Nvidia's mythical Arm gaming laptop may finally arrive in partnership with Alienware

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Still waiting: Once upon a time, Nvidia set out to revolutionize the PC industry with its own gaming machine powered by an Arm-based CPU and a built-in GeForce GPU. But years later, that revolution has yet to arrive – most games still depend on x86 CPUs and require a dedicated graphics card to run at their best.

Taiwanese outlet United Daily News recently reported fresh rumors about the AI PC that Nvidia is allegedly developing to shake up the gaming market. According to unnamed industry insiders, the GPU giant is collaborating with Dell's Alienware to create a new gaming laptop powered by a custom APU – one reportedly powerful enough to alarm Intel, AMD, and other players in the emerging Arm PC space.

The APU is said to feature a custom CPU component designed by MediaTek and a GPU based on Nvidia's own Blackwell architecture. The Alienware Arm laptop is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025, or early 2026 at the latest. Earlier rumors revealed additional details about the chip, suggesting a power envelope between 80W and 120W.

Despite the reduced power draw, the rumored APU is expected to deliver performance comparable to the notebook variant of the GeForce RTX 4070. Taiwanese sources have described the new chip as a potential breakthrough for the PC industry – a unified computing solution that could upend the traditional model of separate CPU and GPU components in portable systems.

However, there are still a lot of "ifs" in this story. Arm processors are traditionally viewed as significantly more energy-efficient than x86 CPUs. Microsoft and Qualcomm have tried to leverage this advantage with their Snapdragon X Pro and Elite processors, yet only a small fraction of customers have actually adopted these systems so far.

Despite challenging market conditions, Qualcomm remains committed to investing in the PC business. The company is reportedly working on the Snapdragon X Elite 2 processor, which could power new liquid-cooled gaming desktops in the not-too-distant future.

Rumors about Nvidia's entry into the PC gaming market began circulating in 2023. More recently, CEO Jensen Huang confirmed that the company has "plans" for an Arm-based desktop CPU. Dell CEO Michael Dell added fuel to the speculation in 2024, suggesting that more concrete details about the project may emerge in 2025.

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Nvidia's mythical Arm gaming laptop may finally arrive in partnership with Alienware

 

[Squid Surprise]

As long as it isn’t compatible with a ton of apps, it will fail…

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Yeap, Nobody wants to deal with this mess ARM incompatibility issues + buggy drivers XD

 

[opckieran]

If this is legit, Qualcomm is likely to be the first casualty in the consumer personal computer space, unless they get serious on the software side. SDE may benchmark well but is only about 0.1-0.2% of consumer sales. Shocker.

The only question is, how would this be priced? Neither nVidia nor Alienware have been known to make a budget option, but there’s also no way this would be performing above 5060 levels, with a power budget of 80-120W. While it’s tempting to compare this to Ryzen AI MAX, this is looking more like nVidia’s answer to Apple’s M series if nothing else, sans the walled garden ecosystem.


Ultimately, I’d rather nVidia focus on developing this to run SteamOS… as unlikely as that would be.

 

[Vulcanproject]

The hardware can and probably will be pretty good. We all know the software compatibility is the limiting factor for consumer interest.

Sounds like it would make a good games console if it had a tailored OS. Perhaps this is less a consumer facing product but an interesting Nvidia audition for a next gen machine.....?

Just a thought.

 

[opckieran]

The hardware can and probably will be pretty good. We all know the software compatibility is the limiting factor for consumer interest.

Sounds like it would make a good games console if it had a tailored OS. Perhaps this is less a consumer facing product but an interesting Nvidia audition for a next gen machine.....?

Just a thought.

I think nVidia would take software compatibility development and engineering far, FAR more seriously than Qualcomm did. They have the effort and results in CUDA to back that up.

 

[AlexIL]

nVidia + Alienware = niche product

Whales could afford it but nobody else

Unless its SteamOS roduct below 1500$ it's a flop. It is unreasonable to buy probably 3000+$ thing when there's Apple ones and Xbox for a change.

 

[Squid Surprise]

nVidia + Alienware = niche product

Whales could afford it but nobody else

Unless its SteamOS roduct below 1500$ it's a flop. It is unreasonable to buy probably 3000+$ thing when there's Apple ones and Xbox for a change.

Well, if it works at the "whale" level, it will eventually trickle down to the "peasant" or "guppy" level...

 

[yRaz]

Arm is only more efficient to a point. If you want to compare 2, 5watt chips with one being x86 and the other being ARM, the ARM chips will win everytime. You push the power budget to basically anything over basically 30 watts, the x86 chip will be faster.

ARM definitely has its place, but x86 isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Especially if Broadcom continues to ruin everything they touch. RISCV might actually have a chance if Broadcom doing what they do best

 

[FaTaL]

I can see application for this in certain areas of industry and personal market but replace the x86 build ? Absolutely not. Its not even up for discussion; its such an asinine statement..

 

[SRB]

The whole problem is that the reason that Qualcomm, Arm, Media tech, Microsoft, et al, are in this for one reason and one reason only...none of them have an x86 license. They want their share of the pie. Arm has always been more about portable devices that sip power rather than big iron. Apple has had success in their laptops and phones because they're the only large scale vendor that has complete control over hardware, software, design, etc. What Arm can't do, Apple uses custom logic and processors that fit like a glove with the OS.

I think the only reason Microsoft will fail at this (as well as the others), is just the simple fact that x96 is far too entrenched in the PC space. If Microsoft hasn't been able to get the x86 instruction set to run/translate to Arm, I don't see anyone else doing much better.

Lastly, the idea that Arm is far and away superior for everything is way too simplistic, and gives too little credit to AMD (and Intel, more so in prior years). They've been honing x86 for years, and it won't be that easy to get rid of.

 

[HardReset]

Arm is only more efficient to a point. If you want to compare 2, 5watt chips with one being x86 and the other being ARM, the ARM chips will win everytime.

Why? Instruction set alone gives very minimal advantage for ARM and that can easily be nullified with slightly better architecture.

Main reason why ARM chips are "efficient" is that almost all ARM chips are designed to be efficient.

 

[yRaz]

Why? Instruction set alone gives very minimal advantage for ARM and that can easily be nullified with slightly better architecture.

Main reason why ARM chips are "efficient" is that almost all ARM chips are designed to be efficient.

But that design is only efficient in a certain wattage range. They are actually LESS efficient at higher wattage relative to performance.

So I 100% agree with ARM laptops and Handhelds, let's do it. Its just that ARM will never top x86 when raw performance is a thing. in the server market when someone needs 600 cores in a 1u, they need it to automate several thiusand basic tasks, not actually compute power. They're looking you automate as many tasks in parallel as possible, ARM is great at that. If you need actually compute performance, x86 is the winner

 

[Kashim]

RISCV might actually have a chance if Broadcom doing what they do best

Keep dreaming. RISCV has no chance. The day RISCV becomes relevant is the day x86 becomes obsolete. (ie. not during your lifetime.)

 

[candle86]

Well, if it works at the "whale" level, it will eventually trickle down to the "peasant" or "guppy" level...

Yeah didn't work with the shield or any other Nvidia gaming device if you're right it's all been a flop

 

[HardReset]

But that design is only efficient in a certain wattage range. They are actually LESS efficient at higher wattage relative to performance.

That is, because they are designed that way. But again, that has nothing to do with ISA itself.

So I 100% agree with ARM laptops and Handhelds, let's do it. Its just that ARM will never top x86 when raw performance is a thing. in the server market when someone needs 600 cores in a 1u, they need it to automate several thiusand basic tasks, not actually compute power. They're looking you automate as many tasks in parallel as possible, ARM is great at that. If you need actually compute performance, x86 is the winner

There is nothing that says ARM cannot compete with x86 on raw compute power per core. However x86(-64) high performance cores have decades of development behind. High performance ARM cores, few years basically. Since ultra high performance CPU core development takes money, I doubt ARM developers want to do that. But that again have nothing to do with ISA.

 

[yRaz]

That is, because they are designed that way. But again, that has nothing to do with ISA itself.


There is nothing that says ARM cannot compete with x86 on raw compute power per core. However x86(-64) high performance cores have decades of development behind. High performance ARM cores, few years basically. Since ultra high performance CPU core development takes money, I doubt ARM developers want to do that. But that again have nothing to do with ISA.

ARM has decades of development behind it. Apple has come out with some pretty great chips, but they're solution is to just make the chips bigger. If Apple cant do it the l dont really believe anyone else can.

 

[HardReset]

ARM has decades of development behind it. Apple has come out with some pretty great chips, but they're solution is to just make the chips bigger. If Apple cant do it the l dont really believe anyone else can.

ARM development has been mostly on low power designs. Basically only ARM core designer that have experience on high performance designs is AMD.

Apple started developing M1 around 2015. That's just 10 years, versus Intel and AMD, Apple is newcomer. Also Apple didn't even try to design high performance chip, even M4 max clocks are just 4.4 GHz. Like AMD showed with Zen4c, just reducing clock speed from 5.7 GHz to 3.7 GHz, makes core 35% smaller. Apple need around 6 GHz architecture to compete on high end. I doubt they will do that.

Anyway my point is that ARM cores Could be high performance but it's not so easy to design them. Also x86 can be very efficient but again, x86 has traditionally been high performance and competing against high efficiency ARM cores is not that easy as ARM basically dominates low power market.

 

[StupidPeopleSuk]

nGreediya + Alienware = uber-mega $$$

'nuff said