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The laptop uses NVIDIA RTX Spark which combines an N1X Arm-based CPU with an RTX Blackwell GPU. The article says RTX Spark graphics were touted as being on par with a desktop GeForce RTX 4070 and Fouquin’s Phoronix results that worked fell in the RTX 4070 range, but 3DMark synthetic tests (Port Royal and Steel Nomad) produced scores closer to a desktop GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The article notes these are pre-release results and could change before the official launch. Answered

The article says offline Shader Preloading "uses some system resources while it's running, but its impact is designed to be minimal," implying it should not max out your CPU or cause performance issues while you do other things. It also notes shader compilation is generally CPU-heavy and completion time depends on your CPU, and you can disable or cancel Shader Preloading in the game settings if needed. Answered

The tests used NVIDIA's RTX Spark 616.00 preview driver released for developers. That preview added CUDA 13.4, OpenGL, and Vulkan support. Answered

Fouquin ran Cinebench 2024 multi-thread (scoring 1386 points), and a few 3DMark synthetic tests including Port Royal (31 FPS) and the 4K Steel Nomad test (around 22 FPS); they also attempted the Phoronix AI test suite but the Phoronix CUDA tests failed. The Cinebench 2024 multi-thread score of 1386 points puts the RTX Spark processor behind the MacBook M4 Pro. Answered