Today, Qualcomm is pulling the wraps off a previously secret Snapdragon X SoC for Windows. It had previously announced the X Elite, and now it's officially unveiling a slightly cut-down version named X Plus. The Plus chip will join three slightly different X Elite chips to form the four-chip family coming to Windows laptops. The Plus version will battle midrange CPUs from AMD, Intel, and Apple when it arrives alongside the X Elite later this year.
The big difference between the X Plus and the X Elite is the Elite chips feature 12 Oryon CPU cores, whereas the Plus has just 10 cores. However, many of the specs are the same between the different versions of the chips, with all four Snapdragon X chips offering a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI tasks. Qualcomm claims its NPU can deliver 45 TOPS of performance, which would put it far beyond the AI processors in AMD and Intel CPUs, currently estimated at around 10 to 16 TOPS. The Plus chip also features lower clocks than the high-end Elite chips and does not offer a dual-core boost.
Qualcomm is making some big claims with its Snapdragon X chips, especially compared with Intel's latest Meteor Lake CPUs. Though the company says its solution is more powerful overall, it focuses on efficiency, which is always a strong suit for Arm-based processors such as Apple's M-series. It claims the Plus can offer the same CPU performance as the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in Cinebench while using 39% less power. With power levels the same, Qualcomm says the Plus is faster than Meteor Lake by 28%. It also claims its integrated GPU can match the performance of the Arc graphics in Meteor Lake while using 50% less power, at least in one 3DMark test.
Our colleagues at PCMag attended Qualcomm's briefing and were able to benchmark both Snapdragon chips (Elite and Plus) against an Intel Meteor Lake CPU. Though being able to run benchmarks is always appreciated, there's a caveat: These tests were pre-chosen and run on Qualcomm laptops. That said, the Intel chip used for testing is the Core Ultra 7 155H, Intel's third-fastest Meteor Lake offering, with 16 cores spread between six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power cores.
The testing showed that Qualcomm's X Elite and Plus chips are, in fact, faster than the Intel CPU in multi-core compute tests, such as Cinebench, Blender, and Geekbench. The Plus chip edged out the Core Ultra 7 chip, while the Elite chip destroyed it across the board. Single-core tests were fairly close between the Plus and the Core Ultra chip, but the Elite was still the fastest.
For gaming, Qualcomm only offered one benchmark—3DMark Wild Life Extreme. The results were inconclusive in that test because PCMag tested two Core Ultra 7 systems, and both machines provided wildly different results. Despite the confusing results, it's still safe to say Qualcomm's X chips will be competitive, although we will need to wait for independent benchmarks before we know exactly how competitive it will be overall.
Regardless, it certainly appears Qualcomm's entry into the mobile processor market will be disruptive. Both its X Elite and Plus chips appear to be highly competitive offerings, but at the same time, that's compared with existing chips from AMD, Intel, and Apple. When these chips are in actual laptops in peoples' hands later this year, its competitors will be close to launching next-generation platforms with Arrow and Lunar Lake, Zen 5, and Apple's M4. That will be a four-way battle royal we cannot wait to see.
