Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus and Elite – revolution for the laptop world?

Qualcomm has presented another system-on-a-chip (SoC) for laptops. With the Snapdragon X Plus, the company is extending its planned chip revolution for Windows 11 ARM (formerly Windows on ARM) to more affordable laptops. The X Plus is the slimmed-down version of the X Elite. Nevertheless, from the middle of the year, it will not only be able to compete with AMD and Intel, but with Apple too.

Overview: four new ARM laptop SoCs launching midyear

But that’s not all: the company has also announced that the Snapdragon X Elite, which was announced last October, will be released in three different versions. Here’s an overview of the four ARM SoCs expected in new notebooks from the middle of the year:

Note on the values above: when Qualcomm presented the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-84-100) in October, the company spoke of a CPU Dual Core Boost of 4.3 GHz. In the latest documents distributed by their PR department, however, it’s only 4.2 GHz. In addition, it remains unclear how many shader cores the iGPUs have and how high their clock rates are. The Thermal Design Power (TDP) is also missing for all models, so it’s unclear whether the weakest versions can be used for fanless laptops at all.

Like its siblings, the newly announced Snapdragon X Plus is manufactured at TSMC using the 4-nanometre process. It should still deliver high performance and, in particular, be energy-efficient. Especially in comparison to CPUs with x86 architecture, the latter is probably true. Only, it has two cores fewer than the Elite chips. Its ten Oryon cores clock up to 3.4 GHz together – the top dog Elite clocks at 3.8 GHz. The Plus also lacks the feature Qualcomm calls Dual Core Boost. This allows two cores of the two better Elite models to achieve a higher clock rate (4.2 and 4.0 GHz).

All models also have an Image Signal Processor with support for 64 megapixel photos and 2160p HDR videos. H.264, H.265, VP9 and AV1 (maximum 2160p and 120 fps) are also supported for video decoding. For encoding, these are H.264, H.265 and AV1 (maximum 2160p and 60 fps). An X65 5G modem, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 are also included. Up to 64 gigabytes are supported for working memory. SSDs with PCIe 4.0 and up to six USB-C ports can be used, three of them can have the USB4 standard.

Better than CPUs from AMD and Intel?

Qualcomm is probably deliberately only showing multi-core benchmark results in comparisons to the competition during its current Snapdragon presentations. Why do I think this? Well, the company said in October that Geekbench 6 would score 3,227 points for single-core. However, it then became clear that this result could only be achieved under optimal conditions in Linux. In Windows, 2,940 points would be possible. Still a brilliant result, if it’s true. At least in comparison to the competition from Intel and AMD, whose Core i9-13900H and Ryzen 9 8945HS achieve around 2,650 points. But that’s not enough to beat an Apple M3 (more on this in the next section). It’s why Qualcomm’s throwing around slides that show multi-core results in a favourable light.

In its Geekbench 6 processor test, the Snapdragon X Plus in Windows 11 ARM achieved a multi-core score of 13,350 points. The Elite version reached 15,610 points. However, don’t forget that the efficiency of cooling is particularly important for notebooks and that these are tests carried out by the manufacturer on its own reference design laptops:

In addition, the Snapdragon chips have ten or twelve cores, whereas the weaker CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS shown in the graphic only has eight cores. Since Geekbench only ever uses one thread per core, even if one core of an x86 CPU supports two threads, the result isn’t a miracle… but still one that’s worth seeing.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, also displayed in the chart above, allegedly has 37 per cent less power than the Snapdragon X Plus, has a total of 16 cores. However, Intel uses a so-called big-little concept for this CPU, meaning that some cores can do a lot while others focus on energy-efficient work. The Intel CPU mentioned here has six performance cores, eight efficiency cores and two low-power efficiency cores.

Despite this, the result of the Qualcomm SoCs is revolutionary compared to all previous attempts with Windows on ARM or Windows 11 ARM – including Microsoft’s Surface devices with ARM architecture CPUs. The new Snapdragon X chips don’t have little-big architecture – Qualcomm says that all cores are optimally designed for both performance and efficiency. It’s undisputed that a revolution in energy efficiency compared to x86 is imminent. ARM chips ensure a longer battery life.

Better than Apple M3?

Apple’s M3 achieves a single-core result of around 3,100 points in Geekbench 6. On its own, this doesn’t paint a pretty picture compared to the slightly more than 2,900 points from the Snapdragon X Elite in Windows. As a result, Qualcomm prefers to show the following multi-core comparison when presenting the new Plus SoC:

It may be true that the two Snapdragons are ten and 28 per cent faster respectively than an Apple M3 in multi-core mode. However, this comparison isn’t on an equal footing, as the M3 only has eight cores. Apple also uses a big-little concept.

What Qualcomm shows us is pure window dressing. A comparison with an Apple M3 Pro using twelve cores would make more sense at this point. However, it also achieves over 15,000 points with multi-core. Depending on the cooling concepts of future laptops, the Snapdragon chip should perform slightly better, on par or worse than an Apple chip in multi-core mode.

Qualcomm shies away from GPU comparisons with Apple and beats the AI advertising drum

In terms of integrated graphics, the Adreno GPU of the Snapdragon X Plus should be able to deliver the same performance (3.8 TFLOPs) as the two weaker Elite versions. The iGPU supports up to four displays – one internal with 4K and 120 Hertz and three external with 4K and 60 Hertz.

The iGPU comparison shown was determined using 3DMark Wild Life. It’s a cross-platform benchmark for Windows, Android and iOS. The result isn’t bad compared to the Intel and AMD competition, but the performance is still poor compared to dedicated graphics cards.

The NPU, i.e. the AI chip, is identical in all Snapdragon X versions and is said to offer 45 TOPS. According to a presentation slide, this performance should be more than double that of other current laptop SoCs. And as with these, new Qualcomm laptops will most likely be advertised under the AI laptop label. As if a good NPU is more important than a strong CPU in 2024.

Snapdragon laptops have revolutionary potential – even in gaming

As with all manufacturers, Qualcomm’s marketing department isn’t afraid to make its future products palatable with vague promises. Too bad the company isn’t focusing on transparency, we can all plainly see what the upcoming Snapdragons have to offer. Nobody expects Qualcomm to overtake the entire competition straight away.

In my opinion, Qualcomm could theoretically compete with its rivals using new chips from the middle of the year. However, there are stumbling blocks that need to be overcome – Windows on ARM, which has always had a major problem. The range of apps created natively for the processors is far smaller than with Windows for x86 processors – or with Apple. For example, Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Fresco already run natively, so they don’t lose any speed. However, the PDF editing software Adobe Acrobat, the video editing software Premiere Pro and other products are still only available as x86 versions. The software, which isn’t adapted to the new processor architecture, still runs on Windows 11 ARM/Windows on ARM, but only emulated. In the end, this always means less speed and more power loss.

Since the new Snapdragons perform strongly, they will probably still be able to display many non-native software programs smoothly. Apart from that, first tests with emulated Windows games show that they could also have potential for the handheld market. Control can apparently be emulated relatively smoothly at medium settings and 1080p resolution, only dropping from 30 to 40 frames per second (fps) to 26 during firefights. YouTuber JuanBagnell also has a video of the first battle in Baldur’s Gate 3, achieving 25 to 30 fps. Since this scene doesn’t take place in the open world, the game should otherwise have slightly fewer fps. It’s hard to imagine what the games would achieve if they were natively programmed for the ARM version of Windows.

All in all, the new Snapdragons could really bring about a revolution in the laptop market. However, this is more likely to be a gradual process, brought about by the increasing range of natively implemented software.