Nvidia's 20-core N1X leaks with 3000+ single-core Geekbench score — Arm chip could rival Intel and AMD's laptop offerings
Nvidia's rumored N1X SoC has surfaced on Geekbench, rivaling the best mobile offerings from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, via Olrak at X. The alleged 20-core chip has hit over 3,000 single-core points on Geekbench, with multi-core performance nearing AMD's leading Strix Halo line. That being said, it's prudent that we approach this leak with caution, given that Nvidia has yet to confirm this chip officially.
The N1 family has long been a subject of rumors, marking Nvidia's foray into the consumer Windows-on-Arm landscape. Nvidia has reportedly partnered with MediaTek, which is expected to handle the CPU development of this SoC using off-the-shelf Arm Cortex cores. The first practical application of this partnership is the DGX Spark (formerly Project DIGITS), based on the GB10 superchip with 20 Arm cores (10x Cortex-X925 + 10x Cortex-A725) alongside a GPU that sports 6,144 CUDA cores based on the Blackwell architecture.
Per the Geekbench listing, the N1X was sported atop an HP development board (HP 83A3) under Linux (Ubuntu 24.04.1). With a 20-thread configuration in the listing, and the fact that Arm designs generally lack SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) like Intel's Lion Cove, we're probably looking at 20 physical cores, similar to the GB10 mentioned above. At the same time, the development board is likely equipped with 128GB of system memory, with 8GB reserved for the GPU.
Before jumping into performance, it's generally not advisable to compare CPUs across different Operating Systems and Geekbench releases. So, I've listed a few relevant CPU samples, noting their OS and Geekbench version. The alleged N1X scores 3,096 points and 18,837 points in single-core and multi-core territories, respectively, with the frequency averaging out at 4 GHz. Even with varying environments, its performance is well within the range of top chips like Intel's Arrow Lake-HX and AMD's Ryzen AI MAX (Strix Halo).
CPU
Single Core
Multi Core
Operating System
Geekbench Version
Nvidia N1X
3,096
18,837
Linux (Ubuntu)
6.2.2 Preview
AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395
3,125
21,035
Linux (CachyOS)
6.4.0
Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX
3,078
22,104
Windows 11
6.4.0
Apple M4 Max
4,054
25,913
macOS 15.1
6.3.0
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite
2,693
13,950
Windows 11
6.4.0
It even trumps Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite; that's expected since the X Elite uses Oryon V1 cores, which should be superseded by Oryon V3 with Snapdragon X2 SoCs next year. That being said, Apple still reigns supreme in Geekbench, with the M4 Max comfortably ahead by 30% (single-core).
Nvidia shied away from announcing or even mentioning these chips at Computex last month, so we may be in for a 2026 debut. It's possible the company may be dedicating more resources to DGX Spark, hoping to make these mini-PCs available for purchase before the upcoming holiday season. Regardless, by next year, more competition is expected with AMD's rumored Sound Wave APUs and Qualcomm's X2 SoCs, in addition to Panther Lake from Intel.
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