Nvidia RTX Spark Edges M5 Max MacBook on Qwen Local AI Test
TL;DR
- Tom's Hardware clocked the RTX Spark Superchip in Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra finishing a dense Qwen 3.8-27B run roughly 25% faster than an M5 Max MacBook Pro.
- The RTX Spark pairs 20 Arm CPU cores with a Blackwell GPU holding 6,144 CUDA cores, 128GB of unified LPDDR5X-9400 memory, and up to 300 GB/s of bandwidth.
- Apple's M5 Max still beats the Spark on CPU Geekbench (around 3,700 single and 35,600 multi versus 2,600 and 23,700), and the review flags gaming as weak.
The RTX Spark Superchip inside Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra finished a dense Qwen 3.8-27B run roughly 25% faster than a 14-inch MacBook Pro with Apple's M5 Max, Tom's Hardware reported in its testing of Nvidia's Windows-on-Arm platform.
The silicon is unusual on paper. RTX Spark pairs 20 Arm CPU cores with a Blackwell GPU holding 6,144 CUDA cores, 128GB of unified LPDDR5X-9400 memory, and up to 300 GB/s of bandwidth, with Microsoft wrapping it in a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra display.
The win is narrower than it sounds. On Geekbench the M5 Max still runs about 40-50% ahead on CPU, landing near 3,700 single-core and 35,600 multi-core against roughly 2,600 and 23,700 for the Spark chip. The review's own framing is that Nvidia's platform "impresses in local AI, but gaming isn't its strong suit."
Originally reported by tomshardware.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Tom's Hardware: Nvidia's RTX Spark Beats M5 Max MacBook Pro by ~25% on Qwen Agent Benchmarks