[Videocardz] NVIDIA N1 laptop motherboard has been pictured, features 128GB LPDDR5X memory
Posted by Nekrosmas@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 97 comments
Maleficent_Celery_55@reddit
so its dgx spark but a laptop?
Krowken@reddit
Yes. That is basically what the N1X is. https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-ceo-confirms-n1-chip-is-actually-gb10-superchip-used-in-dgx-spark
vk6_@reddit
The N1X is the full GB10 chip with 20 cores, the N1 is cut down to 12 cores.
twinkbulk@reddit
what an actual joke the gb10 sucked when it launched and they want to sell us binned versions of a binned chip???
Setepenre@reddit
It did ? In what workload ?
twinkbulk@reddit
way less tensor cores that perform worse than anything else in the blackwell line, way less memory bandwidth, makes it not that useful for diffusion, and pretty slow at lora training imo and about the same price now as an rtx pro 5000 with way more and better tensor cores, if you need the capacity and the low TDP its not THAT bad but when its already not great at diffusion and slow at training, the mac studio looks like a better value with more memory, or getting a AMD strix line, its really only useful if you specifically need fp4 with a lot of memory and dont care about speed + want to save money vs buying a workstation gpu
R-ten-K@reddit
LOL
letsgoiowa@reddit
People will buy it because Nvidia! $2000 laptops coming up boys!
turtleship_2006@reddit
I mean gaming and "workstation" laptops already regularly go for much more.
MogRules@reddit
I can kit a gaming laptop out at $7k CAD right now....$2k is nothing by comparison.
letsgoiowa@reddit
Sure but we have performance on this already and it frankly blows
RandomGenericDude@reddit
Yeah, I've been saying that for a while.
The Dell GB10 even has Microsoft secureboot keys in the firmware...
It will of course lack the context X 6 though.
mckirkus@reddit
SparkBook DGX? Sparktop?
martincerven@reddit
So this has 8x32bit =256 bit bus width, i.e. same bandwidth as DGX Spark. So far only M3,4,5 Max have 512 bit wide bus thanks to Memory-on-Package. Therefore Apple M5 Max will have LLM inference speeds at least 2x thanks to 2x higher bandwidth.
fbernard@reddit
Macbook Pro M5 Max, 16", with 128GB RAM (2TB SSD standard) is roughly 6500 EUR, with a proven thermal management, 614MB/s memory bandwidth, ThunderBolt 5 and decent battery life. nVidia's offer would have to be seriously cheaper and thermally efficient to have any appeal. (Full disclosure, I've had PCs for 35 years, I don't own a Mac, although that might change in the near future).
pac_cresco@reddit
The dgx spark in which this laptop is based retails for around ~5000 USD, so I'd expect this to be at or a notch below the the macbook you mentioned.
Not_a_Candle@reddit
Someone else said the N1 is cut down from 20 to 12 cores, so chances are it's even cheaper than that if corporate greed doesn't kill the pricing, but we all know how that works out.
fratopotamus1@reddit
Plus, the ConnectX interface drives a ton of cost, which the laptop wouldn't have.
PlsDntPMme@reddit
I mean, at the end of the day if they actually want to sell units they’ll have to price it accordingly. Then again, Nvidia makes so much off their GPUs anyway so they just might not care.
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
I expect this to land somewhere in the M5 Pro range. Same 256-bit memory bus, similar memory bandwidth, but way more max capacity and performance should be comparable to a bit better.
The M5 Max is a huge piece of silicon. The only similarity here is the max memory capacity
michaelsoft__binbows@reddit
This is the only part of the market it makes sense for now that apple has the high end dominated
And without macos youre limited to linux to have it usable. Should be a neat machine.
Aggravating_Cod_5624@reddit
N1 has plenty of potential, but because it's not being printed on gaa-fet - my guess is that even Liquid Metal will not be enough to cool down this shit.
Dontdoitagain69@reddit
I understand high ram use cases, i have 1.2 tb rack. After running and playing with large models I honestly dont see a reason to pay 5 Gs for a mid 128GB laptop. For real work you can use chatgpt. For experimenting even a 64gb gaming laptop is fine. Can someone explain what paying 5gs for 128gb device with any chip will get you in a real world use case? Like what do you run? 128 is not enough for large dense models and too much for regular small models that dont have much difference if you know what you are doing.Like the only thing I value is a large context size but even with right plumbing you can achieve like 90% of what 512gb will get you.
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
It will also be 2x the price.
nickN42@reddit
We're talking about Nvidia here. If anything, apple might end up being cheaper.
GHz-Man@reddit
Plus, I mean Apple has had a $499 desktop since 2005, and now has a $499 laptop too.
Some people think Apple is overpriced just because they never offered a cheap plastic Chromebook or $100 iPhone to compete with those cheap Android models.
airfryerfuntime@reddit
I always laugh at the apple crybaby circlejerk when they whine about stuff being too expensive. Just because Apple hasn't offered poverty tier tech trash, doesn't mean they haven't offered budget options either. They've always offered competitive options.
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
I wouldn't go that far. None of the Intel Macs were particularly good value. The MacBooks were all pretty bad. Apple Silicon Macs are great value as a whole, especially for the base models, but it wasn't always the case.
And the iPhones have pretty much never been good value. Maybe, in the North American market, where there's no competition, they are okay, but in the rest of the world, we have a lot more options that either do the same thing for cheaper, or more things for the same price.
The 17e is terrible value, and the Pros should really be having bigger batteries and better cameras at the price they come in.
m0rogfar@reddit
I don't think that really holds up at all. Just look at the 2010's:
The MacBook Pros were generally very price-competitive against high-end Windows laptops like the good ThinkPads and Dell XPS and Precision, and they were generally nicer in many ways.
The MacBook Air also became realistically the most well-known brand in laptops in just five years by being a much better "regular-person" computer than what anyone else would sell you at that price.
I honestly think the desktops were much worse during the Intel days.
The Mac Mini was fine at best on the base model, and upgrading anything made it highly uncompetitive.
The 5K iMac was competitive if you consider a comparable screen, but it was pretty obvious that Apple got a good price on that screen by being by far the largest volume buyer of desktop 5K panels in 2015, and used that as arbitrage to throw in the awesome screen on top of an expensive desktop to seal the deal.
The iMac Pro was the most competitive thing Apple did in the 2010's, and was actually quite compelling for a Xeon-W system when it launched, but Skylake-W LCC was pretty quickly undercut by Intel releasing 8-core dies for Coffee Lake to buy time because they blew it on 10nm.
Then, the 2019 Mac Pro was just too expensive and overengineered.
GHz-Man@reddit
The issue with the Mac Pro and iMac Pro was that they just... stopped refreshing them lol
They continued to sell the 2013 Mac Pro until 2019, and the 2017 iMac Pro until 2021 without ever refreshing the chips.
Now with them making their own chips, they seem to have avoided that problem.
crshbndct@reddit
iPhones for the last ten years or so have been good value. The best phone is always the best iPhone you can afford, whether that is a refurbished one or whatever. Beyond the initial purchase price they hold value so well that when you sell them you get a substantial amount back. Try putting a nothing 1 up for sale. You get no replies. You have to write this big long description which has the energy of “no really guys it’s a good phone”
Not just that, but they last longer. A couple of years ago, when the iPhone 15 came out, I wanted to sell my Note 9 and an iPhone 7 Plus.
When resetting the phones, the iPhone was still responsive and fast enough to use for basic usage. I had an issue updating the software, so I rang Apple support, got through immediately and they were able to resolve the issue(too many years since an update) in a minute.
By comparison, the Note 9 was Alamo’s impossible to use. It was so slow. And there was no security updates for it, so you are just raw dogging the internet at this point.
After all that, the iPhone sold for a much higher amount than I anticipated and I had not one person interested in the Note.
GHz-Man@reddit
Compared to what? I have the 16e and it's been great. Why is it a terrible value?
Android flagship phones cost just as much as iPhones do. Look at how much the Pixels and Samsung Galaxys cost.
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
As I said, the North American market is terrible with zero competition so people keep getting ripped off by Apple, Google and Samsung. Elsewhere, we have options.
Without even thinking about it, the OnePlus 15R costs less than the iPhone 17e, comes with a much bigger battery that lasts longer, has twice the storage, a bigger display that has 120Hz refresh rate, and has more than 1 camera at the back. Said cameras are also better because the sensor on the main is bigger.
If you want something of a similar size, the Vivo X200 FE is also, just better. They still also have very competent SoCs that while being slower than the A19, absolutely, are still very rapid.
As we move up the pricing ladder, the Oppo Find X9 Pro has longer battery life than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, also looks and feels great, also performs great, and has a far superior camera system. The photos are unequivocally better, and video quality is very similar. Similar options also exist from Xiaomi, Vivo and others. Oh. They are also quite a bit cheaper.
The Find X9 Ultra is going to be released this month for the same price as the Pro Max. With an even better camera system.
Sure, none of them have the Apple stuff, but the software experience is still great, and Android has features iOS doesn't. Like notifications that work. A keyboard that isn't garbage. Presence of a clipboard. Ability to take rolling screenshots. You know, basic stuff. And we're not hostage to blue bubbles so that doesn't matter either.
I say all that despite having an iPhone 17 Pro.
Sure. Most of the rest of them weren't. Especially the laptops, which sell in significantly higher quantities than the desktops.
GHz-Man@reddit
Without getting too much into geopolitics, there's reasons why those devices aren't really sold in the US, Canada, and parts of Europe.
I've been using iPhones or iPod touches since 2007 and have had zero major problems with the keyboard lol, what don't you like about it?
The autocorrect used to be more annoying than it is now, but they fixed that a few years ago.
Yeah, things from Chinese companies generally are. There's definitely trade-offs you make with lower quality software and hardware.
The iPhone supports RCS now, so that's literally a non-issue, unless the actual color of the bubble bothers you for some reason.
Apple was buying chips from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia so pricing was somewhat limited by the prices they had to pay them for chips, while also making a profit.
No, a laptop made of aluminum and glass won't be priced the same as a cheap Dell or Lenovo with a plastic screen and plastic body, even if it has the same chips inside it.
But I will point out that they've had the Mac mini since 2005, which has always been priced around $499 since then.
airfryerfuntime@reddit
This is nonsense.
People have access to cheap poverty phones in the US, as well. They get them from Boost, Walmart (Family Mobile), or any of the other million low end carriers. There is plenty of competition here.
But iPhones and higher end Android devices are popular because they're just better, and have better features. You can get a 16e for $300 that will be better than any Android at that price point.
I have a Pixel that was $850, but nothing was stopping me from getting a piece of shit $100 Motorola.
FollowingFeisty5321@reddit
*those devices are $599 not $499
GHz-Man@reddit
With the education discount, both are $499.
In the US, Apple doesn't verify or do any enforcement on their education discount. Anyone can shop in their education store on the website and get the discounts.
I've been doing it for many years lol it's pretty much an open secret at this point. They only do verification outside the US.
FollowingFeisty5321@reddit
Your ability to commit a little fraud does not make the price $499 lmao.
GHz-Man@reddit
This has been widely known for like 15 years now lol it's not new at all. Obviously, it was a deliberate choice for Apple not to use verification in the US.
Everywhere outside the US, their website uses UniDays to actually verify you're a student.
Why don't they do any verification in the US?
FollowingFeisty5321@reddit
If you're happy committing fraud why don't you aim higher, send them a fake invoice for $10,000 and see if it slips through the cracks then the price is negative $9500 hurrrrrrr.
GHz-Man@reddit
If you want to pay the retail price, you can.
I'm just saying you can easily pay $100 less with zero enforcement from Apple. They literally don't care.
They know people abuse it. They don't care. If they did, they would've fixed the loophole decades ago lol
FollowingFeisty5321@reddit
Ok so what do you think the Nvidia costs if there's some fraud you can get away with to obtain one cheap?
GHz-Man@reddit
It's not "fraud" when Apple literally allows it lol
Fraud is a crime. At the very worst, Apple says if they decide to enforce the rule, you'd just be billed the additional $100. Big deal.
So far, that hasn't happened to anyone. There are literally articles written about how Apple doesn't enforce it and telling people to use the discount lol
FollowingFeisty5321@reddit
Nvidia's hardware margins rival Apple's services margins so Apple will definitely end up being cheaper.
UpsetKoalaBear@reddit
Funnily enough, this is part of Nvidia’s push to make companies use their DGX Cloud service. So they’re also trying to get some of that service margin soon.
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
I'm so confused. It is a big SoC with up to 128GB of RAM. All of which sounds premium. But this motherboard is extremely light on I/O, doesn't have a 2280 slot, and only has the single cooling fan? All of that sounds rather built to a cost and lower end.
Which one is it then?
JunosArmpits@reddit
I counted 17(!) small/ribbon connectors in addition to the 4 big ones. That's A LOT. First time seeing a laptop MB?
red286@reddit
It has two 22x40 slots though (pretty sure that's supposed to be 22x42, but whatever), same as found on DGX systems.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
You know laptops can have more than one PCB right?
LastChancellor@reddit
The left side I/O and fan is probably on a separate motherboard
Esp when its heavily suspected that its a Lenovo motherboard (since theyre the only laptop OEM who loves 2242), theyve been doing that for years
Panther107@reddit
Wait nvidia is making an SoC for a laptop? Wild times.
nittanyofthings@reddit
It's mostly MediaTek.
Aggravating_Cod_5624@reddit
And is also not being made on gaa-fet, so this shit will be very hot and even harder to cool.
Exist50@reddit
N3E/P. It's better than anything Intel or AMD are using today.
Aggravating_Cod_5624@reddit
No GAA-FET?
No party—so no.
It’s not better, especially considering we’re already in 2026 and everyone is late. GAA-FET was supposed to arrive a year ago, so I’m not dumb enough to buy this trashy tech now just to ride the hype wave.
I’m going to wait for GAA-FET.
Exist50@reddit
It's better than both Intel and Samsung's GAAFET nodes.
Aggravating_Cod_5624@reddit
It’s not, and if you don’t understand it, that’s your issue, not mine.
In the meantime, I’ll wait for GAA-FET to experience the true leap forward: a massive 32% efficiency gain thanks to GAA-FET transistors.
Exist50@reddit
Lmao, stick your head in the sand then. We have data now.
jenny_905@reddit
That is one big chunk of silicon.
WJMazepas@reddit
This should make gaming on ARM finally viable. No immature Qualcomm drivers to deal with anymore.
I just hope it also gets linux support
alvenestthol@reddit
I bet on Nvidia deliberately cutting off Linux support from the N1, so Linux users must buy the more expensive DGX Spark
DerpSenpai@reddit
No one is cutting Linux support. QC is just immature when it comes to PC chips but they have hired people to develop Linux support (and drivers)
KaiEkkrin@reddit
It's not just about Linux support for the CPU and the other elements of the SoC, though. It's also about having a correct device tree for each device. The ARM ecosystem doesn't have a standardized way of discovering the devices in a PC like the x86 ecosystem does.
This means that every single model and variant of computer released with an ARM SoC either needs the manufacturer to support it explicitly with its own device tree, or for someone to reverse engineer it :/
See for example, Linux being bootable on the expensive Microsoft Surface Pro with the X Elite SoC and OLED screen, but not on the cheaper model with X Pro SoC...
vk6_@reddit
ARM ACPI is a thing and lets you avoid writing a device tree. Unfortunately it's not implemented at all in any consumer hardware, only certain high end ARM severs.
Salander27@reddit
I believe it's implemented in most (all?) Ampere boards which ARE available in desktop form factors. Now granted I don't know why you would use one of those unless you were developing software for Ampere servers but still it's technically not restricted to just server hardware.
DerpSenpai@reddit
This is something that Qualcomm engineers have said they are working on. It will happen. The ARM PC Spec is 1 year old only....
Remember that 12-15 years ago a ton of laptops didn't work with linux straight up because of wifi, or display, etc and those were x86.
Artoriuz@reddit
The Exynos 2600 would also be an awesome chip for handhelds, a shame we'll probably never see it reach its full potential.
Hytht@reddit
Memory bus width is only 64 bit compared to 128 bit in x86 handhelds.
Vince789@reddit
True, the Exynos 2700 with 96 bit LPDDR6 would be more ideal
DerpSenpai@reddit
perfect Steam Deck 2 material with 16gb of RAM tbh
Qsand0@reddit
I'm confused. How does it make gaming on arm viable? Isn't the problem with gaming on arm that a lot of games aren't made natively for arm in the first place? Or do you mean it'll incentivize devs to start creating games for arm
Vb_33@reddit
Qualcomms GPU drivers suck which make gaming on arm windows PCs even worse than it otherwise should be
WJMazepas@reddit
There is the Windows x86 emulation on ARM that helps on the CPU side, without you needing to compile natively to ARM
But on Qualcomm laptops, they use QC iGPU, which lacks a lot of the driver implementations and optimizations found in AMD and Nvidia drivers. Look at Intel GPUs, how much issues they had to make sure every game was running in their Arc GPUs when they launched it.
Qualcomm doesnt have the same incentives as Nvidia or Intel to improve gaming on their machines, so they were slow to improve this. But Nvidia already has drivers for that, so a lot more gaming would be possible on their laptop
It wont be every game that runs flawlessly on this Nvidia laptop, and there are games that wont run at all, but certainly it will run a lot more than Qualcomm
raulgzz@reddit
Nintendo switch games are ARM games.
Qsand0@reddit
how many aaa mainstream console and PC games are on nintendo?? I'm well aware there are arm versions of games at seen with titles like cyberpunk and resident evil village on mac os. But those are a minority
battler624@reddit
Translation layer is doing a lot of work for arm gaming on the cpu side.
AreYouAWiiizard@reddit
This doesn't look like it's for gaming at all but instead targetting AI performance using DDR5X instead GDDR of in a lightweight laptop form factor?
Vb_33@reddit
This is a consumer laptop product, that's Nvidias goal here. DGX Spark is more their AI focused product.
Artoriuz@reddit
It wasn't designed for gaming, it's just getting repurposed for gaming.
syrozzz@reddit
It's getting cleared that next Nvidia gaming GPU will be repurposed NPU so the line becomes blurry lol
WJMazepas@reddit
They stated that they will do a Legion Lenovo laptop, which is their brand reserved for gaming.
If it was just for AI and work, then Lenovo would use the standard Think lineup
nithrean@reddit
Going up to 128 GB does make it seem like it is for AI performance and not gaming. That much RAM will be quite expensive.
PMARC14@reddit
You have to deal with using a slower CPU. The X925 is competitive matching Zen 5 in raw performance, but the emulation penalty means it will be last in single core for gaming.
Matthmaroo@reddit
So faster than an 5m super core ?
GameStunts@reddit
Is this them coming after AMD Ryzen AI MAX chips or not quite the same market?
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
no socamm2 modules for the filthy peasants, isn't that right nvidia?
socamm2 modules only go to servers, so that the datacenters can more efficiently poison the air, water and infrasound spectrum.
disgusting anticonsumer bullshit. not that we should have expected anything else from nvidia.
___
just case people don't know socamm2 is an lpddr camm memory standard, that now gets used on mass in nvidia's datacenter focused devices. putting 8 socamm2 modules next to an nvidia cpu for example.
why does it exist? to make servers servicable and upgradable.
but no servicability or upgradability for you right?
i wouldn't even be surprised if those shits at nvidia prevent ecc from working with it as well.
while of course in server land, it runs with ecc, because of course it does, because the idea to run memory without error correction or error reporting is absolutely insane.
yet it is the standard on desktop and laptop today... think about that a bit to understand how much the tech industry steps on the public.
Smooth_Order2791@reddit
I feel like this is going to be the 'Personal AI Laptop'.
loozerr@reddit
That's going to cost an ARM and a leg.
nittanyofthings@reddit
Mali should've been called LEG.
craterIII@reddit
low energy graphics
LastChancellor@reddit
Is that a Lenovo motherboard? That giant cavity for a single fan feels familiar...
Hour_Firefighter_707@reddit
2242 SSDs means it probably is a Lenovo. They are the only people who regularly use them in full size laptops.
I'm more curious about the lack of I/O on the left side. Are they going to sit separately on a daughter board?
Haxorinator@reddit
Battery connector matches for Lenovo as well!
jorgesgk@reddit
Ooooh...
That's not gonna be cheap.
A_NON99@reddit
It looks more like a gaming GPU itself than a laptop board. If the integrated CPU has no value, it seems that there is not much demand.
Admirable-Extent2296@reddit
So this is just going to compete with Strix Halo in the ~$2k range?
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