Nvidia RTX Spark firmware slows Linux inference to 35%
The gist
Hands-on testing found RTX Spark laptops on Linux drop to about 15 tokens per second when plugged in.
Linux-first AI tooling users must weigh dual-booting against firmware-limited performance.
How it unfolded
- Oct 16, 2026RTX Spark laptops reached stores worldwide from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI, with Nvidia publishing matching 617.42 WHQL Game Ready and Studio driver builds.
- Oct 30, 2026Testing of an HP OmniBook Ultra 16 with RTX Spark found the same SoC ID, CPU cores, GPU and register addresses as the DGX Spark, but faster memory and firmware-enabled hardware the GB10 leaves off.
- Nov 1, 2026Dual-boot testing on an MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI Plus found Linux GPU clocks locked to roughly 780 MHz when plugged in, versus 2 GHz-plus on Windows; unplugged Linux hit about 61 to 67 tokens per second, but plugged in it fell to about 15.