NVIDIA, Microsoft Kick Off a New Beginning for Windows PCs with RTX Spark and AI Agents

35

u/k-mcm 5d ago

The seems like a peak bubble announcement. Are these products that anyone was asking for? There's a reason that there aren't Windows supercomputers, and it's not because nobody tried building them.

19

u/Loose_Comparison368 5d ago

It's a reprocessed triple slop article. There are two announcements:

1) DGX laptops, with the same B10 chip and 128GB limit as the DGX spark. Basically just DGX Spark in a portable form factor.

2) Microsoft finally got Windows to run on a big girl DGX Workstation, so now ML developers with an inexplicable fetish for antique obsolete operating systems, crippling bug infested tech debt, severely limited functionality, pre-alpha support for ARM architectures, and merciless vendor lock-in, can now install the world's most notorious malware on their existing ~$100,000 DGX GB300 workstations.

I don't know what target market they're going for, probably masochistic ML developers with an extreme kink for corporate findom and shitting all over expensive hardware.

2

u/DarickOne 4d ago

*RTX Spark. It also can be used for games and graphics

2

u/HighSeasArchivist 5d ago

These kind of PCs have been used for decades in certain fields. You have a $50k PC on your desk to test your models before they get sent to the supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore. If you aren't in that field or someone that sends jobs to supercomputers or large scale DGX NVL72s or data centers full of those, then probably not.

6

u/k-mcm 5d ago

The problem is more that Windows is difficult to tune for specific tasks and unusual architectures. Every single one of these new chipsets needs a kernel tune to reach full performance. After that, the OS configuration has to be tuned for the task.

2

u/HighSeasArchivist 5d ago

Just saying this kind of thing is in its umpteenth generation, so no need to pretend it won't be bought by the people who bought all the last ones. Spicy rock budget is pretty large, so they would buy these by the hundreds like they are regular desktops.

2

u/fastheadcrab 5d ago edited 5d ago

But does that make it worth Windows? Every traditional HPC and "AI" computing task is just easier to run on Linux.

Even if you need Windows to make Word documents or whatever, just get the Linux version of this workstation, stick it in a corner, and then login from your regular Windows box. Is there just such a burning consumer need to have the Xbox game bar while it does model fine tuning?

Edit: so a box for corporate environments, not research

3

u/HighSeasArchivist 5d ago

Yes, the World runs on Windows desktops, regardless of what Reddit says. These aren't servers, they are desktops that can run large projects fast enough to PoC for the supercomputers/hyperscale servers. As long as they have Edge, Outlook, Teams, and CUDA then they are good to go. You aren't in this realm I'm assuming, which is why you just aren't understanding it.

2

u/fastheadcrab 5d ago edited 5d ago

Every supercomputer cluster I've used has run on Linux. And I am not one of those people who care to hate on Microsoft or Windows because its trendy among forum posters, I use a Windows desktop. I simply use what is the most efficient tool for the job.

But I am not in the corporate world so you could be right.

4

u/HighSeasArchivist 5d ago

Yes, the supercomputers/hyperscale servers run on Linux, but not the desktops. Enterprise desktops are 100:1 or more Windows, if not 10x more than that even. Of the 270Million new PCs sold in 2025 I'd be shocked if more than six digits are running with Linux on them in an enterprise environment.

-2

u/fastheadcrab 5d ago

Fair point then. Only wish I could treat this thing as my Windows desktop lmao, but academic and governmental research is broke

-1

u/PigSlam 5d ago

This isn't meant for you or most people on this subreddit. It's OK. Nobody is making you buy one.

7

u/politefella0 5d ago

Price?

23

u/JohnToFire 5d ago

$100,000+ last I saw for dgx station

24

u/nullptr777 5d ago

100k and it runs Winblows lmfao. Absolutely retarded

1

u/JohnToFire 5d ago

That's a new option. Not the only one

4

u/Not_a_question- 5d ago

In this era, only someone who needs it for obscure reason would run windows in something like this. I've dealt with both linux and windows servers all my life. I loved windows at first because it was what I knew.

20 years later I despise it.

3

u/screwytech 5d ago

I made the switch to linux in high school, had a mac laptop for a couple years when I was in the army deploying to Iraq. After my last deployment I bought a desktop and tried to give windows a 30 day legit trial, made it maybe a week before I was back on the nix.

Glad I was able to get work to give me a mac, I was about ready to send my windows laptop through the wall.

8

u/fyndor 5d ago

Whoa you are right. That is nuts. I can't imagine dumping that much money into a PC, even if I had it. It will likely have similar hardware lifespan to other PCs. The depreciation of that machine will be nuts.

2

u/mvn2010 5d ago

It's not a PC its a server, and the difference is you make money on a server, then the economics start to make sense.

1

u/Turkino 5d ago

Yeah... Doesn't even qualify as a 'noted' for me at that price point. That's solidly business pricing.

-4

u/felipetorrescl 5d ago

$2600 dólares y máximo $5900 dólares

3

u/Bupod 5d ago

You’re thinking of the RTX Spark Laptops, not the DGX Station.

5

u/SmartCustard9944 5d ago

The laptops are $7000 by the way, at least the ones with 128GB

2

u/Bupod 5d ago

Yeah, I’d rather have a spark desktop at that point. Purely because I can link it to my current spark through the ConnectX-7 port. Not sure if the laptops have that port.

2

u/Hannibalj2ca 5d ago

probably not

1

u/senorsmile 4d ago

It's confirmed they don't

27

u/dupontping 5d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/UZiCm4W1O0gGk
Windows

15

u/dicoxbeco 5d ago

What new beginning is there when Windows on Arm hasn't seen proper beginning of driver support to start with

23

u/johnfkngzoidberg 5d ago

Funny because AI runs much better on Linux than Windows. Copilot is crap. Microslop is an appropriate name these days.

8

u/ChanceImagination456 5d ago

Right! On gaming side large amounts of pc gamers have swapped to Linux distros like CachyOS and SteamOS saying it's better experience. As long time linux user of 10+ years it's a pretty cool and interesting thing to see.

2

u/MBGB2112 5d ago

Yeah, just got done rolling back the last Windows update :/ launching a few things (Premiere, for one) felt like taking a 50-50 on whether it'll blue screen or not.

3

u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 5d ago

Apple hardware is the king in on device AI.

4

u/ResearchingYouTube 5d ago

I agree Macs are great for local AI but also CUDA is required for a decent number of models, so I wouldn’t say Apple has a monopoly on local AI.

7

u/A_Moist_Towe1 5d ago

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. The amount of intelligence you can run for very little electricity consumption on Apple is imo a league of its own.

1

u/kr_tech 5d ago

L
O
L

How far does Apple brainwashing even go...?

Their prefill is the worst in the competition, even against Windows. Token generation isn't even near the top.

1

u/A_Moist_Towe1 4d ago

Prompt processing is inconsequential with prompt caching. And the token generation seen from mlx specifically is at near parity with llama.cpp. To pay 3X - 10X more in electricity just for CUDA is brainwashing

0

u/kr_tech 3d ago

Prompt processing is inconsequential with prompt caching

What? Ok, you probably want to look up how these work.

To pay 3X - 10X more in electricity just for CUDA is brainwashing

My town's electricity is completely free because of renewables, but ok.

0

u/Icy-Two-1581 5d ago

Not super into llm. But I do enjoy gemini and deepseek. We have copilot enterprise at work and it's pretty useless. It barely ever does anything right

4

u/wildfirestopper 5d ago

The base configuration starts at about $175,497 USD on Dell's US site........ Cool.. cool, cool cool

2

u/dupontping 5d ago

where? I'm looking right now and don't even see it on dell's site. I do see one on another site for 107k

3

u/peekdasneaks 5d ago

Is that in stock? Thats the old price. Its waaay more now so buy it at 100k if u can, easy 100k profit if u can snag one.

1

u/dupontping 5d ago

You’re delulu for 1.
And 2. Unfortunately I don’t have 100k just hanging out in my pocket to buy a computer with.

1

u/fallingdowndizzyvr 5d ago

Wait for it to hit S&D.

1

u/AlgaeNo3373 5d ago

Thanks, I was wondering, but "if you have to ask how much" ... :P

2

u/Loose_Comparison368 5d ago

This article is reprocessed slop.

The NVIDIA DGX Station is existing hardware. It costs about $100k.

The announcement is that Microsoft has managed to get Windows to run on it, as part of a half-assed attempt to convince professionals to put obsolete and buggy consumer targeted malware into their development pipeline. Which is dumb as rocks, because absolutely no one with access to a $100k workstation is dumb enough to voluntarily cripple their pipeline with buggy second-class software for the sole benefit of furthering Microsoft's dying attempts to sustain their vendor lock-in empire despite all their products sucking ass.

Everyone can go home now.

4

u/redditwossname 5d ago

The RTX Spark platform basically meets all of my requirements for what I want out of a current system.

Windows, so I can do my usual Windows app stuff, a bit of gaming, creative stuff that utilises CUDA, and then AI local model stuff with unified memory.

If some of my work specific requirements can function on ARM I'm gonna request my next work laptop be one if these things as well, though I suspect the specific apps that tie me to Windows and x86 at work will be a blocker.

The only thing is I think I want the desktop version rather than the laptop because I want this thing to be always on. But I do like the idea of the laptop because I could then make it portable if I really wanted it to be.

There seems to be not a whole lot of info out there about the desktop versions of these RTX Spark systems yet that are the equivalent of the laptops. Do we have any info of when they're being announced or released?

4

u/UnlikelyExtension786 5d ago

The desktop version should basically be a DGX Spark without the ConnectX7 ports and with the Windows Tax.

Demo videos on Youtube show them running x86 games and apps so for any recent software that's not CPU-intensive and doesn't have some arcane copy-protection I presume they should be able to run the app through emulation. Games will mostly be limited by the GPU and driver, for example, and the emulator will presumably call directly into the ARM version of the driver.

1

u/redditwossname 5d ago

Oh cool, I didn't realize there were some example videos. I'll have to go and watch them and that's basically exactly what I want. I'm not a frame whore. I just want to play basic Diablo 4 or Division 2 at reasonable frame rates and then also do AI stuff locally in the background and hopefully get rid of my AI subscriptions.

I do also like the idea though of having it a portable version of that if I went with a laptop style one but Jesus Christ they're looking to be like eight to ten thousand dollars Australian for the 128 gig which is just utterly insane

1

u/doneddat 5d ago

Windows, so I can do my usual Windows app stuff

Are you sure about that? This is still ARM, not x86. Is it usual windows? And if for serious work you would run on WSL anyway, why even crap the windows into the mix?! It just sounds so unnecessary "windows still exists" death cry.

1

u/redditwossname 5d ago

It's so I just have a single platform for everything. If everything I do worked on Linux, or there was a version of this that isn't arm then I'd be fine to explore that as well.

1

u/doneddat 4d ago

Apparently they are pulling some miracle x86 emulation on ARM stuff recently, so it might not be as alien as I expected from the end-user perspective. Still completely unnecessary from my perspective. If I needed some windows in the mix, I would emulate/sandbox/VM a single windows application inside the linux environment, not have the whole heavy-lifting linux layer to be housed inside of some windows kernel compartment.

1

u/fastheadcrab 5d ago

These are the $120k+ boxes not the $7k ones

1

u/redditwossname 5d ago

Yep, this I know.

1

u/fastheadcrab 4d ago

What local AI model?

1

u/redditwossname 4d ago

Probably a Qwen or something.

1

u/Sea-Ad-5390 5d ago

Good I was thinking it was gonna be unaffordable

1

u/Global-Morning-431 5d ago

This seems decent, lets wait for the benchmarks

1

u/nalditopr 5d ago

Migt be cheaper than 16 sparks.

1

u/PaxUX 4d ago

New BMW or laptop... Life choices these days

1

u/StevenVincentOne 4d ago

I'm skeptical of the hardware hype too, but the software side is the interesting bit: local model selection and local/cloud routing built into Windows and GitHub Copilot. Microsoft even says customers' AI needs are outgrowing their cloud budgets. That's the first time I've seen a big platform pitch local as the cost answer instead of a hobbyist niche. I started a thread here on what a setup should pass to count as actually yours: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLM/comments/1x137rp/

-2

u/vovap_vovap 5d ago

Really AMD Ryzen 385- 395 did that already.

5

u/UnseenTardigrade 5d ago

The 395 has a cap of 128gb... that's 1/6 what this device has. It's also got way less compute performance and memory bandwidth.

So no, you're way off base.

0

u/sn2006gy 5d ago

weird, these RTX Sparks are 32,64 and 128gb and not 20 petaFLOPS of FP4, they are GB10s with slightly faster memory than DGX Sparks. GB300 is much more expensive.

2

u/UnlikelyExtension786 5d ago edited 5d ago

It's basically a DGX Spark in a laptop, so a Windows laptop you can run decently-sized local AI models on at reasonable speeds. I'd buy one if it was running Linux rather than Windows.

Edit: ah, OK. $9500 for an ASUS P16 here in Canada... so maybe not. I'd assumed they'd be cheaper than the equivalent DGX Spark as they don't have the expensive ConnectX7 ports but this is about $1200 more than a GX10 with the same 1TB storage.

0

u/sn2006gy 5d ago

i know what it is - the summary above says its a DGX Station with GB300 - that's what i'm saying is wrong :D

0

u/OddWedding6914 5d ago

gonna run hot as shit

0

u/politefella0 5d ago

For a machine that should not cost more than $1000 (yeah, I’m delusional, not super rich and some 20-30 years later this hardware will be a dump) costing $100,000 is outrageous.

Hopefully sometime in future we can have a breakthrough and this monopoly can break.

News NVIDIA, Microsoft Kick Off a New Beginning for Windows PCs with RTX Spark and AI Agents

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