Snapdragon X Plus and Elite again beat competitors Apple, AMD and Intel in preliminary tests

The HotHardware portal was able to take a closer look at the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus PC processors presented today, find out their performance, energy efficiency and evaluate the new chips against the background of Intel, AMD and Apple processors. Brief conclusions: in the vast majority of tests, Qualcomm chips performed quite well, and in some cases turned out to be significantly better than their competitors.

Let us briefly recall that the Snapdragon X series of 64-bit processors for Windows laptops consists of three 12-core Snapdragon X Elite models (X1E-84-100, X1E-80-100, X1E-78-100) and one 10-core model Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-64-100).

All chips are built on Arm architecture, manufactured using a 4nm process technology, offer support for up to 64 GB of LPDDR5X-8448 RAM, are equipped with Snapdragon X65 5G modems, support Wi-Fi 7, and also have powerful built-in AI engines (NPUs) with with a productivity of 45 TOPS.

The senior processor in the series is the 12-core X1E-84-100. It claims a maximum frequency of 3.8 GHz in multi-threading mode. On one or two cores, the chip can automatically accelerate to 4.2 GHz. For the X1E-80-100, the maximum multithreading frequency is 3.4 GHz and 4.0 GHz for one to two cores.

The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 and Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 differ from other Snapdragon X series processors in that they do not support Turbo mode for one or two cores. Both processors run at 3.4 GHz on all cores.

The older 12-core X1E-84-100 is equipped with an integrated Adreno graphics core with a performance of 4.6 Tflops. The remaining chips received integrated Adreno graphics with a performance of 3.8 teraflops. It should also be noted that all processors have 42 MB of shared cache memory. More detailed characteristics of the new products can be found in the table below.

Since consumer laptop models based on these processors had not yet been presented at the time of this publication, the vast majority of test results were transferred to HotHardware directly by Qualcomm itself. However, the portal staff also managed to conduct a number of additional checks of the new chips themselves.

In Geekbench multi-threading tests, Qualcomm claims up to a 37% advantage over the Snapdragon X Plus processor over the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Ryzen 9 7940HS at the same power, and similar performance while consuming 54% less power than the competition. Obviously, the X Elite models should provide even better results due to two additional cores.

In a similar comparison, but this time in the Cinebench benchmark, the performance difference between the Snapdragon X Plus and its competitors becomes smaller, but still remains significant. Here, the Snapdragon X Plus delivers 28% better performance at the same TDP with Intel and AMD chips, and the same performance as the competition while consuming 39% less.

When comparing the Snapdragon X Plus with the Apple M3 chip based on three runs of the multi-threaded Geekbench test, the Qualcomm chip also came out ahead.

The performance of the integrated graphics does not disappoint either. Qualcomm showed this with the example of Snapdragon X Plus. With the same power consumption in the UL 3DMark Wildlife Extreme benchmark, the integrated Adreno with 3.8 Tflops provided a 36% higher result compared to the integrated Intel Core Ultra 7 155H graphics and demonstrated a similar result with half the lower consumption.

Qualcomm also provided additional benchmark results simulating AI performance and performance in office applications (UL Procyon), as well as gaming performance (3DMark Wild Life Extreme). The data provided allows us to evaluate the difference between X Plus and X Elite.

Depending on a particular test, this difference can range from 15 to 30%. The AI ​​performance of both chips turned out to be the same for obvious reasons, since the X Plus and X Elite are equipped with the same NPU.

As noted above, HotHardware also conducted its own tests of Qualcomm processors and compared them with competing chips. In the same PCMark 10 Applications benchmark, the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite processors outperformed the Ryzen 7 7840U, but were slower than laptops based on Intel and AMD HX series processors, which are equipped with powerful discrete graphics cards.

The Geekbench test results were very revealing. The Snapdragon X Elite beat all major Intel and AMD chips, and was also faster than the Apple M2 Pro processor in single-threaded and multi-threaded tests. The new Qualcomm chip was second only to high-performance HX-series gaming processors from Intel and AMD, which showed better results. Snapdragon X Plus, in turn, turned out to be faster than the Raptor Lake-H and Raptor Lake-U chips, and also beat the Ryzen 7040U and Ryzen Z1 Extreme. It sits next to the Core Ultra 7 165H from the new Meteor Lake series.

The situation in the Cinebench test looked similar. Snapdragon X Elite was able to compete with the best mainstream processors from Intel and AMD, and Snapdragon X Plus was not very far behind. However, the same Core Ultra 7 165H provided a significant lead over the X Plus in the multi-threaded test.

The performance of the integrated graphics of the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors turned out to be significantly higher than that of the “built-in” Radeon 780M as part of AMD processors and UHD Graphics as part of Intel chips. However, the leader in the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test was the integrated graphics of the Apple M2 Pro processor.

The 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second) built-in AI engine (NPU) of the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors gave Qualcomm processors a significant advantage over the competition in the AI ​​performance benchmark test.

HotHardware also tested the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus in Blender 4.1. The older processor coped with the task about 30% faster than its competitors.

The speed of Microsoft Edge and Chrome in versions for Arm architecture was carried out in the Jetstream 2 Speedometer 2.1 tests. In Microsoft Edge, the Snapdragon X Plus processor performed worse than in the recently released Arm version of Chrome, although Microsoft clearly had more time to optimize its software.

The Snapdragon X Elite provided even better performance in this test. Interestingly, the X Elite performed better in Chrome this time around.

In the Chrome Speedometer test, the Snapdragon X Elite scored 489, the highest score of any laptop HotHardware has tested so far.

Snapdragon X Plus, although behind its older brother, also showed decent results in this test.