Snapdragon X Plus officially. According to Qualcomm, the Apple M3 will surpass competition from Intel and AMD – SMARTmania.cz

Snapdragon X Plus officially: a computer processor that is supposed to be more powerful than the Apple M3

• Qualcomm introduced its second computer processor from the Snapdragon X family
• The Plus variant has ten cores and a powerful neural unit
• According to the first benchmarks, the new product should be more powerful than the Apple M3 processor

Qualcomm held a press conference yesterday, from which we expected a detailed dive into the specifications of the Snapdragon X Elite computer processor revealed last year. But instead, the American company revealed another computer chipset called Snapdragon X Plus. It is baked from the same ARM dough as the Elite variant, only slightly weaker. Even so, Qualcomm boasts of its stunning performance.

Snapdragon X Plus: more powerful than the Apple M3

Snapdragon X Plus becomes the next protagonist to play a major role in the upcoming new generation of AI Windows PCs. Qualcomm’s plans are not modest – it aims to emulate Apple’s success with Apple Silicon chipsets and disrupt the hegemony of x86/64 processors in the Windows world. The newly introduced Snapdragon X Plus should become the main representative in mainstream computers of the new generation.

Qualcomm has “pumped” into its new chipset all the core components that we are used to from mobile chipsets – a processor with Oryon cores, Adreno graphics and a Hexagon neural unit. Compared to the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite, we have two fewer processor cores here, in addition with lower clocks (3.4 GHz), but there should be no shortage of performance – Qualcomm claims that its new product is more powerful than the competition from Intel and AMD, it even surpasses and the Apple M3 processor.

Qualcomm’s words are proven by benchmarks and graphs – in the GeekBench 6.2 benchmark, for example, the new Snapdragon scored 13,350 points in the all-core test, while the Apple M3 scored “only” 12,154 points in the latest MacBook Pro. The more powerful M3 Pro variant will receive adequate competition in the form of the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm has not yet found an answer to the high-end M3 Max or M2 Ultra processors. Compared to the x86/64 competition, the Snapdragon X Plus is expected to outperform both the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS, in addition to being significantly more efficient.

The Snapdragon X Plus will also dominate in artificial intelligence performance, as it contains the same neural unit as the Elite variant, which boasts a performance of 45 TOPS. In this discipline, none of the current processors is equal to it – Apple M3 has a performance of 18 TOPS, AMD Ryzen 8040 16 TOPS and Intel Core Ultra 10 TOPS. The new chipset also features powerful 4.6 TFLOP Adreno graphics.

Snapdragon X Plus also boasts support for modern LPDDR5x memories and exemplary wireless connectivity – it supports 5G networks, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. In terms of port equipment, computers with this processor will be able to be equipped with up to three USB 4, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 and one eUSB2. The chip can also handle up to three external displays with 4K resolution.

We will see the new Snapdragon X in the first computers soon

We’ll see the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite in new computers in the coming weeks, with the consumer variants of the Microsoft Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 among the first. The next wave of new machines is likely to be introduced in early July at Computex 2024.