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Qualcomm continues to challenge both Intel and Apple in the processor market, as the tech giant claims the mid-range model of its Snapdragon X series of chips outruns the M3 in performance. It’s a bold statement that could put its chips squarely in the running for the best processors you can get in a laptop, but does it really hold water? And what would that mean for its competitors? Qualcomm recently announced a new lower-end model of its next laptop-grade SoC, the Snapdragon X Plus, which shares similarities with its flagship Snapdragon X Elite. There are a few key differences, however. The 4-nanometer process Snapdragon X Plus features 10 cores and is missing the dual-core boost found on the Snapdragon X Elite. The GPU performance has also been pulled back from the Elite's 4.6 teraflops to 3.8 teraflops. According to Qualcomm’s benchmarks for the Snapdragon X Plus, which runs at 3.4Ghz with 42MB of total cache, its performance matches the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H while still outperforming it on power efficiency by a claimed 54%. It also claims a 10% performance margin over Apple’s M3 processor, another large boast. While it’s definitely important to take all these claims with a grain of salt since they come from Qualcomm and we haven’t tested any of this ourselves, if any of them turn out to be true, this could be serious news for both Intel and Apple — especially the former. Snapdragon X Plus could be a game changer The 10% claim concerning Apple’s M3 is a bit on the low side, but even if the Snapdragon X Plus turns out to be as or nearly as good as the M3 and not superior, that’s still major competition. Intel’s CPU market share as of 2024 is 75% for laptops and 64% for desktop PCs, a massive hold compared to AMD and Apple. However, one of Intel’s current issues is the decreased battery life in its laptops. A Qualcomm chip netting performance levels around the incredibly powerful M3 while maintaining its current standard of battery life of around 20 hours would absolutely be an Intel killer and a major Apple challenger. We could be looking at a chip that could and probably would threaten Intel’s market hold. This is further demonstrated by a new report that asserts the Surface Pro 10 will be outfitted with the Snapdragon X Plus. The Pro 10 is already set to be of higher quality with a brighter OLED screen and boosted front-facing webcam (including AI capabilities) as well as a Qualcomm chip that features superior performance and better battery life. There’s also the fact that Baldur’s Gate 3 was playable — and played well — on the Snapdragon X Elite through emulation, which is even more impressive considering the technical issues in the past due to compatibility with Windows on Arm (WoA). If Qualcomm can achieve this with other AAA titles, Apple should be worried about its M3 MacBook gaming ambitions. It remains to be seen how accurate Qualcomm’s benchmark boasts are in the long run, but if it’s close to what it claims, we could see a major shift in the laptop market away from Intel, and that level of emerging competition is always good for the consumer. You might also like Leaks for Snapdragon X Elite show a CPU that's a serious threatApple should be worried – Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip threatens AppleQualcomm Snapdragon X Plus may be the laptop chip of Intel and Apple's nightmares View the full article

Microsoft will advertise that its upcoming Windows laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processor are faster than the MacBook Air with Apple's latest M3 chip, according to internal documents obtained by The Verge. "Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it's planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation," the report says. Microsoft believes its laptops will offer "faster app emulation" than Apple's Rosetta 2. Introduced in October, the Snapdragon X Elite has Arm-based architecture like Apple silicon. Qualcomm last year claimed that the processor achieved 21% faster multi-core CPU performance than the M3 chip, based on the Geekbench 6 benchmark tool. There are a few caveats here, including that Microsoft and Qualcomm are comparing to Apple's lower-end M3 chip instead of its higher-end M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. MacBooks with Apple silicon also offer industry-leading performance-per-watt, while the Snapdragon X Elite will likely run hotter and require laptops with fans. Since being updated with the M1 chip in 2020, the MacBook Air has featured a fanless design. Apple can also optimize the performance of MacBooks since it controls both the hardware and macOS software. Nevertheless, it is clear that Apple's competitors are making progress with Arm-based laptops. Microsoft plans to announce laptops powered by the Snapdragon X Elite later this year, including the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on May 20.Tags: Microsoft, Qualcomm This article, "Microsoft Says Windows Laptops With Snapdragon X Elite Will Be Faster Than M3 MacBook Air" first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums View the full article

Qualcomm continues to keep itself busy building up expectations for the incoming Snapdragon X Elite processor, and some freshly revealed hands-on experiences certainly add fuel to this particular fire. Our sister site Tom’s Hardware got the chance to try out a bunch of laptops that have the new ARM-based chip, while listening to claims from Qualcomm about how the Snapdragon X Elite will outgun both Intel’s Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) laptop CPUs and Apple’s M3 silicon (which is a rival ARM part). According to Qualcomm’s testing – add a little seasoning as always with internal benchmarks, not that they’d be faked, of course, but they’re inevitably cherry-picked to present hardware in the best light – the Snapdragon X Elite easily beats Apple’s M3 SoC in Geekbench 6. In multi-threaded testing, the Snapdragon was close to 30% faster than the M3, in fact – although Qualcomm did not provide a single-threaded comparison. Even more eye-opening was the race against Intel, which pretty much saw Team Blue eating Qualcomm’s dust. The Snapdragon X Elite proved 52% quicker in multi-threaded performance, and 54% faster than the Core Ultra 7 155H for single-threaded performance. That’s when both chips have the same power usage – alternatively, the Elite could match the 155H performance-wise while using 60% or 65% less power (for multi- and single-threaded respectively). Pretty impressive? Certainly, although we should bear in mind that Intel does have Lunar Lake CPUs inbound this year, which may not be too far behind Qualcomm’s chip – and those next-gen laptop processors promise to seriously drive forward with power-efficiency. Turning to integrated graphics, the Snapdragon X Elite is apparently up to 36% faster than Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H, although note the ‘up to’ and that this is a vague assertion (we’re not told what the benchmarking involved). That’s what we mean about cherry-picking, and in the case of integrated graphics, Qualcomm didn’t draw any comparison with the Apple M3 (or faster Intel silicon such as the Core Ultra 9). (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne) Gaming goodness On the gaming front, we also have the hands-on experience of Digital Trends to draw on. The site found that on one of Qualcomm’s reference laptops, the Snapdragon X Elite was able to run Control fairly smoothly at 35 frames per second (at 1080p, with low to medium graphics settings). With the same settings, Baldur’s Gate 3 ran at 30 fps on average. Those are pretty impressive results for contemporary games running under emulation (as it’s an ARM chip, remember, not x86). One of the big hopes for Windows on ARM devices is that emulating software and games (that can’t be run natively as they’re x86) will reach a level where it’s more than palatable, and the Snapdragon X Elite seems to be a good step forward in that direction. Via VideoCardz You might also like... Windows 11 remains an unloved OS – but why won't people upgrade?You can now run Windows 11 seamlessly on Apple silicon MacsDon’t make these 5 big mistakes when using Windows 11 View the full article

Let’s take a closer look at Hybrid AI, how you can take advantage of it, and how Snapdragon brings hybrid AI to apps at the edge.View the full article