Nvidia and MediaTek are seemingly teaming up to develop what could become the first ARM-based gaming APU. Rumoured to target a late 2025 release, this chip could offer a strong alternative to AMD’s Strix Halo.
According to multiple rumours, the latest of which comes from Taiwan Economic Daily and verified with our own sources, Nvidia and MediaTek are planning to launch a dedicated APU for gaming laptops, combining an Nvidia GPU with a MediaTek CPU inside a single package. The GPU in question will likely be based on the latest Blackwell architecture powering RTX 50 Series, with the CPU leveraging MediaTek’s experience building ARM cores.
This integrated approach should yield significant gains in power efficiency and thus thermal performance while reducing motherboard complexity, all of which are critical to modern gaming laptops that chase ever-thin chassis. Some leaks claim a TDP ranging between 80W and 120W, which would put it straight against AMD’s Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max APUs.
Nvidia has an uphill battle to match the performance of established APU solutions from AMD and Intel, who have mastered this craft for some time already. Though they have improved drastically lately, ARM-based CPUs remain slow compared to their x86 counterparts, mainly being competitive in the efficiency department. To be fair, part of this performance deficit is due to the x86 to ARM translation layer. LPDDR memory could also reduce GPU performance compared to GDDR-powered chips, but that is the case for most APUs.
According to previous leaks, Nvidia is seemingly targeting RTX 4070 mobile performance while running at 65W. As a reminder, RTX 4070 mobile has a 115W TDP. By consolidating the CPU, GPU, and NPU (Neural Processing Unit) into a single chip manufactured using TSMC’s 3nm node, Nvidia hopes to deliver excellent gaming performance in thinner mobile designs, mirroring the efficiency leaps seen with Apple’s M-series chips, but instead tailored for Windows.
Early industry partners reportedly include Dell’s Alienware division, which is said to be working on an all-Nvidia gaming laptop based on this APU, alongside other designs from the likes of Asus, Lenovo, and HP. While Nvidia’s graphics feats don’t need any introduction, the ARM CPU may require a lot of optimisation to be competitive against x86 chips.
Regardless, this Nvidia and MediaTek adventure is expected to bear its first fruit sometime in late 2025 or early 2026. With both Intel and AMD well established in this segment, Nvidia will have to offer a great deal to encourage users to switch. What is sure is that we are eager to see this APU in action.
