Qualcomm officially unveils Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips for Windows laptops

Qualcomm announced the upcoming release of the Snapdragon X Plus laptop processor and provided additional information about the older Snapdragon X Elite models. The company was the first to release chips that could compete in speed with products from Apple, Intel and AMD.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor is the entry-level product in the lineup. It has 10 Oryon cores, 42 MB cache, a clock speed of 3.4 GHz, and an AI accelerator (NPU) with a performance of 45 Tops. The chip supports LPDDR5x memory with speeds up to 8448 MT/s and has an Adreno graphics subsystem with a performance of 3.8 teraflops.

Qualcomm will also release three 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processors clocked at 3.8 GHz and integrated graphics with up to 4.6 Tflops – all three models have the same NPU and memory support at the Snapdragon X Plus level. The two top models in the line are distinguished by the Dual-Core Boost function (up to 4.2 GHz) – this is a kind of analogue of Intel Turbo Boost and AMD Turbo Core: this function allows you to adjust the processor frequency, if necessary, increasing its performance.

Processors from Qualcomm are distinguished by the absence of a hybrid architecture, which is found in Apple and Intel chips with productive and efficient cores. Both companies point out that this architecture reduces power consumption and improves battery life, but according to Qualcomm, all of its Snapdragon cores are “performance”, and they outperform Apple, Intel and AMD cores in performance, energy efficiency and battery life. — and computer games should “just work” with the Arm version of Windows, even through an emulator.

In practice, the system based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite coped quite well with the game Control, demonstrating high performance in the emulator, writes The Verge. The graphics settings weren’t at their maximum, but the game ran at 30 frames per second. Apple has proven that the Arm platform on a laptop can significantly increase battery life compared to systems on Intel and AMD chips. With the advent of Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, this opportunity will open up for Windows laptops.

The first laptops with Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips are expected by mid-year.