In October last year, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X Elite high-performance platform for laptops at the Snapdragon Summit, which means that Qualcomm will once again launch an offensive into the PC industry. Since the announcement of the Snapdragon X Elite, the media and market response have been very good, it has outstanding performance in terms of performance, energy efficiency ratio, etc., and the laptop products built based on it are also quite exciting. And now, Qualcomm has unveiled a new member of the Snapdragon X family - the Snapdragon X Plus.
Snapdragon X Plus technical specifications
First, let's take a look at the technical specifications of the Snapdragon X Plus.
Like the Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X Plus is built on an advanced 4nm process technology, in which the Qualcomm Oryon CPU has 10 custom high-performance cores with a maximum frequency of 3.4GHz and a total cache capacity of 42MB. It supports LPDDR5x memory, its integrated Adreno GPU has a computing power of 3.8TFLOPS, and the integrated Qualcomm Hexagon NPU is currently the fastest NPU in the world with a computing power of 45TOPS. Thanks to its compact size and excellent energy efficiency ratio, the Snapdragon X Plus supports a wide range of product designs.
While announcing the specific specifications, Qualcomm also officially gave the performance of the Snapdragon X Plus.
Snapdragon X Plus performance comparison
In terms of Geekbench 6.2 CPU multi-threaded performance, the Qualcomm Oryon CPU integrated by the Snapdragon X Plus is 10% faster than the Apple M3 processor, with a multi-threaded performance score of 13350, and the Snapdragon X Elite is 28% faster than the Apple M3 in the same test. At the same time, it can be seen from the performance that the Snapdragon X Plus is positioned one level lower than the Snapdragon X Elite, but its performance has surpassed Apple's latest M3 processor.
Compared with the Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen platforms, the Snapdragon X Plus is still Geekbench multi-threaded performance, on the one hand, it is better than the Core Ultra 7 155H and Ryzen 9 7940HS in terms of performance, with a 37% lead in performance at the same power consumption, and on the other hand, when reaching the same peak performance, the Snapdragon X Plus consumes 54% less power than the benchmark platform, so the Snapdragon X Plus has a better energy efficiency ratio.
Under the CINEBENCH 2024 multi-threaded test standard, also compared with the Core Ultra 7 155H and Ryzen 9 7940HS, the Snapdragon X Plus has a 28% lead in CPU performance at the same power consumption, and the power consumption is 39% lower when reaching the same peak performance, and the energy efficiency ratio advantage is also obvious.
In terms of GPU graphics performance, the 3DMark WildLife Extreme test standard, compared with the Core Ultra 7 155H platform's Arc Xe GPU and the Ryzen 9 7940HS platform's Radeon 780M GPU, the Snapdragon X Plus's integrated Adreno GPU is 36% better at the same power consumption, and the power consumption at the same peak performance is 50% lower, which is only half of the benchmark platform.
In addition, like the Snapdragon X Elite, the Snapdragon X Plus integrates 45TOPS computing power, which is currently the world's fastest NPU computing unit, which can bring excellent computing power support for AI applications.
"The benefits of Qualcomm NPU can be seen in many different application areas, and with up to 45 TOPS of AI computing power, our NPU can be used to create a better user experience in almost all PC applications," said Nitin Kumar, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies. For example, in the field of software development and programming, software developers can use the NPU computing power of 45TOPS on the terminal side to generate code in real time, and in addition, it can also enable rich applications such as image quality enhancement, AI filters, and AI noise reduction. The Snapdragon X Elite also supports large language models with a scale of 7 billion parameters running at a speed of 30 tokens/s on the device side, which can enable a wide range of use cases on the device side. If you're a student, this will help you complete assignments faster on the terminal side without having to access the cloud. ”
In other subsystems, the Snapdragon X Plus also has leading performance and functionality.
First of all, in terms of graphics processing, the Snapdragon X Plus can support an external three-screen ultra-high-definition 4K 60Hz display and support HDR10.
Secondly, in terms of connectivity, the Snapdragon X Plus supports the same advanced connectivity technologies as the Snapdragon X Elite, including Wi-Fi 7, high-frequency concurrent multi-connectivity, and 5G connectivity that supports sub-6GHz and mmWave speeds of up to 10GB/s.
In terms of imaging, the Snapdragon X Plus supports 18-bit dual ISP and MIPI cameras, which can bring advanced image and video capabilities to related devices.
In terms of audio, the Snapdragon X Plus supports leading Snapdragon Sound features, including Bluetooth 5.4 audio transmission, and more.
These features enable devices built on the Snapdragon X Plus platform to provide users with a more comprehensive and comprehensive experience.
Review of Snapdragon X Elite core features
On the occasion of the announcement of the Snapdragon X Plus, we might as well take a look back at the Snapdragon X Elite released last year.
The Snapdragon X Elite is also built on a 4nm process technology, with 12 high-performance cores, an integrated Adreno GPU that supports 4.6 trillion floating point operations per second, clocked at up to 3.8GHz, and dual-core enhancement up to 4.3GHz, which is also the first ARM-based CPU core above 4GHz. In addition, it has a total cache capacity of up to 42MB, a memory bandwidth of 136GB/s, and supports eight-channel LPDDR5x, and its integrated NPU also has a powerful computing power of up to 45TOPS.
Snapdragon X Elite performance comparison update
Last year's press conference, Qualcomm officially released the performance comparison results of Snapdragon X Elite and Apple M2, and this time it released a comparison with M3, as shown in the figure below, relative to M3, in the Geekbench 6.2 multi-threaded test, its performance reached 15610 points, 28% faster than M3.
At the same time, Qualcomm has also updated the performance comparison results of the Snapdragon X Elite and the Core Ultra 7 155H. In the Geekbench 6 single-threaded test, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes 65% less power at the same peak performance, which is only 1/3 of the Core Ultra 7 155H. In addition, it can be seen that under the same power consumption, the CPU performance of Snapdragon X Elite is 54% higher, and the energy efficiency ratio is excellent.
In the Geekbench 6 multithreaded test standard, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes 60% less power at the same peak performance than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, and the Snapdragon X Elite delivers a 52% lead in CPU performance at the same power consumption.
In addition, when compared to the higher-end Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, the Snapdragon X Plus also has a leading edge. Under the Geekbench 6 single-threaded test standard, the power consumption is 65% lower at the same peak performance and up to 51% performance is up to 51% at the same power consumption.
In the Geekbench 6 multithreaded test, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes 58% less power at the same peak performance and 41% more performance at the same power consumption compared to the Core Ultra 9 185H.
In terms of graphics performance, the Snapdragon X Elite consumes only half the power of the competition when reaching the same peak performance compared to the Core Ultra 7 155H's integrated Arc Xe GPU, while the GPU performance is 36% ahead at the same power consumption.
The biggest benefit of the excellent energy efficiency ratio is that the Snapdragon X Elite platform will have a stronger battery life in the same application state. The Snapdragon X Elite's battery life is at least 40% longer than that of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in multiple use cases, including Office 365 apps, local video playback, web browsing, YouTube streaming, and Teams video calling.
In terms of platform responsiveness, all kinds of mainstream software, such as Adobe Photoshop, Teams, Steam, WinRAR, Firefox, etc., Snapdragon X Elite can achieve faster response and open applications, at least 7% faster than Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, and at most nearly 70% faster.
In fact, relative to performance, many users are most concerned about the compatibility performance of the Snapdragon platform. At present, Qualcomm has cooperated with many mainstream ISVs to ensure that a variety of popular applications can be better compatible with the Snapdragon platform. As you can see from the figure below, these applications currently cover many fields, including office collaboration, productivity, coding development, browsers, entertainment, etc., and a large number of applications are compatible with the Snapdragon X Elite platform to bring users an enhanced experience.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that Google Chrome, Qualcomm has partnered with Google to fully optimize this browser application based on the Snapdragon X Elite architecture, so that Windows PCs with Snapdragon can support native Google Chrome. Meanwhile, compared to the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Brave web browsers are 20%, 57%, and 15% more responsive, respectively.
Conclusion
According to official news, the terminal devices based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus platforms will be launched in mid-2024, if the performance of the final equipment and the compatibility of systems and software can meet the officially announced standards, then the PC products of Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform will inevitably have a huge impact on the existing PC market pattern, especially for thin and light laptops and AI PCs, Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform will be able to achieve high performance in terms of performance, energy efficiency ratio, NPU computing power, It has obvious advantages in terms of battery life.
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