Nvidia’s set to supercharge Copilot+ PCs with its RTX GPUs – and maybe that’ll happen soon

Nvidia has announced that it’s going to beef up the power of Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft’s new more powerful spin on its AI PCs, by equipping these laptops with Nvidia RTX GPUs.

In a blog post, Nvidia tells us: “In the coming months, Copilot+ PCs equipped with new power-efficient systems-on-a-chip and RTX GPUs will be released, giving gamers, creators, enthusiasts and developers increased performance to tackle demanding local AI workloads, along with Microsoft’s new Copilot+ features.”

As well as giving this new breed of AI-powered Windows 11 laptops a great deal more grunt in terms of AI processing power through its RTX GPUs, Nvidia has further plans for developers and creators as mentioned.

That includes a new Nvidia R555 Game Ready Driver that facilitates running AI models locally on a Windows 11 PC in a much faster manner. Indeed, Nvidia claims that Large Language Models (LLMs) can run up to 3x faster with the new driver.

Other goodies will allow Windows developers to train complex AI models on Microsoft’s OS natively, Nvidia informs us.

Not long to wait?

What does Nvidia GPUs coming to Copilot+ PCs actually mean, then? Well, that these devices will be a lot more capable of punching at a heavyweight level for AI performance, with not just the power-efficient CPU and its NPU running the show, but a powerful discrete mobile GPU getting in on the act, too.

Team Green appears to be jumping on the Copilot+ PC bandwagon sooner rather than later, as while the “coming months” is a little vague as far as a release timeframe goes, it seems to suggest the move is in the cards for the nearer future.

Nvidia mentions combining its mobile RTX GPUs with “new power-efficient systems-on-a-chip” and right now, the only offering in town is Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X. However, we don’t see this as a statement to the effect that we’ll get a Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PC with an Nvidia RTX GPU, as there are lots of wrinkles to iron out there (on the Windows on Arm driver front for starters, and overall, it just doesn’t feel a likely combination).

So, we take this to mean that Nvidia is preparing to equip Intel or AMD-powered Copilot+ PCs with RTX GPUs down the line when those devices emerge, likely with the launch of Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Strix Point, which meet the more stringent NPU requirements for Copilot+ PCs – which current-gen mobile chips from Teams Blue and Red don’t.

Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that RTX graphics will be a powerhouse addition to help drive Windows 11’s incoming AI features.

You might also like

• These are the best graphics cards across all budgets
• Top gaming PCs: great rigs for serious PC gaming
• Best PC games: must-play titles you don’t want to miss

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel – ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ – was published by Hachette UK in 2013).