Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops reach South Africa at R84,999 and R134,999

The first laptops built on Nvidia's RTX Spark chip are on sale in South Africa. Evetech lists two models as in stock: the ASUS ProArt P16 at R84,999 and the MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ at R134,999, both including VAT.

That makes these some of the most expensive Windows laptops a South African buyer can order today. They are aimed at creators and people who want to run AI models on their own machine, not at most office workers or students.

RTX Spark is Nvidia's move into the main processor of a Windows PC. Until now, Nvidia's laptop role has been the graphics card next to an Intel or AMD chip. Here, Nvidia supplies the whole package: an Arm-based Grace CPU and a Blackwell RTX graphics processor sharing one pool of memory.

What is on sale here

The ASUS ProArt P16 H7607BA at R84,999 has the 20-core Grace CPU, a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU, 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1TB SSD. It has a 16-inch 3,840 x 2,400 OLED touchscreen at 120Hz and Windows 11 Pro. Evetech lists a list price of R94,999 and a three-year warranty.

The MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+ at R134,999 is a 2-in-1 with the same 20-core CPU and 6,144-core GPU, but 128GB of memory and a 2TB SSD. It also has a 16-inch 3,840 x 2,400 OLED touchscreen at 120Hz and comes with MSI's Nano Pen and a three-year warranty. Evetech's list price is R140,999.

Nvidia's product page says the chip delivers up to one petaflop of FP4 AI performance, with up to 128GB of unified memory and a power range of 45W to 80W. The large shared memory is the selling point: AI models that would not fit in a normal laptop graphics card's memory can run on the machine itself.

Who else is coming

Nvidia held launch events for RTX Spark on 16 October. Its product page also shows models from Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft: the Dell XPS 16, HP OmniBook Ultra 16, Lenovo Pro 9n and Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra. None of those is listed by a South African retailer yet, so for now local buyers have two choices, both at the top of the price range.

The Arm question

These laptops run Windows 11 on Arm. Apps written for Arm run natively. Older x86 apps run through Microsoft's emulation layer, which works for most software but can be slower, and some drivers, plug-ins and games may not run at all. Buyers who rely on a specific plug-in, VPN client or anti-cheat game should check that it supports Windows on Arm before paying R85,000 or more.

Not yet known

We have not tested either laptop. Battery life, how well Windows on Arm handles common South African business and banking software, and how the machines perform under sustained AI workloads are all untested here.

Evetech is the only local retailer we found listing RTX Spark models. ASUS and MSI have not published South African prices, and there is no word yet on when the Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft models will reach local shelves.