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Microsoft Hardware

Microsoft and Nvidia Unveil Surface Laptop Ultra For $2,599 (neowin.net) 94

At a press event today, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Laptop Ultra featuring an NVIDIA RTX Spark platform with a Blackwell-based GPU capable of up to one petaflop of AI compute. The laptop supports up to 128GB of unified memory for running models as large as 120 billion parameters locally, while also adding a 15-inch mini-LED display, expanded ports, upgraded cooling, and support for hundreds of AAA games. It's available for pre-order today starting at $2,599. Neowin reports: To keep the device's temperature under control, Microsoft has also developed a new cooling system that offers up to 2.5 times the thermal capacity of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7th Edition. The Surface Laptop Ultra comes with a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra mini-LED touchscreen with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a pixel density of 262 PPI, and peak HDR brightness of up to 2,000 nits.

Despite its beefy specs, the Surface Laptop Ultra measures less than 18mm thick and weighs under 4.5 pounds (around 2kg). The laptop will be available in Platinum and Nightfall finishes. Microsoft has also increased the size of the precision haptic touchpad by more than 30% compared to the Surface Laptop 7th Edition for improved haptic input. The Surface Laptop Ultra includes a broader selection of ports, featuring USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. It also features the world's first built-in USB-C magnetic charging.

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Microsoft and Nvidia Unveil Surface Laptop Ultra For $2,599

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  • by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @02:13PM (#66366804) Homepage
    2.5X the thermal is likely a drop in the proverbial ocean. Probably needs more like 50X the cooling of a typical laptop to take full advantage of the processor. But then the battery would be exhausted in 20 minutes. I'd also expect the case to get very hot if they really open it open. Perhaps a new way to burn your fingerprints off by typing?
    • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      I, too, find it rather strange to build such a thing as a laptop rather than into a larger housing, given how extremely dependent the "large AI model" use-case is on being able to run at full power for extended periods of time.
      • by darkain ( 749283 )

        Its honestly just fine. I'm actively replying using the MacBook Pro M5 MAX 128GB. When doing "AI" tasks, the bottleneck is memory performance, not compute. So yeah, the fans kick in because the system heats up, but it doesn't get to the point of thermal throttling. I imagine the Nvidia based laptops doing "AI" tasks will work about the same.

        • Using an M4 Pro for local AI, and the thermals register regularly at 99-100C under load. It never goes above, which means it's thermal throttling. You can confirm with all-smi installed from Homebrew.

          • by darkain ( 749283 )

            I cannot speak for your machine, but on my personal M5 MAX, thermals hover around 70c when doing long sessions.

          • by Malc ( 1751 )

            Can't you just run the following instead of installing something, or did these change with Arm Macs?

            pmset -g therm

            sudo powermetrics --samplers thermal,cpu_power -n 1

            The other clue is the kernel_task process unexpectedly running at high CPU load.

          • What's your point? On my desktop workstations with watercooling system my thermals register regularly at 100C under load as well. The question isn't "throttling vs not throttling". Modern CPUs boost to thermal limits as part of their design. The question is, "Is the performance sufficient for what I need?"

            And sometimes the need is to be able to move something around i.e. a laptop.

      • Again, this Blackwell GPU is not the kind of Blackwell GPU meant to go into a data center (or even a large desktop workstation), much like not all RTX 50-series GPUs have the same cluster config or TDP. This is a chip intended for LLM models that run locally on a laptop. Now, don't ask what people are doing with local LLMs, but the Mac Studio is selling very well to the local LLM crowd, so there is a market for them, and it's reasonable to assume that some of that crowd will want a machine that is mobile.
      • Most of the issues of running larger models have little to do with processing power and a lot to do with memory. You may be confusing *training* a model with using a model. Training takes a lot of compute. Using focuses a lot on moving data too and from memory. With dedicated AI compute hardware and a shitload of RAM you don't actually need cook with huge amounts of power.

        It's one of the reason the MacMini is one of the most popular pieces of AI hardware on the market right now.

    • Not sure if you know what this is, but an RTX Spark is at the high end of a low power ARM core. It has a TDP not dissimilar than any other workstation laptop crossover CPU ranging from 45W to 80W depending on which Spark this includes.

      Worth nothing literally every laptop CPU is thermally limited. Heck these days most desktop CPUs are as well. 2.5x the thermal performance likely means well above 2.5x performance boost over the previous gen (which wasn't an efficient ARM chip).

      • by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @03:18PM (#66366896) Homepage
        Am well aware. I'm also well aware my newer thinner laptop throttles way sooner than my old one. The faster processor on it is literally not just useless, and performs worse than my old slower one because it throttles within a couple seconds. That one petaflop spec is going to last a tenths of a second I expect. I did see another article since my post from a different source and it was touting the cloud access the new machine gets and how a few tasks could be run locally. So I'd expect that this is just a terminal into the cloud in reality. Run the task in the cloud, it'll be fast. Assuming you have a fast connection. Run it local and have dinner, a good nights sleep and it might be ready in the morning. Bonus, fry your eggs on it.
        • That one petaflop spec is going to last a tenths of a second I expect.

          You can't know that yet. Yes, this obsession with thinness is unhealthy, but you don't know how aggressively the fans are programmed to ramp up and whether a liquid metal thermal interface was used or not. Some OEMs can get surprising thermals out of thin laptops using aggressive fan curves and liquid metal (at the expense of the liquid metal sometimes leaking onto the board and amalgamating with the solder joints).

          Also, all modern ch

          • Some OEMs can get surprising thermals out of thin laptops using aggressive fan curves and liquid metal (at the expense of the liquid metal sometimes leaking onto the board and amalgamating with the solder joints).

            This is like watching McDonalds advertise their fresh hot coffee by showing a copy of the lawsuit they settled after burning the shit out of a customer.

            (They got any cool T-800 features to go along with that liquid metal, or is the term "melt down" about to get really explosive being near all that lithium ion.)

            Also, all modern chips throttle, it's a feature called "boost", but you can't know whether the promised 1 petaflop is boost or sustained because that wasn't disclosed, you have to wait for someone to test it.

            Knowing 21st Century marketing, they did achieve 1 petaflop. Measured for approximately 0.18 seconds. Right before the entire laptop exploded, with performance experts standing on the other side of

            • This is like watching McDonalds advertise their fresh hot coffee by showing a copy of the lawsuit they settled after burning the shit out of a customer.

              If this happens, you were holding it wrong.

              or is the term "melt down" about to get really explosive being near all that lithium ion

              If this happens, you were holding it wrong.

              Ok, jokes aside, liquid metal is a popular thermal interface in high-performance yet thin laptops, and it comes with warnings to let the laptop cool down before you put it in a vert

              • As an aside, the battery won't explode even if there is liquid metal leakage in laptops that have liquid metal as their thermal interface material, lithium batteries have overcurrent protectors that protect from short-circuits happening outside the battery enclosure (which is plastic and doesn't amagalmate with liquid metal), what happens is that the liquid metal ends up all over the board and makes the board almost unrepairable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
              • Ok, jokes aside, liquid metal is a popular thermal interface in high-performance yet thin laptops, and it comes with warnings to let the laptop cool down before you put it in a vertical orientation (for example, in a backpack or briefcase/laptop bag) so the liquid metal has a chance to cool down and become less viscous and to not flex the chassis because that may cause the liquid metal to leak out of the seal covering the heatsink.

                Asking people to wait for a device society has normalized slamming shut and tossing in a bag the millisecond a clock reads you're done for the day, is like developing a new car tire that requires drivers to slow down to 10MPH for the last mile of driving to keep the tires from exploding in the garage.

                Was there really a point in making that tech mobile, or does it come with a litigation-proof sticker on the front that reads Insmelt Inside? Asking on behalf of the T-800 mini-me threat mitigation.

                • Asking people to wait for a device society has normalized slamming shut and tossing in a bag the millisecond a clock reads you're done for the day

                  Yeah, if it wasn't clear from my previous comments, putting liquid metal on laptops is a crazy thing to do, but if it gives a boost on benchmarks or a slightly thinner laptop or both, manufacturers of gaming laptops will go for it.

                  is like developing a new car tire that requires drivers to slow down to 10MPH for the last mile of driving to keep the tires from expl

        • You can suspect whatever you want. Your past experiences do not translate unless you're comparing to another ARM platform. That's the thing with fundamentally different processors, your best example would be Apple's shift to A series CPUs on Macbooks, and that was a huge step in capability increase.

          So I'd expect that this is just a terminal into the cloud in reality.

          The previous one wasn't a terminal into the cloud and was fine doing some heavier workloads. This one not only apparently has a far better cooling solution but also a far more efficient CPU architecture.

          Normally

        • You make a good point - it's a very heavy weight terminal to the cloud, which is Microsoft's general direction of travel for the last few years.

          I can imagine Microsoft thinking it's wise to let consumers pay for compute as well as software, with Microsoft just hosting the storage and connectivity. But for that to work, they'll have to shed some of their work to the users. That's going to be a tricky undertaking for the next several years because all AI hardware is super expensive, so even if they 'encourage

        • by maitas ( 98290 )

          24GB RAM for 2599 USD.

    • Just because it's a Blackwell-architecture GPU, it doesn't mean it's the same chip as the Blackwell-architecture GPUs that go into data centers. GPUs are highly parallel, so they can scale TDP-wise depending on how many clusters of unified shaders you have and the clocks you run them at. This is not new, for example, the Maxwell architecture had chips ranging from 30W TDP (GeForce 830M and 930M) to 250W beasts like the GeForce GTX TITAN X.
  • by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @02:15PM (#66366810)

    It's already out of stock

    • It's already out of stock

      That is sometimes an intentionally engineered situation used to garner more attention and manufacture confidence.
      You really need to know how many units were manufactured. If only enough for some fraction of early adopters, its not so meaningful to run out.

  • finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @02:18PM (#66366814)

    my windows update patching can happen in mere hours.

    • FYI the 1 petaflop is in the GPU, not in the CPU. The SoC is an RTX Spark N1X, so the CPU is 10+10 or 9+9 ARM cores (Cortex-X925+Cortex-A725), depending on the specific variant. And Windows Update uses the CPU to put its KBs in a row and install them, not the GPU.

      That said, if your Windows installation takes hours to Windows Update every month (not just after a clean install), something is wrong with your Windows installation.
      • by zlives ( 2009072 )

        there once was a man from Nantucket
        his Windows was stuck so he said fuck it
        he moved to a Mac and lived so long
        and now you can go and suck it.

        • Most people would just run Windows Update troubleshooter to "reset" Windows Update if it took hours during every update, instead of throwing an entire system away...
  • You are going to be able to heat your house with this, just in time for the next massive heatwave.

    • At 80W TDP for a fully loaded RTX Spark (which this may not be, they didn't specify which Spark they are using) you're not going to be heating much more than your lap.

      • At 80W TDP for a fully loaded RTX Spark (which this may not be, they didn't specify which Spark they are using) you're not going to be heating much more than your lap.

        A laptop cooling pad is a great investment for such a machine.

        • Wait? 80W is a lot for you guys?

          /hides away 400W Area-51m that came with two power supplies that must be used simultaneously
    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      maybe just a room, unlesss your house is a caardboard box like me.

  • $5900 for 128GB

    Windows-only Aarch64 stuff. Nova Lake is almost here anyhow. If I spend that much, I want more than a overheating windows laptop.

    • $5900 for 128GB

      Windows-only Aarch64 stuff. Nova Lake is almost here anyhow. If I spend that much, I want more than a overheating windows laptop.

      Nova Lake needs recompiled software to truly realize its performance. The apx architecture is backwards compatible to x86_64 but software needs to be rebuilt to apx specifically to access new registers, new instructions, etc and get all the performance benefits.

      • All I want is excellent compatibility with my existing x86-32 and x86-64 software, aka in-hardware backward compatibility (when it comes to CPU instruction set architecture), which is something you don't get from ARM CPUs and the various OS-provided emulators and recompilers. If a developer goes as far as to recompile their software to take advantage of the new instructions in Nova Lake or whatever, so much the better, but it's not a necessity. It's been that way since the first Pentium introduced some nift
    • If I spend that much, I want more than a overheating windows laptop.

      If you can get away without having a laptop then this product was never made for you. Also all computers overheat these days. The thermal envelope is very much a limiting factor in most devices including desktops.

  • That's awesome! The specs listed on the MS site don't mention a special USB-C port, just a special charger--I wonder if that charger would work with other USB-C-powered devices.
    • by Thud457 ( 234763 )

      -I wonder if that charger would work with other USB-C-powered devices.

      MOAR POWAH = faster magic smoke production! Efficiency!1!!

  • Are these more repairable than the tablet style ones? Thin form factors are ok if they're cheap like a tablet, but spending so much on something disposable is less sensible.
  • by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @02:57PM (#66366860)

    The only Microsoft hardware I've ever been impressed with was their mouse. Now that Microsoft is a full-on spyware company I can't imagine ever wanting to own one of these laptops.

    • The only Microsoft hardware I've ever been impressed with was their mouse.

      The Z-80 coprocessor card for the Apple II was pretty good. :-)

      • Oh yeah, I forgot about those early PC cards.

    • FYI their x86-64 Surface offerings are standard PCs, there is nothing "magical" about them: https://www.makeuseof.com/put-... [makeuseof.com] So, if you like their hardware, you aren't stuck with Windows. Their ARM offerings should be assumed to be stuck with Windows on ARM, much like ARM boards intended to run Linux should be assumed to be stuck with the Linux images the manufacturer provided. Ahh... I can feel all that ARM openness hitting me in the face...
    • Since 1999. If Redmond built OS and applications as well as their hardware the world would be a better place.

      • I'm one of those people that learned how to type 60+ WPM the wrong way (had a computer in the home since 1980 when I was 12). Those natural keyboards only made my typing much worse and slower, but like you I have heard others (that know how to type properly) rave about them.

        • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

          I'm one of those people that learned how to type 60+ WPM the wrong way (had a computer in the home since 1980 when I was 12)

          Same experience for me. I remember a slow day in the office back in 99 or 2000 (we'd just shipped a release) we got into an argument about typing speeds so set up typing tests for the whole team. My "my fingers never actually sit on the home keys, my hands relocate from time to time, and most of my typing is with three or four fingers and a thumb" ass clocked over 100wpm to the incredulity of the rest of the team.

          Natural keyboards feel decidedly unnatural to me, because my hands always want to be somewher

          • Kind of in the same boat except I don't think I'm at 100. Probably more like 60. I started out in a definite hunt and peck style, that as time progressed I just got better and better at. I even kind of remember somewhere in my early 20's after years of always looking at the keyboard, I realized I could just not look and still hit the right keys. I just got faster and faster at it. I also always used the same text editor. Ned. Still use essentially the same editor, although I rewrote it since after decades,
            • "One last comment which is as you get faster, the keyboard starts to make a real difference."

              Yep, that is why I continue to use Model Ms and Fs as much as I can, or at least clones like Unicomp's. Rubber dome keyboards are the worst.

      • Disagree. As someone who is using a Microsoft mouse right now I can tell you their hardware is a mixed bag. Some things are good, other things are buggy, some things are well built, others are cheap. Microsoft's headsets have a tendency to snap, their Surface Pros (as much as I am a fan and love every one I've used) are horrendously unreliable and break very easily (my current one has given up on fast charging, is down to 1 USB port, and is on its second keyboard). The Surface Laptops on the other hand have

  • How many Beowolf clusters is that?

    This is AI in 2026, son. Show your work in gigawatts of compute or GTFO.

  • by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @03:07PM (#66366874)
    that's like the most important feature of a portable computer
    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      comes with a really long cable

    • I dunno how efficient these processors are these days but I'm guessing a petaflop of calculations lets you watch the battery percentage bar go down like a melting ice cream cone on a hot July day
      • It's an RTX Spark N1X, the TDP is 80W.
      • Again, it's an RTX Spark N1X SoC, the TDP is 80W. There are gaming laptops consuming two or even three times that, and they last 2 hours under full load.
        • Maybe I misunderstand TDP. I would expect if TDP is 80W, and it is under full load, it is consuming 80W. I know of no laptop battery with more than 90W-H capacity. Your example says you know of gaming laptops at 2X the 80W and lasting 2 hours at full load, or 320W-H. What am I missing? And in this surface laptop case, we are not even counting the GPU power. I still say it is nonsensical. If this thing is running anywhere near 100W, which seems very possible with the 80W cpu and ?W GPU plus all the other stu
          • Yeah obviously performance is gonna be capped in battery mode. Also, 99Wh batteries exist.
            • OK, 99, but 320? Your claim was 2-3X performance for 2 hours. 2X is 320 W-H. I guess gaming doesn't run full throttle. To me, full throttle means all cores running as fast as TDP permits until the task is complete. DRC, IC P&R, synthesis, these are tasks that want full throttle until completed. Granted you'd be nuts to run on battery, but I have run DRC's on a laptop plugged in. Hours and I mean many hours later, its done. Like start after dinner and ready by breakfast if lucky.

              The other point I make ab

    • that's like the most important feature of a portable computer

      Portables may not be battery powered, they may use a wall outlet. For example one can get a case for a Mac mini M4 or M6 or an Intel / ASUS NUC and move it from a desk at home to a desk at the office and back again. That too is a portable computer. Its a laptop computer that is battery powered. "Portable" goes back to suitcase sized IBM PCs affectionately referred to as "luggable" by users, and the original 1984 Mac.

    • that's like the most important feature of a portable computer

      It is not the most important feature. It's the most important feature if your use case is to run it on battery. Some use cases aren't that. Some use cases is simply the requirement to be able to move around between places where power is accessible (like all our work laptops spend 99.9% of their time on different docking stations). Likewise some use cases are for things to be as light as possible (like how I requested a different laptop to my co-workers due to how much time I spend travelling).

      There is a LOT

  • So they're violating Apple's MagSafe patent?

    Does it have a Thunderbolt 5 port?

  • Fatal flaw (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Smonster ( 2884001 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @04:18PM (#66366958)
    It runs a modern Windows OS.
    • Not only that, but the base model, which sells for a mouth watering $2599, comes with the powerful "Home Edition".
      • To be fair there is fuck all difference between Home and Pro these days. About the only thing that I miss between my "Home" laptop on my Surface "Pro" (whichever moron at Microsoft decided that was a good combination of software and hardware needs to be lynched by the marketing department) is that the Home models can't remember and store bitlocker passwords for external storage.

        Beyond that if you're not on a domain, Pro really doesn't give you much extra, at least nothing that can't be replaced with a simpl

  • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @04:36PM (#66366974) Homepage
    Dump the screen, keyboard, ridiculous cooling solution, use standard sized components - and it's a desktop! which should be relatively affordable to the laptop version.

    With no battery and no thermal throttling after 30 seconds, it sounds like a no-brainer. Oh wait, but it's 2026...
    • You mean the DevBox? https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com] $5,999.99 for the 20-core, 128 GB unified memory, 2 TB. Compared to Surface Laptop Ultra 20-core, 128 GB unified memory, 1TB for $5,899.99
    • And no portability? If you're in the market for a desktop then this product isn't targeted at you. It's okay, not everything is made for Fly Swatter (30498). I know you may not like to hear this but there are ... other people out there. At least for now. God knows the way the world is going you may be the last survivor in your basement.

      no thermal throttling after 30 seconds

      Literally every desktop computer thermally throttles as well. It's a question of time. CPU / GPU design has dynamically adjusted performance to thermal envelopes for years no

  • by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @04:50PM (#66366990)

    I selected NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X (6144-core GPU, 20-core ) and the price with 64 GB + 2 TB went to $4700.
    Then I did Apple M5 Max 64 GB + 2 TB. It was $5400

    Benchmark: Apple 58000 vs 39000 on cpubenchmark site (multi-core). Even more percentage difference for single core. I would rather pay 17% more and get 50% more performance.

    Only Windows lovers will buy this.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you have benchmarks for AI performance? That seems more relevant here.

      Also which Apple machine are you comparing to? The M5 performance depends heavily on thermal and power limits. That website is probably using the desktop version with much better cooling and a higher power limit than any of Apple's portable offerings.

    • Benchmark: Apple 58000 vs 39000

      Benchmarking CPU/GPUs targeted at laptops generically is fucking stupid. The performance of each device is almost exclusively determined by the thermal and power design. You are using benchmarks wildly incorrectly. Please stop.

      Now maybe you're right and the performance numbers are as you suggest, but if you are then it's by fluke, not because you're doing anything sensible. Wait until the device is released, tested, and benchmarked in its actual configuration before you draw any conclusions.

      • by unrtst ( 777550 )

        Wait until the device is released, tested, and benchmarked in its actual configuration before you draw any conclusions.

        This sounds an awful like like, "Wait until the leopard eats your face before you draw any conclusions." There are well established benchmarks that provide insight into what we can expect, and that's a lot more useful than trusting the marketing and suggesting people wait for it to be released before deciding to buy the competition.

        Benchmarking CPU/GPUs targeted at laptops generically is fucking stupid. The performance of each device is almost exclusively determined by the thermal and power design. You are using benchmarks wildly incorrectly. Please stop.

        If you can't put two and two together and see what the benchmarks imply, that's on you. If you can, then do so and show where this went wrong (something like what AniMoJo implied

        • WTF does this have to do with leopard eating faces for anyone who isn't so incredibly stupid to pre-order untested hardware? Do you make all your purchasing decisions on vibes? Have you already pre-ordered your 2030 Tesla Model S?

          There are well established benchmarks that provide insight into what we can expect

          The one thing we can expect from CPU benchmarks is that they do not reflect their performance in laptops since in a laptop the performance is almost universally defined by the thermal / power envelope. That's why you can get laptops on the market with Intel i5s that well and truly

  • You could have made a graphical powerhouse but nooooo you made a useless fucking waste of AI compute.

    Given I almost NEVER see a Surface device in the wild, I'm guessing this is just another shoddy attempt at trying to lock people into AI-only shit.

  • I'm sure the NFL will buy the excess stock for half off retail.

  • I'm here wondering how much software this will never run since it has an NVidia ARM CPU.

    Don't forget to make sure that your printer of choice has ARM 64 drivers. The Windows 11 x64 drivers won't do.

  • whats the performance like for actual work?

    • whats the performance like for actual work?

      The keyboard seems fine. I think I'll be able to type prompts at a sufficient WPM.

  • The 128GB option is tempting, depending on what that configuration actually costs. Being able to run a large model locally would give me a reason to consider this, and I'd definately appreciate the 3:2 display and proper ports every day. The petaflop headline needs its footnote attached, though: Microsoft's figure is theoretical FP4 performance with sparsity. I'd like to see someone load one of those 120B models, say what quantization and context length they're using, and show how fast it answers after the

  • Probably thanks to some agentic assist: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surfa... [reddit.com]

  • 1. Lack of inverted T arrow key cluster. This shows that MS did not hire a proper ergonomics pro, and is the one shortfall of their entire Surface line up. I'm an Apple guy, but LOVE the Surface Pro due to it's kickstand, but always bring my own 3rd party keyboard with the inverted T arrow keys. Trying to navigate text and content with those awful oversized left and right keys is a disaster. Apple, ASUS and some Lenovo laptops retain this inverted T layout. Better for gaming too if you don't use WASD. 2. Wi
  • For the super mega elite-ultra pro+ edition.
  • The price with 128 GB RAM is $5899+taxes

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