Microsoft is opening preorders today for Surface Laptop Ultra, a laptop built around NVIDIA RTX Spark with unified memory reaching up to 128 GB and a starting MSRP of $2,599. Availability begins October 16, with orders through Microsoft.com and selected retailers worldwide. Microsoft says the machine can run AI models with more than 120 billion parameters locally, giving developers and creators another option for workloads they would otherwise send to the cloud.
The desktop companion, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, is also available to preorder at an MSRP of $5,999, with shipments scheduled to begin in November. Buyers can order it only through Microsoft.com in the U.S., a narrower sales footprint than the laptop’s worldwide retailer availability. Commercial versions of Surface Laptop Ultra are available to preorder today as well.
Read more: Microsoft's New Surface Pro and Laptop Run on Snapdragon X2 Plus
Inside Surface Laptop Ultra, an NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU offers up to 6,144 cores, paired with an NVIDIA Grace CPU offering up to 20 cores. Microsoft rates AI performance at up to 1 petaflop, based on theoretical FP4 calculations using sparsity. The unified memory is shared dynamically by the CPU and GPU, and the GPU can address less than the total system memory, depending on configuration and workload.
The laptop has a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra touchscreen, with peak HDR brightness rated at 2,000 nits over a 10 percent window displaying HDR content. Sustained brightness and SDR brightness are lower, and the touchscreen does not support pen input. Microsoft puts the chassis below 18 mm thick and its weight below 4.5 pounds, while claiming up to 2.5 times the thermal power capacity of its current Surface Laptops.
Magnetic Connect lets the supplied charging cable attach magnetically to the USB-C port on the right and detach easily, while that port also handles video and data. An SD card reader and HDMI connection join additional USB connectivity, and the laptop can drive up to three 4K displays. Owners can remove the storage themselves for replacement or upgrades.
Surface RTX Spark Dev Box uses the same NVIDIA RTX Spark platform, with unified memory reaching up to 128 GB and AI performance rated at up to 1 petaflop. Microsoft says it arrives with development software already installed, including Python, Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot. Microsoft Execution Containers keep agents contained, according to the company, which adds that planned Windows features will draw on Microsoft Entra to tell agent and user activity apart.
