THE APEX TIMES
NVIDIA Brings RTX Spark to Korea’s PC Bangs, Court-Based Deals With T1, KRAFTON, NC and Riot
Jensen Huang’s stop in Seoul puts RTX Spark’s “personal AI agents” pitch in front of esports fans and major game studios, with demos ranging from League of Legends to unreleased PUBG and NC titles.
NVIDIA used Korea’s busy PC bang scene, and its top esports brand names, to underline what it says is a coming shift in PC computing. At a series of gaming-cafe stops in South Korea, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang unveiled RTX Spark to local players and showcased support from prominent game developers, including KRAFTON and NC, as well as Riot Games, whose titles include League of Legends.
RTX Spark, NVIDIA says, is a “superchip” class of hardware aimed at slim Windows laptops and small, ultra-efficient desktop PCs built for what NVIDIA calls the era of personal AI agents. The company positions the platform as a way to deliver demanding AAA gameplay, citing 1440p play above 100 frames per second with ray tracing plus NVIDIA technologies such as DLSS (deep learning-based upscaling), and Reflex (a low-latency feature meant to reduce input delay). RTX Spark also supports NVIDIA’s newer ray-tracing image improvements, including DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, which NVIDIA says uses a second-generation transformer model for improved realism in ray-traced and path-traced scenes.
Huang’s first stop in the tour was T1 Base Camp, a PC bang owned by T1, one of Korea’s best-known esports organizations. There, Huang met with T1’s reigning League of Legends world champion roster, including Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, and used the fan-heavy setting to showcase RTX Spark. Attendees at the venue were also offered prizes that included RTX Spark laptops, League of Legends and T1 merch signed by Huang and Faker, and GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs. NVIDIA also said it is collaborating with Riot Games to bring League of Legends and VALORANT to RTX Spark-powered systems, expanding access to high-performance gaming on slim Windows devices.
From there, Huang moved to another PC bang in Seoul, Optimum Zone PC, where KRAFTON leadership and NVIDIA demonstrated current and upcoming experiences on RTX Spark systems. The pair showcased PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Subnautica 2, then shifted to an unreleased PUBG character concept called PUBG Ally. NVIDIA and KRAFTON described PUBG Ally as a co-playable character built using NVIDIA ACE technologies. NVIDIA ACE (short for “ACE,” NVIDIA’s platform for building AI-powered digital agents and characters) is positioned as enabling next-generation game companions that can function more like teammates rather than scripted NPCs.
NVIDIA and KRAFTON said PUBG Ally resulted from joint AI research and development, framing it as part of an effort to create characters that can provide more meaningful, immersive engagements for players. The demo in the PC bang context underscores how NVIDIA is trying to tie its AI-agent narrative to recognizable, high-engagement game moments, rather than limiting the pitch to traditional PC hardware benchmarks. For the industry, the message is clear: AI features that require local compute must be experienced where gamers already congregate, not only where developers test.
At Portal PC, Huang showcased NC titles including CINDER CITY and AION 2 on RTX Spark. NVIDIA highlighted that NC’s co-CEO Taekjin Kim supported the stop, and that attendees received a playable demo for CINDER CITY, described as an open-world massively multiplayer online tactical shooter. NVIDIA also said CINDER CITY will support DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and Super Resolution at launch, and that gamers will be able to experience the game on RTX Spark laptops and compact desktops later this year.
NVIDIA’s relationship with NC goes back decades, and the PC bang visit was designed to show that depth. The company said NVIDIA and NC began working together in the early 2000s on the Lineage franchise, and that NVIDIA RTX technology has since been integrated across multiple NC titles, including Lineage 2, AION, Blade & Soul, AION 2, and CINDER CITY. More broadly, NVIDIA pointed to Korea’s long role in shaping esports and powering PC bang demand, adding that it marked 25 years of GeForce in Korea last October with a free festival for gamers.
Outside of KRAFTON and NC, NVIDIA said the RTX Spark push includes “100+” Windows software providers and game developers. It named partners such as NetEase, Remedy Entertainment, and XBOX, framing RTX Spark as an ecosystem play as much as a silicon pitch. Still, the company’s Korea post did not disclose key buying details such as pricing, exact device configurations, or the specific timeline for when every RTX Spark demo machine will appear across local PC bangs. It also did not describe the benchmark methodology behind its cited performance targets in this particular release.
Looking ahead, NVIDIA’s follow-through may depend on two linked timelines: device availability and ray-tracing software upgrades. NVIDIA has previously said RTX Spark laptops and compact desktops will be available this fall from major manufacturers including ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, and MSI, with additional models from Acer and GIGABYTE to follow. On the graphics software side, NVIDIA has also said DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction is coming this August, which will be important to watch for players who care about ray-tracing quality on day one. For the esports and content partners, the next test is whether League of Legends, VALORANT, and the showcased KRAFTON and NC titles arrive on RTX Spark systems with enough stability and performance to match the hype of the PC bang demos.
Why It Matters
- PC bangs remain a key consumer distribution channel in Korea, so NVIDIA is attempting to turn a hardware launch into a mass-market, experience-led rollout.
- By linking RTX Spark to major esports and live-service titles, NVIDIA is positioning local AI compute as relevant to mainstream gaming, not only creators and enthusiasts.
- The success of RTX Spark may hinge on whether DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and other AI-rendering upgrades land quickly enough to preserve image-quality gains on new systems.
- Named partnerships with KRAFTON, NC, and Riot suggest NVIDIA is racing to align game content timelines with upcoming RTX Spark device availability.
Sources
Key Facts
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang brought RTX Spark demonstrations to multiple Seoul PC bangs and met with T1’s League of Legends champions, including Faker.
- NVIDIA says RTX Spark targets slim Windows laptops and compact desktop PCs for gaming and local AI agent use.
- The RTX Spark pitch tied together ray tracing performance with DLSS and Reflex, and it highlighted DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction using a second-generation transformer model.
- NVIDIA and partners showcased games and demos including League of Legends and VALORANT (Riot collaboration), PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS plus a PUBG Ally co-playable concept, and NC’s CINDER CITY with DLSS 4.5 features at launch.
- NVIDIA said 100+ Windows software providers and game developers are embracing RTX Spark, naming NetEase, Remedy Entertainment, and Xbox.
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