The RTX Spark version of the Surface Laptop Ultra lagged behind the M5 Pro-equipped 14-inch MacBook Pro in multiple performance tests. The two tested devices were priced at $5,900 and $3,700 respectively, meaning the former was $2,200 more expensive but failed to deliver superior performance in most workflows covered by these tests.
After NVIDIA announced the RTX Spark "Superchip" in June, it revealed that ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Microsoft would launch laptops using this platform. Microsoft subsequently showcased the Surface Laptop Ultra, with a test configuration featuring a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU, a GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, and 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory. For comparison, the MacBook Pro was equipped with an M5 Pro chip and 64GB of memory.
In CPU benchmarks such as Cinebench 2026, Cinebench 2024, and Blender, the Surface Laptop Ultra consistently trailed behind the MacBook Pro. In some tests, it even fell short of the Legion Pro 5i equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and the HP ZBook Ultra powered by the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395.
Creative workloads such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and DaVinci Resolve Studio showed similar results, with the Surface Laptop Ultra ranking last in the Photoshop test. In GPU-intensive tasks for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, its scores were also slightly lower than those of the M5 Pro. However, Premiere Pro has not yet been optimized for RTX Spark, while DaVinci Resolve has been deeply optimized for Apple's M-series chips.
In GGUF large language model tests compatible with both Mac and Windows, the RTX Spark only surpassed the M5 Pro in the Qwen 3.8 Q4 test. When switching to the more demanding Q8 model, the M5 Pro regained the lead and maintained its advantage as the workload increased further.
RTX Spark remains well-suited for gaming scenarios, but current tests show its gaming performance is comparable to laptop GPUs like the RTX 5060 or RTX 5070. Future application optimizations may narrow the current gap; however, for the workflows covered in this test, the additional $2,200 cost of the Surface Laptop Ultra has not yet translated into higher performance.
