At this point, the writing has been on the wall for Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra for some time. The company has been parading the thing around all summer, heralding its AI capabilities and demonstrating its capacity to chew through demanding games with admirable ease. We’ve known since Computex that the Ultra would be among a whole laundry list of laptops rolling out this year powered by Nvidia’s new RTX Spark, an Apple-style superchip that staples a CPU, GPU, and unified memory together. And that, along with Microsoft’s not-at-all-subtle marketing, made it fairly evident that the Surface Laptop Ultra was being positioned as an AI machine.
Here’s where things get interesting. The RTX Spark platform has two variants: one with 18 cores and one with 20. We predicted back at IFA that many laptops would contain the 18-core chip, given that that’s, you know, the one that seems more evidently useful for laptops and that Nvidia was demoing the 20-core version in mini PCs at the same show.
But the Surface Laptop Ultra, it turns out, is not trying to be an ordinary laptop. Windows Central’s Zac Bowden has leaked nearly all remaining details of Microsoft’s upcoming MacBook Pro competitor, and one of them is very spicy. Per the leaks, Microsoft will be selling the Ultra with both RTX Spark variants, including that 20-core monstrosity that we all kind of figured we’d only see crammed into weird-looking mini PCs.
Microsoft’s eighteener reportedly maxes out at 32GB of memory; the 20-core guy goes all the way up to 128GB. Also of note: the entry-level 18-core SKUs will reportedly run Windows 11 Home, while higher-end configs get Windows 11 Pro. The tangible difference between these operating systems is mainly security and virtualization stuff, but the signaling here is important—the 20-core option is targeting a very different market segment.
This is interesting for a few reasons. The fact that Microsoft is positioning this Ultra device as a rival to Apple’s M5 Max MacBook Pro is no secret (I mean, look at the thing). What I didn’t necessarily expect was that Redmond planned on spanning the whole gamut, from the 24GB entry-level notebook all the way up the chain.
Bowden’s sources say that the upcoming event will focus on “how Surface Laptop Ultra and RTX Spark are capable of running local 120B parameter models that enable on-device AI experiences and agentic workflows,” and that the company plans to “demonstrate how the Surface Laptop Ultra maintains maximum performance even when not plugged in.” These both appear to be direct attacks on what Apple’s most premium systems are traditionally known for in this space: maintaining high performance on battery and enabling large local AI workloads to dive headfirst into a massive pool of memory.
Previously, there was a real question as to whether Microsoft was building one several-thousand-dollar halo product tailored to folks who know what “120B parameter model” means or a broader product family. Now, we at least know that there are two clear tiers. Microsoft has one horse in the premium consumer laptop race and another that’s just hoping to take a big bite out of the customer base Apple’s arguably had cornered since the launch of the M-series. It’s shoving the maximum possible performance into a machine with a 2,000-nit-peak-HDR screen and hoping for the best.
Of course, this whole equation is missing one major variable: cost. Bowden’s sources have not confirmed an exact price, and that number will definitively determine where this 20-core Ultra model fits in the current market. I’m willing to make a bold prediction, though: it probably won’t be cheap.
