NVIDIA RTX Spark chip benchmark results are out — multi-core is 12% faster than AMD, but Apple's M5 Max is 35% faster. NVIDIA's Arm laptop chip, the RTX Spark (codename N1X), just had its real-world performance leaked on Geekbench 7. The 20-core version scored 23,126 in multi-core, surpassing AMD's Ryzen AI Ma

💡 What You Will Learn

NVIDIA RTX Spark chip benchmark results are out — multi-core is 12% faster than AMD, but Apple's M5 Max is 35% faster. NVIDIA's Arm laptop chip, the RTX Spark (codename N1X), just had its real-world p

📜 Table of Contents

• Benchmark Data Overview
• Multi-Core Is Impressive, But Single-Core Is the Weak Spot
• Apple M5 Max Still Leads by a Wide Margin
• From Benchmarks to Products, There Are Still Steps to Go

NVIDIA RTX Spark Chip Benchmarks Leak: 12% Faster Multi-Core Than AMD, But Apple M5 Max Is 35% Ahead

NVIDIA's Arm laptop chip, the RTX Spark (codenamed N1X), just had its real-world performance leaked on Geekbench 7. The 20-core version scored 23,126 in multi-core, beating AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and Intel's Panther Lake X9 388H — but trails Apple's M5 Max by a 35% margin.

The first real benchmark results are out, and they're more complicated than expected.

Benchmark Data Overview

Multi-Core Is Impressive, But Single-Core Is the Weak Spot

Let's start with the good news. The 20-core N1X hits 23,126 in multi-core, 12% faster than AMD's flagship Ryzen AI Max+ 395 and 20% faster than Intel's Panther Lake X9 388H. Considering the N1X has a TDP of just 45W to 80W, while AMD and Intel's mobile flagships both exceed 55W, that efficiency is quite striking. NVIDIA has taken its first step into the laptop market with Arm architecture.

But single-core performance isn't pretty. The N1X scores 2,570 in single-core, 7% slower than Intel's X9 388H (2,767), and only marginally ahead of AMD. Many everyday tasks and games still rely on single-core performance, and that's where NVIDIA trails Intel and Apple.

Apple M5 Max Still Leads by a Wide Margin

The most eye-catching entry in the table is Apple's M5 Max. Its 18 cores deliver 3,766 in single-core and 35,527 in multi-core — 32% faster than the N1X in single-core and 35% faster in multi-core. The M5 Max uses TSMC's N3E process, and NVIDIA's N1X is also on TSMC 3nm, so there's no major process gap — the difference comes down to CPU architecture design.

Apple's chip team has consistently led the industry in single-core performance. The M5 Max's 18 cores are essentially all custom high-performance cores, with no big.LITTLE split like x86 designs, so single-core scheduling is more straightforward. The N1X, by contrast, uses 10 Cortex-X925 performance cores paired with 10 Cortex-A725 efficiency cores. While it succeeds in stacking cores for multi-core performance, its single-core ceiling is limited by Arm's off-the-shelf designs.

From Benchmarks to Products, There Are Still Steps to Go

These scores come from engineering samples, and the Geekbench entries have already been taken down. Earlier leaks showed the N1X losing to the M3 Max on Geekbench 6, so this is a significant improvement — a sign NVIDIA is still actively optimizing. But engineering sample scores don't reflect final retail performance; thermal and power tuning will still affect the real-world experience.

The RTX Spark is positioned for high-end laptops and mini PCs, going head-to-head with MacBook Pro and Snapdragon X2 Elite products. The N1X's real selling point is packing a Blackwell GPU (6,144 CUDA cores, matching the desktop RTX 5070) and up to 128GB of unified memory into a 45W–80W SoC. Its 1 Petaflop of AI compute is what truly sets it apart from other Arm chips.

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra will be one of the first devices to ship with it, expected to launch this fall. Analysts estimate the flagship N1X configuration will land around $2,899, with mainstream N1 models around $1,799. At that price point, it's competing directly with the MacBook Pro. Whether NVIDIA can crack the laptop market with an Arm chip — we'll only know once the products actually ship.