Nvidia calls gaming laptops from Asus and MSI ‘RTX AI PC’
Nvidia made big moves on Sunday when it announced several new products and services focused on artificial intelligence (AI) innovations for desktops. It unveiled its RTX AI Toolkit for developers to build apps and experiences on its platform, and also teased a tech demo for Project G-Assist, an AI assistant with gaming expertise. The company also teased the “RTX AI PC” moniker for upcoming gaming laptops from Asus and MSI, noting that it will be bringing Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features to those devices.
Nvidia’s push for RTX AI PCs
In a blog postNvidia stated, “Newly announced RTX AI PC laptops from ASUS and MSI feature up to GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs and power-efficient systems-on-a-chip with Windows 11 AI PC capabilities. These Windows 11 AI PCs will receive a free update to Copilot+ PC experiences when available.” While the company didn’t detail what constitutes an RTX AI PC, it did highlight several AI accelerations its GPU platforms are enabling in laptops launching throughout the year.
It also claimed that these laptops will get Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features via a free update “when available.” The wording suggests that the gaming laptops will not receive features like Recall and Cocreate at launch, but may be upgraded later. Additionally, according to a report from The Verge, these laptops run on AMD’s latest Strix CPUs.
This distinction is fitting considering Microsoft announced its partnership with Snapdragon for its Arm-based chipsets with much fanfare during its Build event. It is likely that the company will keep these features exclusive to the Snapdragon chipsets that perform AI tasks using integrated Neural Processing Units (NPUs) for a certain period of time.
During the announcements, Nvidia also highlighted that GPUs are better suited for running heavier AI workloads compared to NPUs. The comparison is likely based on information Microsoft shared, namely that its internal NPUs can handle 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS). In comparison, Nvidia GPUs can reportedly handle up to 1,000 TOPS. However, one downside to GPUs is that they consume more power, while NPUs are optimized for performance.
Asus and MSI’s gaming laptops are expected to be available in July as RTX AI PCs, but it’s unclear when they’ll be upgraded to the Copilot+ PC category.
