Qualcomm Snapdragon X: Performance on par with AMD and Intel

For today, Qualcomm is preparing the official release of Snapdragon X Plus / Elite processors built on ARM architecture cores Orion. This line of products is intended for personal computers, mainly notebooks, but desktop solutions can also be expected, perhaps in the mini-PC segment. Qualcomm announced support for a wide TDP range last year: we should expect 12W for passively cooled products, 28W for standard notebooks, 80W for powerful ones. The Elite and Plus model series differ mainly in the number of processor cores: 12 for the Elite, 10 for the Plus, but considering the performance results, a significant reduction in clock frequencies can also be expected for the Plus series. While the Elite supports a maximum of 4.2GHz (dual-core boost), the Plus series does not support single/dual-core boost and the cores run at a maximum of ~3.4GHz.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Performance (VideoCardz)

Performance test results from Qualcomm are already available. The table does not indicate at what TDP they were achieved, but considering the usual marketing, it cannot be expected that at 12W. The Snapdragon X series is highlighted in yellow in the graphs below:

CineBench 2024

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The Snapdragon X Elite outperforms the Apple M2 Max in Cinebench 2024 and stands among the standard and powerful range of mobile products when compared to the x86 world. With regard to the wide availability of products expected sometime before the half-year, a comparison with the upcoming generation of AMD and Intel products, whose representatives will be on the market from the beginning to the end of the next half-year, will be more relevant.

The Snapdragon X Plus slightly outperforms the Apple M2 Pro and is itself slightly outperformed by last year’s Ryzen 7 7840HS (Phoenix).

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The single-core performance of the Snapdragon X Elite seems to be close to the next generation of x86 architectures, while the cheaper Snapdragon X Plus is closer to the current one.

GeekBench 6

GeekBench 6 results are also available, but keep in mind that the purpose of this test is not to present the real-world performance of the product, but the achievable performance of the architecture. The load is dosed in short bursts, the aim of which is to prevent the core from overheating and throttling (for products that do experience throttling in real-world use). Especially for products whose real performance is limited by temperature limit, TDP and the like, results can be achieved in GeekBench as if there was no limitation.

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The twelve-core Snapdragon X Elite achieves performance roughly at the level of current powerful mobile twelve-core processors. The 10-core Snapdragon X Plus is a competitor to processors like AMD Phoenix (Ryzen 7 7840HS) or Intel Meteor Lake (Core Ultra 7 155H).

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In terms of single core, the Snapdragon X Elite is comparable to the Apple A17, while the Snapdragon X Plus is comparable to the Apple M2.

Snapdragon X Specifications (VideoCardz)

In conclusion, it is important to emphasize that the Snapdragon X Elite will not exist in one design, but at least three models are expected, which are distinguished only by the product number (part number). Only the highest of them (X1E-84-100) has a powerful GPU (4.6 TFLOPS) and a 4.2GHz boost. All lower models have GPUs of 3.8 TFLOPS. The middle model (X1E-80-100) also has a reduced 4.0GHz boost and the lowest of the Elite series (X1E-78-100) does not support boost at all and runs single/dual core at 3.4GHz. Thus, there can be very significant performance differences between products with “Snapdragon X Elite”.