News Snapdragon X Elite beats AMD and Intel flagship mobile CPUs in Geekbench 6 – Qualcomm's new laptop chip leads in single- and multi-core tests

[Admin]

The Snapdragon X Elite has show up in Geekbench 6, and it's beating the top mobile CPUs from AMD and Intel. It's another impressive result for Qualcomm's new ARM laptop CPU.

Snapdragon X Elite beats AMD and Intel flagship mobile CPUs in Geekbench 6 – Qualcomm's new laptop chip leads in single- and multi-core tests : Read more

 

[DavidMV]

This is great news. A duopoly (Intel & AMD) is never good enough for real competition. Adding Apple and Qualcomm into the PC CPU market will definitely help. We probably need a couple more. Still rooting for Intel GPUs too!

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Do ARM CPU's employ HT/SMT type tech or is this 12 pure (performance cores). Would the multi scores be even worse for Intel/AMD with HT/SMT off?

This is an impressive showing. I know it's but one bench, but the numbers seem to tally. With it's efficiency, this could be great news for battery life on Laptops.

 

[Notton]

With those scores, even if it were 30% slower in real world applications, it'd still be pretty darn fast for only using 10~23W.

10W is what passively cooled Alder Lake N100 uses, and that only has the performance of an i7-2600k from 10yrs ago.

 

[Gururu]

This is pretty exciting but very preliminary. I dont think we will see competitive mid-range laptops with these chips for a while and only if Qualcomm keeps at it.

 

[bit_user]

After 5 years of reading about the whole Nuvia saga, I think I can wait until it reaches the hands of independent reviewers and undergoes a full array of tests. I think we all know Geek Bench can be misleading, especially when comparing different CPU ISAs. At least the OS should be the same.

BTW, what's the state of the ARM litigation?

Speaking of litigation, I'll bet Apple is going to hit Qualcomm with a bunch of patent infringement claims, as soon as they get one of these machines into their labs and start analyzing it. There's no way the Nuvia team didn't reuse any of the stuff they patented while at Apple.

 

[bit_user]

I dont think we will see competitive mid-range laptops with these chips for a while

It's up to Qualcomm. If they were smart, they should price these like mid-range x86 chips. They could take a big chunk of the market, that way.

Do I think they will??
🤣

 

[bit_user]

This is great news. A duopoly (Intel & AMD) is never good enough for real competition. Adding Apple and Qualcomm into the PC CPU market will definitely help. We probably need a couple more.

I think MediaTek is rumored to be aiming for this market, probably with a SoC featuring Cortex-X4 + A720 cores and possibly a Nvidia iGPU. CPU performance won't be as fast, but it could be competitive at the lower-end.

Then, there's that rumor of AMD & Nvidia entering the ARM laptop market, next year.

Do ARM CPU's employ HT/SMT type tech or is this 12 pure (performance cores).

No. There have been some ARM ISA cores with SMT, but none of the mainstream cores you'd find in phones or laptops. So far, ARM cores with SMT have only appeared in some (defunct) server CPUs and embedded cores.

10W is what passively cooled Alder Lake N100 uses, and that only has the performance of an i7-2600k from 10yrs ago.

A better point of comparison, for the N100, would be the i5-6600T (35W Skylake, 4 cores/4 threads). The two perform quite comparably, in the tests I've seen.

 

[Flayed]

I must be missing something but I don't understand how these chips can run Windows. Does Qualcomm have an x86 license?

 

[abufrejoval]

I must be missing something but I don't understand how these chips can run Windows. Does Qualcomm have an x86 license?

Two ways:
1) The code is compiled for AARCH64 (faster, different binaries)
2) The code is transpiled (or binary translated) from x86 to AARCH64 on the fly via a technology originally developed by Transitive, that's also been used for the Power to x86 transition at the Fruity Cult.

Unfortunately IBM bought the company and the patents when people like Gene Amdahl thought it was a good idea to run z/Arch mainframe code like this on less expensive hardware, and they've only let it out in bits and pieces e.g. to allow the reverse, running x86 on z/Arch machines.

Windows (NT) was originally developed by Dave Cutler (of VMS fame) as portable between architectures and used to support quite a few of them, e.g. Alpha, Power and Itanic among them.

 

[abufrejoval]

The Snapdragon X Elite has show up in Geekbench 6, and it's beating the top mobile CPUs from AMD and Intel. It's another impressive result for Qualcomm's new ARM laptop CPU.

Snapdragon X Elite beats AMD and Intel flagship mobile CPUs in Geekbench 6 – Qualcomm's new laptop chip leads in single- and multi-core tests : Read more

For me the real question is: is this all about replacing a locked down appliance from one vendor with a locked down appliance from another vendor or is it the rebirth of the PC under a new ISA?

Nobody needs rotten apples from Microsoft!

 

[dimar]

I'd like to see a thorough review with various benchmarks and battery life comparisons for gaming, video watching, office work. What about long term apps, OS support and drivers? Windows and x86 can run very old stuff and last 10+ years. If Windows will be dropping Snapdragon support every 2-3 years like Android does, then forget it.

 

[sstanic]

Any company with this level of perf per watt will obviously go after the most profitable segment eventually - servers

No doubt Q is aiming at that in a year or two

 

[Makaveli]

impressive numbers but I need to see more than Geekbench!

 

[DavidMV]

I must be missing something but I don't understand how these chips can run Windows. Does Qualcomm have an x86 license?

Windows on ARM is a thing now. Many apps are starting to be compiled for both x64 and ARM. I think in the short to medium term it will just be laptops though.

 

[luka3]

Why is the article presenting random Intel and AMD CPUs as supposedly flagships? The actual Intel and AMD flagships score about 25% higher values than the Snapdragon, both single core and multi core

 

[Pierce2623]

After 5 years of reading about the whole Nuvia saga, I think I can wait until it reaches the hands of independent reviewers and undergoes a full array of tests. I think we all know Geek Bench can be misleading, especially when comparing different CPU ISAs. At least the OS should be the same.

BTW, what's the state of the ARM litigation?

Speaking of litigation, I'll bet Apple is going to hit Qualcomm with a bunch of patent infringement claims, as soon as they get one of these machines into their labs and start analyzing it. There's no way the Nuvia team didn't reuse any of the stuff they patented while at Apple.

There’s nothing special about the Apple chips. they trade power usage for die area. Easy to do at Spple margins. The main problem with the Snapdragon X family is that anything that isn’t compiled specifically for windows on ARM will go through an expensive emulation layer.

 

[Notton]

I'd like to see a thorough review with various benchmarks and battery life comparisons for gaming, video watching, office work. What about long term apps, OS support and drivers? Windows and x86 can run very old stuff and last 10+ years. If Windows will be dropping Snapdragon support every 2-3 years like Android does, then forget it.

There are a bunch of youtube videos out right now.
Snapdragon X (most likely 23W model) does a stable 1080p 30fps, medium for Baulder's Gate 3.
For comparison, RoG Ally Z1 Extreme does 1080p 30fps on med-high.

Unfortunately, there is not much info on how much power it is consuming while playing BG3, or if the game is running through emulation or has a native ARM version.

 

[LabRat 891]

Make a socketable and modular permutation, and I'd happily build an ARM PC.

(AFAIK, such does exist in the server/industrial space. I can vaguely recall some ARM server platforms being shown off around EPYC's introduction, with sockets, PCIe, etc.)


As long as these are exclusive to 'highly integrated products', I have 0 interest (personally).


Regardless, it'll be interesting to see how this impacts the market. (and, if there shall be litigation from Apple)

 

[atomicWAR]

There’s nothing special about the Apple chips. they trade power usage for die area. Easy to do at Spple margins. The main problem with the Snapdragon X family is that anything that isn’t compiled specifically for windows on ARM will go through an expensive emulation layer.

I could be wrong but I took it more as it easier/likely they'll their 'old' tech, in one fashion or another be it intentional or not.

Humans are creatures of habit. I would expect there to be some small tweaks to 'existing' tech to add better performance or in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit but I'd also not be surprised to see one filed eventually. Knowing the industry and how people work, Apple is expecting this behavior and are ready to find out where so they can eventually monetize it through royalties or shut it down all together conversely. Of course that is once the lawsuits get settled. I know I expect something along those lines at least.

 

[JamesJones44]

Why is the article presenting random Intel and AMD CPUs as supposedly flagships? The actual Intel and AMD flagships score about 25% higher values than the Snapdragon, both single core and multi core

Ryzen 9 8945HS and Core i9-13900H are theoretically not over clockable, it's hard to trust scores from the HX level submissions.

 

[JamesJones44]

There’s nothing special about the Apple chips. they trade power usage for die area. Easy to do at Spple margins. The main problem with the Snapdragon X family is that anything that isn’t compiled specifically for windows on ARM will go through an expensive emulation layer.

Translation is not emulation. There is a big difference between the two.

 

[raymondit]

I can't believe people still read fake reviews like this.
Lets wee the test on real Hardware not I say this is the number and you must believe me

 

[HideOut]

its good to see a viable alternative appearing for the AMD/Intel war. BUT this is not an independent/reproducable test yet. AND both AMD and Intel are close to releasing new hardware. AMD is already shipping samples to OE's for prototype builds. This is going to be good compitition (but features will be very important!) but they wont be faster than Zen 5 and probably not faster than Intel gen 15 either.

 

[watzupken]

I am not sure if Geekbench is a good gauge to begin with. A lot of bench marks just magnify some benefits/ features, and gives an inflated result. Hence, when it comes to actual performance, it’s just fine. I have no doubt at low power conditions, ARM base SOC can do very well because Apple have proven this point. So I expect no less from Qualcomm here when it’s a bunch of seasoned folks working on this X Elite chip. However I still feel that Windows will be the party pooper.