Nvidia could be ready to take on AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm for an all-around chip. Yes, that means CPUs. The last time Nvidia tried its hand at non-graphics PC processors, it ended in a lasting failure. Times have changed, and now it’s ripe for Nvidia to once again enter the market for all-in Team Green machines. It could mark the moment when ARM-based PCs really take off, if only the ongoing RAM crisis wasn’t making this one of the worst moments for PCs in general.
Sure, Nvidia didn’t have much to say at CES 2026; however, a report from Digitimes (read via machine translation) claims that the company could have a notebook-ready chip early this year. This would be an ARM-based chip potentially akin to the Grace Blackwell SoC (system on a chip) found inside Nvidia’s DGX Spark AI-centric computers. Tom’s Hardware reported last week the same chip appeared in a shipping manifest for a sample Dell 16 Premium laptop.
This supposed “N1X” chip could be followed by several differently spec’ed CPUs later in the year. If Digitimes’ supply chain sources are correct, we could even hear about a supposed “N2” chip as a follow-up before the end of 2026. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously hinted at the N1 last year in a press conference with Intel’s new chief, Lip-Bu Tan. That’s where Nvidia promised to craft chips with Intel that would somehow combine the best of both companies. We’ll have to see how well that partnership goes if both chipmakers are actively competing with each other.
There’s a mountain of competition for Nvidia
Nvidia will be late to the party no matter what it does. Qualcomm, the other big ARM-based chipmaker for lightweight laptops, already has its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip promising huge gains in graphics capability. Qualcomm also shared details on its Snapdragon X2 Plus chip at CES 2026. Nvidia’s only consumer-end announcements were tied to DLSS upscaler updates, more multi-frame gen for games, and computer vision technology for autonomous vehicles.
The N1X could still be a powerful chip, though with all the delays, Nvidia may be better off waiting to showcase a more powerful N2 chip if it wants to compete with Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 laptop chips or whatever gamer-specific APU (accelerated processing unit) AMD has been cooking up. Of course, we’d be interested in a laptop that has RTX 50-series Blackwell capabilities without the need for a power-sucking discrete GPU.
Microsoft promises all ARM-based PCs will be good for gaming
On Wednesday, Microsoft declared that it was making its Xbox app work natively on “all” ARM-based PCs. That’s interesting rhetoric considering how much of its messaging previously centered on “Snapdragon on PCs” or “Copilot+.” Xbox now claims that 85% of Xbox apps are compatible on ARM, though that’s mostly thanks to improvements to the Windows Prism emulator. Prism can take x86 native apps and help them run by recreating that separate CPU microarchitecture as software. In a recent update, Microsoft added support for AVX and AVX2 extensions to the x86 instruction set. These are especially important for games that rely on AVX for tasks like video encoders and physics engines.
Microsoft is also advertising that ARM-based PCs will share compatibility with Epic Anti-Cheat. Lack of EAC support is why some of these computers and other Linux-based systems like Valve’s Steam Deck struggle to run games like the ever-popular Fortnite. We’re two years into Microsoft’s big ARM-based PC push, and Qualcomm is adamant it no longer needs to talk about compatibility issues. The chipmaker launched a Qualcomm Control Panel app last year that’s supposed to act as a launcher for various games and programs, ensuring they work natively or on emulators when necessary.
Nvidia would have some catching up to do, but most of the hard work has been done for it. There are still some drivers and other software that do not work natively on ARM, though the list of incompatible apps has shortened since 2024. All the while, the ongoing memory crunch has PC makers scrambling for RAM and SSD storage. It’s going to be a bad year for PC prices, so don’t expect any all-Nvidia PC to be cheap.
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