How many TOPS do you need? NPU TOPS from 10 to 80 explained

Laptop listings now quote AI power the way car adverts quote horsepower: 13 TOPS, 40 TOPS, 50 TOPS, 80 TOPS, and on gaming laptops numbers like 233 or even 1,824 “AI TOPS”. So how many do you actually need? Here is a simple answer, the real number for every common chip, and what each level lets you do.

Why it matters: TOPS has become a selling point, and the gap between two laptops can look huge on paper while making little difference in daily use. Knowing where the useful lines are can save you money.

The short answer

Under 40 TOPS: fine for everyday work. The chip’s AI engine (the NPU) handles small jobs like background blur and noise removal on video calls, but the laptop won’t get Microsoft’s Copilot+ features.
40 to 50 TOPS: the sweet spot for most people. 40 is Microsoft’s minimum for a Copilot+ PC, which unlocks Windows AI features that run on the laptop itself, such as Recall, live captions with translation and the image tools in Paint.
60 to 80 TOPS: more headroom for future features, but today’s Windows features don’t need it.
Hundreds or thousands of “AI TOPS”: that is the graphics chip, not the NPU, and it is counted differently. It matters if you want to run image generators or big AI models on your own machine.

Bar chart of NPU TOPS by chip: Ryzen 7040 10, Meteor Lake 11, Arrow Lake 13, Ryzen 8040 16, Apple M4 38, Snapdragon X Elite 45, Lunar Lake 48, Ryzen AI 300 50, Panther Lake 50, Ryzen AI 400 60, Snapdragon X2 Elite 80, with a line at 40 TOPS for Copilot+ PCs; gaming laptops show 194 to 1,824 AI TOPS, counted another way. — The NPU number on each chip, and the 40 TOPS line for Copilot+ PCs · Illustration by DIGITAL WOXTER TECHNEWS.

What does TOPS mean again?

TOPS stands for “trillions of operations per second”: how many simple maths steps an AI engine can do each second. Most laptop chips now have a dedicated AI engine called an NPU (neural processing unit) that does this work using very little battery. We explain the details, and the fine print, in our guide to AI TOPS.

The number on each chip

These are the makers’ own maximum figures for the NPU alone, from the oldest to the newest:

Chip	Found in	NPU TOPS
AMD Ryzen 7040	2023 laptops	10
Intel Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake)	2023–2024 laptops	about 11
Intel Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake)	desktops	13
AMD Ryzen 8040	2024 laptops	16
Apple M4	Macs and iPads	38
Snapdragon X Elite (1st generation)	Copilot+ laptops	45
Intel Core Ultra 200V (Lunar Lake)	Copilot+ laptops	40 to 48
AMD Ryzen AI 300	Copilot+ laptops	50
Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake)	2026 laptops	50
AMD Ryzen AI 400	2026 laptops	up to 60
Snapdragon X2 Elite	2026 laptops	80

A few notes. The 10, 13 and 16 TOPS chips are the ones behind searches like “13 TOPS NPU”: they all fall short of the 40 TOPS line, so laptops and desktops built on them aren’t Copilot+ PCs, PCWorld and AnandTech explain. Among Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, the Core Ultra 7 and 9 models reach 47 or 48 TOPS and the Core Ultra 5 models 40. Apple rates the M4’s Neural Engine at 38 TOPS but has not published a figure for the newer M5, and Macs don’t use Microsoft’s Copilot+ label anyway.

An opened Framework Laptop 13 from 2023 with an AMD Ryzen chip, showing the fan, battery and circuit board. — Inside a 2023 laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7040-series chip: its first-generation NPU is rated at 10 TOPS · Photo: Ogidya, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What each level can actually do

Four cards: 10 to 16 TOPS for video call effects, 40 to 50 TOPS for Copilot+ PC features, 60 to 80 TOPS for extra headroom, and hundreds of AI TOPS on graphics chips for running image and chat models yourself. — What each TOPS level lets you do · Illustration by DIGITAL WOXTER TECHNEWS.

10 to 16 TOPS. These first NPUs were built for light, always-on jobs: blurring your background or cleaning up your voice on a video call without draining the battery. Everything else AI-related runs on the main processor, the graphics chip or in the cloud, just as it did before NPUs existed.

40 to 50 TOPS. This is where Windows starts using the NPU for features of its own. Microsoft’s developer guide says Copilot+ PCs rely on an NPU that can do more than 40 trillion operations per second. Every current Snapdragon X2, Ryzen AI 400 and Core Ultra Series 3 laptop clears that bar.

A Microsoft Surface Pro with its keyboard, showing 'Copilot+ PC' on the screen. — A Copilot+ PC: the label means an NPU of 40 TOPS or more · Photo: KK IN HK, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

60 to 80 TOPS. More TOPS can help apps that run AI on the NPU for longer, but no Windows feature today requires more than 40. If two laptops are otherwise equal, a higher number is a nice bonus, not a reason to pay much more.

The big gaming-laptop numbers. Nvidia lists “AI TOPS” for its laptop graphics chips: from 194 for the RTX 4050 Laptop GPU and 233 for the RTX 4060, up to 1,824 for the RTX 5090, according to Nvidia’s comparison table. These come from the graphics chip’s AI cores, not the NPU, and the newest figures use very small number formats that make them look bigger. LaptopMedia notes that the RTX 5050 does about 105 TOPS at standard precision but around 420 when counted with the tiny FP4 format and a shortcut called sparsity, and that the older RTX 4070 reaches the same 420 at a more precise format. Don’t compare them with NPU TOPS.

So which should you buy?

Students, office work, browsing: any recent laptop works. If you want the new Windows AI features, look for the Copilot+ PC label, which means 40 TOPS or more.
You like trying new AI features: a 50 TOPS chip is plenty. Spend the difference on more memory (16 GB or more) and a better screen.
You want to run AI image or chat models yourself: the graphics chip and its memory matter far more than the NPU. That is the idea behind Nvidia’s RTX Spark laptops.
You use a Mac: the TOPS race doesn’t apply in the same way. Apple’s own AI features are designed for its chips.

Bottom line: 40 TOPS is the line that matters today. Above 50, battery life, memory, screen and price will change your experience far more than the extra TOPS.