Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite looks like the Windows world’s answer to Apple Silicon

For years, Qualcomm has been making Snapdragon chips for Windows PCs, and for years, those chips' performance have failed to dislodge Intel's or AMD's chips to any significant degree. Its latest Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (and the closely related Microsoft SQ3) appears in just two consumer PCs, the cumbersomely named Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with 5G and Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s Gen 1.

But that may be changing. Nearly three years ago, Qualcomm bought a company called Nuvia for $1.4 billion. Nuvia was mainly working on server processors, but the company's founders and many of its employees had also been involved in developing the A- and M-series Apple Silicon processors that have all enabled the iPhone, iPad, and Mac to achieve their enviable blend of performance and battery life. Today, Qualcomm is formally announcing the fruit of the Nuvia acquisition: the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is a 12-core, 4 nm chip that will compete directly with Intel's Core processors and AMD Ryzen chips in PCs—and, less directly, Apple's M2 and M3-series processors for Macs.

Qualcomm says the Snapdragon X Elite will begin arriving in PCs starting in mid-2024. The company has also announced a new Snapdragon SoC for smartphones, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Meet the Snapdragon X Elite

The X Elite has a 12-core CPU based on the Oryon architecture. Unlike Intel's, Apple's, and even some of Qualcomm's other chips, the X Elite uses 12 large cores, rather than a mix of large and small ones.

Credit: Qualcomm

The star of the Snapdragon X Elite is its all-new custom CPU architecture, codenamed Oryon. The X Elite includes a total of 12 Oryon cores, rather than a mix of large and small cores like Qualcomm has used in past designs. When all cores are active, they can run at peak speeds of up to 3.8 GHz, though when just one or two cores are boosting they can go up to 4.3 GHz.

Qualcomm uses some Apple-esque performance charts to demonstrate the X Elite's performance and power efficiency; the company claims that the X Elite will run up to twice as fast as an Intel Core i7-1355U or Core i7-1360P at the same power level, or it can match their performance while using 68 percent less power. Qualcomm also says the X Elite can match the performance of a beefier Core i7-13800H using 65 percent less power—providing roughly the same multi-core performance at 30 W that the Intel chip provides at 90 W. The X Elite's power consumption appears to max out at around 50 W, and to go as low as 10 W, at least according to these charts.

Compared to ultraportable U- and P-series CPUs from Intel, Qualcomm says it can provide the same level of performance at around 18 W as Intel can at 50 W. At 50 W, Qualcomm says the X Elite can run up to twice as fast.

Qualcomm

Compared to ultraportable U- and P-series CPUs from Intel, Qualcomm says it can provide the same level of performance at around 18 W as Intel can at 50 W. At 50 W, Qualcomm says the X Elite can run up to twice as fast. Qualcomm

Compared to a higher-end H-series processor, Qualcomm says it can perform the same at 30 W as Intel does at 90 W.

Qualcomm

Compared to a higher-end H-series processor, Qualcomm says it can perform the same at 30 W as Intel does at 90 W. Qualcomm

Qualcomm's direct comparisons to Apple were relatively few and far between, but the company does say that the X Elite is about 50 percent faster than the M2 at peak performance in multi-threaded tests.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm's direct comparisons to Apple were relatively few and far between, but the company does say that the X Elite is about 50 percent faster than the M2 at peak performance in multi-threaded tests. Qualcomm

Compared to a higher-end H-series processor, Qualcomm says it can perform the same at 30 W as Intel does at 90 W. Qualcomm

Qualcomm's direct comparisons to Apple were relatively few and far between, but the company does say that the X Elite is about 50 percent faster than the M2 at peak performance in multi-threaded tests. Qualcomm

These manufacturer-provided claims should always be taken with a grain of salt, but if they're anywhere close to accurate it seems like the X Elite could be well-suited for both ultraportable PCs (like the ThinkPad X Carbon) and thin-and-light workstations (like a Dell XPS 15 or 14-inch MacBook Pro). Lower power consumption also means better battery life and lower temperatures, which should make fanless MacBook Air-style designs possible.

Qualcomm hasn't said whether it plans to launch any versions of the X Elite with fewer CPU or GPU cores enabled, though we'll presumably find that out once actual products start to launch.

Qualcomm spent most of its time comparing the X Elite's performance and power usage to Intel's rather than Apple's—which makes sense, since Apple is coming up on its third generation of Arm chips for Macs. But it's clear that Qualcomm has Apple Silicon in its sights, too.

Qualcomm says that the X Elite has "50 percent faster peak multi-threaded performance" than the Apple M2, based on a multi-threaded Geekbench 6.2 test. Qualcomm's charts imply a peak power usage of around 50 W for the X Elite, which suggests that Qualcomm can roughly match the CPU performance of Apple's M2 Pro or M1 Max at roughly the same power consumption—this would be impressive for a first outing. But remember that this is just one test that Qualcomm itself has provided and that Apple is gearing up to release M3-series processors on a new 3 nm manufacturing process, which ought to help Apple keep its power-efficiency edge.

Graphics and other details

Qualcomm says that the X Elite's Adreno GPU has upgradeable drivers, which means new capabilities can be added over time. But it wouldn't say for how long it would actually provide those drivers.

Credit: Qualcomm

We have fewer details about the makeup of the chip's Adreno-integrated GPU, but we know that it will support a 4K 120 Hz laptop display, plus a total of three 4K external displays (or two 5K external displays). The GPU supports the DirectX 12 graphics API—no Vulkan support, at least not yet—and Qualcomm says it will feature "upgradeable drivers." The company wouldn't say how many years of driver update support it planned to offer for the GPU (or any other component of the SoC, for that matter). Qualcomm only provides three years' worth of hardware support for its Snapdragon chips in Android phones.

Qualcomm compared the X Elite's GPU favorably to both Intel's Iris Xe and AMD's Radeon 780M, the best integrated GPUs you can (currently) buy. The Adreno GPU is reportedly up to twice as fast as the Iris Xe and up to 80 percent faster than the Radeon 780M, or it can match their performance while using about one-fifth as much power.

As with the CPU tests, Qualcomm claims impressive performance and efficiency gains for its Adreno GPU compared to Intel's Iris Xe.

Qualcomm

As with the CPU tests, Qualcomm claims impressive performance and efficiency gains for its Adreno GPU compared to Intel's Iris Xe. Qualcomm

AMD's integrated GPUs are generally better than Intel's, but Qualcomm says it can beat them, too.

Qualcomm

AMD's integrated GPUs are generally better than Intel's, but Qualcomm says it can beat them, too. Qualcomm

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3.

Qualcomm

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Qualcomm

AMD's integrated GPUs are generally better than Intel's, but Qualcomm says it can beat them, too. Qualcomm

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Qualcomm

The chip also includes respectable media encoding and decoding capabilities, with support for hardware-accelerated H.264, H.265/HEVC, and AV1 video encoding and decoding, plus hardware-accelerated decoding support for the VP9 codec.

Qualcomm's Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) also makes a return for AI and machine-learning tasks that can't as easily be accelerated by a CPU or GPU. Qualcomm says the new NPU is capable of up to 45 "tera operations per second" (TOPS), three times more than the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. For now, Windows mostly uses the NPU to accelerate some webcam background removal features, though as Microsoft adds more AI features to Windows, local processing will become more important. Algorithms like Stable Diffusion can also benefit from NPU acceleration.

And Qualcomm being Qualcomm, the X Elite comes with a Snapdragon X65 5G modem capable of peak download speeds up to 10 Gbps (though this will be heavily reliant on your connection, and these speeds will be thoroughly theoretical for most users). Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 round out the wireless connectivity.

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3.

Qualcomm

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Qualcomm

An overview of Snapdragon X Elite features.

Qualcomm

An overview of Snapdragon X Elite features. Qualcomm

The X Elite's NPU claims to be roughly three times faster than the last-generation Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Qualcomm

An overview of Snapdragon X Elite features. Qualcomm

Finally, let's talk about I/O. The X Elite can use up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, which can provide up to 136 GB/s of memory bandwidth to the chip. The image signal processor (ISP) supports up to 64 MP cameras and 4K HDR video capture. The chip supports PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs and the UFS 4.0 and SD 3.0 storage standards, as well as up to three USB 4 ports (plus two more 10 Gbps USB 3.2 gen 2 ports).

The Windows factor

No matter how good the hardware is, it's only part of the puzzle. The Apple Silicon transition succeeded in part because Apple's Rosetta 2 compatibility layer made x86-to-Arm code translation mostly invisible to the user, and because the company had already broken legacy technologies like 32-bit app support and certain kinds of drivers in previous macOS releases. Qualcomm will be relying on another company's software to succeed, namely the Arm version of Microsoft's Windows 11.