATED GRAPHICS.

The future

So the present is looking incredibly bright for Intel’s XeSS 3. Without this tech already in there, the Zenbook Duo I’ve been testing has been a marvel for iGPU gaming, while bringing a huge battery life increase over your standard gaming laptop.

And now, this mini breakthrough just made things a whole lot more intriguing. With gaming laptops furnishing those who are chasing the absolute best performance and nothing else, Intel Core Ultra X series chips now pose a better balance for most players.

But where does it go in the future? Well, as Tony Polanco confirmed, Intel has told Tom’s Guide that multi-frame generation is coming to the Intel Arc B580 desktop GPU. And with that, my favorite budget GPU just became the one I’d recommend to everyone, given the RAM price crisis has just made all Nvidia GPUs skyrocket in cost.

Next, if I could make a quick wish, it would be to take a couple of learnings from Nvidia. Dynamic frame generation would be significant not just on-laptop performance, but also plugging into monitors and TVs.

And finally, there’s one area that Team Green has had the lead for years that Intel needs to catch up on — game compatibility. Don’t get me wrong, they’re working on it and all 50+ XeSS 2 titles support XeSS 3. But we need more titles on this list!

More from Tom's Guide

• I’m benchmarking an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H laptop right now — what would you like me to test?
• Samsung just confirmed 20% higher prices for Galaxy Book 6 with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 — here's what this means for you
• ‘Chaotic’ RAM pricing won’t kill PC gaming, a CEO told me — and history backs him up

In a surprising twist, a new leak regarding Lenovo's next gaming laptops may have come from the company itself. And the leak appears to reveal the first true Windows 11 on ARM gaming laptop based on the upcoming Nvidia N1X chip.

The new laptops were spotted by dataminer Huang514613, who tweeted out a series of product codes for upcoming Lenovo devices.

Here's what we know about Lenovo product codes to help us understand what these actually mean. Typically, the first number you see in the code is the screen size. So for the Legion Pro 7, found on the Lenovo site, the product code is 16IAX10H.

So, that device has a 16-inch display. The first letter in the code refers to its platform: A= AMD, I= Intel, N= Nvidia and Q= Qualcomm. Other information includes the chip number.

On the Lenovo Legion Space support page under the supported devices section, a surprising code makes an appearance; the Legion 7 15N1X11, which means its a 15-inch gaming laptop powered by the Nvidia N1X chipset.

Here are other devices that Huang spotted that will likely be powered by Nvidia N1X and N1 CPUs.

• Ideapad Slim 5 14N1V11
• Ideapad Slim 5 16N1V11
• Legion 7 15N1X11
• Yoga Pro 7 15N1V11
• Yoga Pro 7 15N1X11
• Yoga 9 2-in-1 16N1X11

What makes this leak stand out is that it hasn't yet been revealed when Nvidia's consumer N1-series would actually debut in gaming laptops. It was suspected that we would have to wait at least a year before anything would actually debut.

This means Lenovo will ship a Legion gaming laptop powered by the N1 chip as a direct competitor with AMD and even Qualcomm, which makes ARM systems. However, laptops and mini PCs that use Qualcomm's systems aren't gaming machines.

This could be one of the first true Windows 11 on ARM gaming laptops. However, the dataminer didn't provide more information beyond the code existing.

The question is whether or not Lenovo's Nvidia laptop will debut before Dell's version. Earlier this week, our colleagues at Tom's Hardware reported that a Dell laptop featuring an N1X chip is will debut in the "first quarter of 2026" and will likely be under the company's Alienware brand.

What's so special about the Nvidia N1-series?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has previously confirmed that the N1-series is based on the company's DGX Spark AI systems and is powered by a GB10 superchip based on N1 silicon.

The GB10 features a 20-core ARM CPU, but is paired with an RTX 5070 GPU. It could have up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory, though how much it actually ships with may get altered by the ongoing RAM crisis.

Meanwhile, Nvidia may already be developing a second-generation N2 chip that will debut in 2027.

Stay tuned to Tom's Guide for the latest and we can't wait to get one of these new Windows 11 on ARM gaming laptops in to test out for ourselves.

More from Tom's Guide

• Nvidia RTX 50-series GPU production reportedly 'paused,' but insists it will 'continue to ship' all cards
• ‘RTX 5070 is the sweet spot’: Scan CEO reveals what Nvidia GPU PC gamers actually want
• 'Basically a photograph interacting with you at 500 frames per second': Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shares his vision of the future of PC gaming, and how the company plans to tackle GPU pricing crisis

Building or upgrading your PC isn’t easy nowadays, thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis — or RAMageddon. Due to the global shortage of GDDR7 memory and the growing demand for AI-capable hardware, GPU prices continue climbing — seemingly with no end in sight. If you’re a tech nerd and gamer like me, this isn’t a fun time for our favorite hobby.

While Nvidia says all RTX 50-series GPUs will 'continue to ship,' stock and supply tell a different story. Right now, it’s virtually impossible to find popular graphics cards like the RTX 5070 Ti at its original $749 price, or find it at all.

However, you don’t have to pay these inflated prices for a new GPU. If you’re fine with alternatives from AMD and Intel, using automated tracking tools, or even doing what I did during the 2021 chip shortage and buying a pre-built PC, you can get a reasonably priced GPU that won’t crush your bank account.

Below, I detail some of the strategies you can take when buying a GPU this year, and what prices you should (and shouldn’t) settle on. Let’s dive in!

Price check

Before you start shopping for a GPU, it’s good to know what cards are supposed to cost. Retailers often treat MSRP as a suggestion, as you’ll often see prices at more than 10-15% their original cost. If you see these inflated prices, I advise you to walk away. Here’s a handy reference guide for you to follow.

Red flags to watch out for

This is something I learned while doing research for this article. Scalpers can hide behind the “Third-Party Seller” tag on legitimate sites like Amazon and Newegg.

That’s a frightening reality, but here are ways you can vet each listing to ensure you’re not getting ripped off.

• The "sold by" rule: Only buy if the listing says "Sold and Shipped by [Retailer Name].” If it says "Sold by GPU-King-2026," or another ridiculous name you’ve never heard of, that’s a marked-up price.
• The VRAM premium: High-VRAM cards (16GB+) are seeing massive hikes because GDDR7 is scarce. If you mostly play games at 1080p, I recommend sticking to 8GB or 12GB cards to avoid the "AI-tier" memory premium. I know that sounds low, but trust me, that’s more than enough VRAM for 1080p gaming.
• The "old stock" rumor: In a Q&A at CES 2026, Jensen Huang hinted that Nvidia might bring back older GPUs to solve the crisis, calling it "within the realm of possibility" (via TechRadar). Please do not pay 2026 prices for 2023 tech! If you see an RTX 3060 for $400, that’s a trap.

Buy a pre-built PC

If you’re not having any luck finding a standalone GPU, you can always do what I did and just purchase a pre-built PC. I know buying an entire computer for the GPU sounds wild, but during the chip shortage, it was how I snagged an RTX 3080 Ti. It worked during the chip shortage, and now it also works during RAMageddon.

Major brands use long-term contracts to effectively lock in component prices. Because of that, it’s often cheaper to buy a whole new PC with an RTX 5070 than to buy the card alone in the secondary market. Here are some tips when buying a pre-built PC.

• Dual-channel RAM: Make sure your PC has two sticks of RAM. A single 16GB stick can bottleneck performance by 15%, so please avoid that.
• Standard parts: If possible, try to avoid proprietary motherboards. If they aren't standard ATX, you won’t be able to easily upgrade later. You want industry-standard parts.
• Storage size: With many new and upcoming games hitting 150GB+ of storage, don't settle for less than a 1TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD.

Automate your searches

Manually searching the web for good GPU prices isn’t efficient. Here are some tips on how to automate your hunt:

• HotStock.io: This app pings your phone the moment a card hits MSRP at a major retailer, such as Best Buy. Be sure to buy your GPU manually and avoid the “Autobuy” feature, as some users report it can be unreliable.
• Micro Center (in-store only): If you live near one, go in person. They often have "secret" stock reserved for local customers to prevent bot-buying.
• Best Buy Founders Edition: Nvidia’s "Founders Edition" cards are the only ones locked to their original MSRP. Set your alerts specifically for these.
• Price trackers: Use CamelCamelCamel. If the price graph shows a vertical spike in the last 30 days, wait for the dip. I use the CamelCamelCamel extension when writing deals posts, so I highly recommend it.

Which cards to buy?

If you’re willing to step outside Nvidia’s green halls, you can save big on a GPU that delivers excellent performance for modern games. Here are a few you should consider.

• Intel Arc B580 ($249): Intel’s Arc GPUs are often overlooked (even by me), but given the current climate, it’s good to expand your options. The Intel Arc B580 has an MSRP of $249. This is a good GPU for 1080p gaming.
• AMD RX 9070 XT ($599): If you want a higher-end GPU, AMD’s RX 9070 XT is a great option that can offer similar performance to the RTX 5070 Ti, but at a much lower price.
• Nvidia RTX 5070: If you’re strictly Team Green, then you can buy a pre-built RTX 5070 machine from the likes of CyberPower or Newegg’s ABS brand.

Bottom line

I know that finding a GPU for a reasonable price is tough these days, but if you’re patient and strategic, you can score a graphics card without paying through the nose.

The window for finding a “true” MSRP card is shrinking fast, so you have to decide if you’re willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for an Nvidia GPU, or if you’d rather look to the likes of Team Red or Team Blue to get what you need. Then again, integrated graphics have gotten surprisingly good recently, so there's always that option to hold you over until you can find a GPU you like at the right price.

In short, try to avoid buying a GPU from third-party vendors you’ve never heard of, automate your searches, or buy a pre-built with the components you want.

More from Tom's Guide

• ‘RTX 5070 is the sweet spot’: Scan CEO reveals what Nvidia GPU PC gamers actually want
• ‘Chaotic’ RAM pricing won’t kill PC gaming, a CEO told me — and history backs him up
• Which MacBook should you buy in 2026? I ranked the 5 best Apple laptops for every need

The state of Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs is in flux. With the RAM crisis causing prices to skyrocket and supply to dwindle, Nvidia was put in the position to confirm that it will “continue to ship” its graphics cards. But a recent leak claims otherwise.

Speaking with industry sources, reputable tipster Moore's Law Is Dead (MLID) claims Nvidia is now putting its entire RTX 50-series GPU production on hold, and it's in order to meet AI demand. What's more, the RTX 5060 with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM will be cut for the foreseeable future.

According to the leak, which sees several sources commenting on the cut in RTX 50-series production, RTX 5060 supply will "get worse until at least Q4 [2026]," while other models in the lineup, including the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5090 will be "unobtanium" — in other words, unobtainable.

As MLID puts it on a post on X, the "5060 is done," and "the entire series" is put on hold. But going into the comments, there's more to it, as GPUs such as the RTX 5050, RTX 5060 Ti with 8GB, RTX 5070 and RTX 5080 will still be available, albeit still in low supply.

Previously, Asus had allegedly put the RTX 5070 Ti into End of Life (EoL) status, but this was retracted after Nvidia claimed RTX 50-series would continue to ship as usual. However, with the memory shortage hitting the tech market hard, and Gigabyte stating Nvidia's GPU strategy is about "revenue per gigabyte," it's looking more likely that Team Green's graphics cards won't be easy to buy this year.

Is RTX 50-series production shifting?

We've heard that Nvidia's plan is to prioritize GPUs with lower video memory, which means that since the RTX 5060 Ti comes in bother 8GB and 16GB models, Team Green will push production of the 8GB version. One source speaking to MLID appears to back this up.

"I [Distributor] just got done with multiple phone calls with AIBs — it sounds like the 5060 is done for the next 6 months. Everyone says that Nvidia vastly overbooked Al sales, and therefore needs to pause almost all RTX 50 Series Production until at least Q3 2026. The 5090, 5070 Ti, 5060 Ti 16GB, and 5060 will soon be unobtanium... and the 5080, 5070, and 5060 Ti 8GB will trickle in with incredibly low volume."

So, while some GPUs, which include many of the best graphics cards you can get, will soon be near-impossible to grab, the rest will still be in production, but still at a "low volume." Or, at least, until Q3 of 2026 (around July to September). However, according to an unknown major retailer, there's a different idea.

"On Monday we [Major Retailer] were told that we should soon expect 5060 supply to get worse until at least Q4. In fact, we were specifically told that the 5050 and 5060 Ti 8GB are going to be most of the volume through summer. Yes, there will be a trickle of 5080s and 5070 supply... but not enough. Nvidia will 're-examine' in Q4."

With this in mind, it's looking like the RTX 5050 and RTX 5060 Ti with 8GB will be most seen on shelves, while Nvidia will rethink its production plans towards the end of 2026. In any case, it's another reason to believe that we'll soon see the RTX 5060 on its way out. The last source also supports this claim.

"For the foreseeable future, Nvidia's effectively only selling us [AIB] 5080, 5070, 5060 Ti 8GB, and 5050 kits. As for "why" Nvidia's effectively pausing 5060 production - it all comes down to cost & RAM. The 5050 uses GDDR6, and the 5060 Ti uses the same amount of GDDR7 as a 5060 — so they are preferable. Oh, and get ready for a ~30% baseline price increase to GPUs imminently."

Not only can we expect a cut in production on Nvidia's most popular GPUs, but now, it appears we may also see a 30% price increase. Of course, this isn't entirely surprising, considering Intel also expects costs to rise after 'about 9 to 12 months' of stock on laptops runs out, but it's still something to anticipate — if these comments ring true.

Nvidia's official statement brings this into question

While these leaks and rumors continue to come out, Nvidia has stuck to its comment confirming all RTX 50-series GPUs will continue to ship, barring the challenges with memory supply.

Responding to Tom's Guide, Nvidia states: "Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability."

Despite many rumors swirling around RTX 50-series GPUs being in troubled waters this year, Team Green clearly states there's no trouble when it comes to shipping its graphics cards. If anything, that's good news to all looking to grab a GPU this year, and hopefully, this plays out.

Is a GPU drought coming?

It's still uncertain just how Nvidia's GPU strategy will play out, but with even more sources pointing to a limited supply of RTX 50-series graphics cards, it's looking like GPUs will become a precious commodity in the near future.

Interestingly, Tom's Guide got to chat with CEO of U.K. PC supplier Scan, Elan Raja, who said the "RTX 5070 GPU is the sweet spot" when it comes to what PC gamers are actually buying. Fortunately, this is one of the graphics cards that apparently won't be in such short supply (for now), and that's due to its offering 12GB of VRAM, as opposed to its sibling, the RTX 5070 Ti, delivering 16GB of video memory.

In any case, if MLID's sources are predicting the near future, expect many of Nvidia's GPUs to be in incredibly short supply, with some being near impossible to find. So, would you grab an RTX 50-series GPU now or wait for supply to return after the RAM crisis passes? Let us know your thoughts!

More from Tom's Guide

• I don’t like it, but the RAM crisis might force gamers to play on the cloud
• ‘RTX 5070 is the sweet spot’: Scan CEO reveals what Nvidia GPU PC gamers actually want
• 'That's not going to last': Jeff Bezos believes AI will force you to rent your PC from the cloud, and the RAM crisis is accelerating it