Nvidia's desktop PC chip holdup purportedly tied to Windows delays — ongoing chip revisions and weakening demand also blamed

(Image credit: Nvidia)

MediaTek and Nvidia have reportedly pushed back the launch of their much-anticipated N1X AI PC platform to the first quarter of 2026, according to a new DigiTimes report citing supply chain sources. The latest reasons given contrast with an earlier report, which still informed us of the delay, but attributed it to critical hardware defects requiring a silicon respin. While chip revisions at Nvidia are still part of this latest story, the new information points toward a broader set of factors, including Microsoft’s slower-than-expected OS roadmap and weakening demand across the notebook market.

The N1X platform, originally believed to be scheduled for Q3 2025 with both consumer and commercial models, never materialized at Computex earlier this year, fueling speculation about its readiness. DigiTimes now reports that MediaTek and Nvidia are prioritizing enterprise-class systems for the initial rollout, banking on stronger commercial adoption before expanding into the volatile consumer segment.

The N1X processor has previously been tipped to deliver 180–200 TOPS of AI compute performance and would mark MediaTek’s most ambitious entry into the PC space, backed by Nvidia’s AI expertise. Major OEMs and ODMs, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, MSI, and Compal, are reportedly preparing notebook and desktop designs for the platform. This is another area where Intel underestimated the competition way back, and now Nvidia appears to be gunning for this territory, rivaling not only Intel and AMD but also Qualcomm.

Moreover, DigiTimes' report also offers a glimpse into Nvidia and MediaTek’s expanding collaboration. Beyond PCs, the two companies are said to be advancing joint efforts in automotive AI via MediaTek’s Dimensity Auto platform, as well as edge AI development with Nvidia’s TAO toolkit and MediaTek’s NeuroPilot SDK. Digitimes says the companies have also co-developed the DGX Spark personal AI supercomputer and are key partners in Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion ecosystem for custom AI silicon.

Interestingly, DigiTimes mentions MediaTek’s involvement in Google’s v7e AI project, now reportedly delayed to mass production in October 2026. This long-term partnership could bring significant revenue—estimated at $4 billion—and signals that MediaTek is building a stronger presence in the AI silicon market, both at the edge and in data centers. For those unaware, v7e is a next-generation TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) Google is co-developing with MediaTek, designed for large-scale AI workloads in Google’s data centers.

Anyhow, the new reported Q1 2026 timeline for N1X could suggest that Nvidia and MediaTek are refining both hardware and strategy. While SemiAccurate’s earlier claims of hardware defects may still hold some truth, the new report paints a picture of a more calculated delay, aligning with Microsoft’s OS updates, fixing remaining chip-level issues, and waiting for commercial demand to stabilize. In the meantime, Nvidia’s GB10-based AI workstations, which are still on track for release, may serve as the company’s first real-world testbed for consumer-facing AI PC hardware before N1X arrives.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

6 Comments Comment from the forums

abufrejoval

Well, who would have thought that this would be the reason to push this back: it only runs well with Linux/SteamOS!

Possibly even with MacOS, if anyone wanted that.

It's also the only reason I'd ever want to buy one of those, if the price was right. But looking at Strix Halo, everybody is just expecting to get rich from doing Fruity Cult things.

And you shouldn't let an LLM proof-read itself, there is so much cut & paste garbage in there, it becomes hard to read.
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SomeoneElse23

Windows is delayed because MS is busy spending money buying crap.
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bit_user

The current version of this article has almost a second copy concatenated onto the end. Someone is either sloppy with cut-and-paste or trying to pad out the word count. Either way, it's clear the final version wasn't proofread.
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EzzyB

abufrejoval said:
Well, who would have thought that this would be the reason to push this back: it only runs well with Linux/SteamOS!

Possibly even with MacOS, if anyone wanted that.

It's also the only reason I'd ever want to buy one of those, if the price was right. But looking at Strix Halo, everybody is just expecting to get rich from doing Fruity Cult things.

And you shouldn't let an LLM proof-read itself, there is so much cut & paste garbage in there, it becomes hard to read.
This seems a bizarre thing to say. Given it's target market it pretty much has to run on Windows. "(MediaTek and Nvidia are prioritizing enterprise-class systems for the initial rollout)" Why would Linux or MacOS be modified for it? Nvidia could be using a custom Linux to test it I guess, but more likely a pre-release version of Windows for ARM. Apple would not seem to be involved at all. Best guess is this works better on whatever Windows build MS has provided and not at all on Linux or MacOS.

It's another attempt to crack the enterprise laptop market which is Intel's last bastion and hasn't, so far, worked too well for for Snapdragon X (for the same reasons I state below.)

Nvidia really seems to be doing this backwards. THE toughest nut to crack is getting a new product directly into enterprise. Those are the absolute most conservative types because literally everything piece of software in the enterprise has to be tested against that hardware/software before they'll buy it. You are even less likely find AMD processors there because they are THAT conservative. If your job is to sign off on a buy of say, 5000 laptops, you have to be.
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abufrejoval

EzzyB said:
This seems a bizarre thing to say. Given it's target market it pretty much has to run on Windows. "(MediaTek and Nvidia are prioritizing enterprise-class systems for the initial rollout)" Why would Linux or MacOS be modified for it?
Well Linux already runs as well with Nvidia GPUs on ARM as it does on x86: you might say it's pretty near done, but ARM on Windows is still a nightmare, I keep hearing. From my experience on RP5 and Orange Pi 5+ the Windows OS core is fine, but anything device related is missing: much easier to run as a VM on ARM-Proxmox with RDP.

EzzyB said:
Nvidia could be using a custom Linux to test it I guess, but more likely a pre-release version of Windows for ARM. Apple would not seem to be involved at all. Best guess is this works better on whatever Windows build MS has provided and not at all on Linux or MacOS.
I have no insight into the portability of today's MacOS: I'm pretty sure the Darwin base and BSD userland is ARM-proof, while the GPU side may be trouble to port from Apple's GPU to Nvidia. no matter the CPU ISA.

EzzyB said:
It's another attempt to crack the enterprise laptop market which is Intel's last bastion and hasn't, so far, worked too well for for Snapdragon X (for the same reasons I state below.)
On Snapdragon's Windows troubles, I only have second-hand information. My impression is that every laptop maker tends to do their own thing for everything outside the CPU/APU/SoC and rely on UEFI abstractions to fill the gap to the OS.

That layer just doesn't exist for Snapdragon and it's causing mortal overhead on Windows and Linux implementations, because it would require scale to make it worth development effort.

Nvidia may be in a better position to pressure Microsoft than Qualcomm, but with M$ shedding staff, it may just not scale that well and I really don't want to look into Qualcomms balance sheets: they got really lucky they didn't loose the court case with ARM.

EzzyB said:
Nvidia really seems to be doing this backwards. THE toughest nut to crack is getting a new product directly into enterprise. Those are the absolute most conservative types because literally everything piece of software in the enterprise has to be tested against that hardware/software before they'll buy it. You are even less likely find AMD processors there because they are THAT conservative. If your job is to sign off on a buy of say, 5000 laptops, you have to be.
They are also after Fruity Cult profit margins. And that's a bit of a sonic wall or chicken and egg issue.

I have no idea if Apple sells in some corporate environments or layers, but they didn't get rich only on private consumers. In any case it's a market that doesn't support commodity or competition, as current court cases well attest.

And no, the enterprise market value is actually dying from both all directions, compute saturation, AI layoffs etc., which is why Microsoft invented nonsensical hardware criteria to revitalize it via Windows 11.

Even the lowliest Atoms outrun most entreprise software needs by far and whoever needs leading edge does it in the cloud or on low volume workstations. Enterprise purchasing departments are by nature penny pinchers not innovators, I agree there, but not on Nvidia making that a priority.

Perhaps they can't really help themselves from acting like Intel during their glory days: delivering the best user product isn't nearly as important when you're #1 as depriving the competition of opportunities to grow and fester and they can afford to invest a lot of money into that.

But mostly I believe it's Mediatek and the Asian market pushing here and those guys are far more ready to ditch not just x86 but also Microsoft. Or US domination in general. Nvidia is smart enough not to say no when they can just sell more. They have the Switch, but would probably like the Steam consoles and then everything upwards.

Can't fault them both for that as a European, nor do I think they have anything backwards.
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thestryker

Delaying a hardware launch (if its actually ready to go) due to nebulous "OS" issues seems unlikely unless it's a problem with their driver stack. A chunk of the issues Qualcomm had with the Snapdragon X Elite launch were certainly on them not Microsoft. Windows on Arm has been in wide release for years and even if you point at the the X Elite as the true launch still over a year.

I still think this is a product almost nobody wants at a consumer level. That's likely to be their biggest issue and the performance level isn't going to be high enough to get gamers onboard as these are unlikely to be appropriately priced.
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