Qualcomm shows off its Snapdragon X Plus/Elite muscles before its return to laptops

Powerful Windows laptops with processors ARM? This is the whole meaning of the announcement made by Qualcomm.

For weeks, Qualcomm has been having fun building up pressure around the arrival of its new processors, ARM chips for Windows which could well give a good kick to the anthill.

Qualcomm, its full name Qualcomm Technologies, has put an end to the suspense and lifted the veil on the expansion of its ranges with four new APUs. peak “, and that’s Qualcomm saying it!

A Snapdragon X Plus to boot

Four APUs, that is to say four processors whose particularity is to integrate a relatively robust graphics solution, in any case sufficient to do without a dedicated graphics card… An asset in the world of laptops.

Indeed, Qualcomm is clearly targeting the world of portable PCs, particularly in the case of the only model from the Snapdragon X Plus range presented during this announcement. Identified by the number X1P-64-100, this chip is distinguished by its 10 cores, its 42 MB of cache and its maximum frequency of 3.4 GHz.

For this chip, Qualcomm mentions “ Up to 37% faster CPU performance than competitors, while consuming up to 54% less power “. The brand also talks about 45 TOPS (tera operations per second) and insists on support for LPDDR5X at 8,446 MT/s.

Alongside this single Snapdragon X Plus chip, there was also talk of three models of Snapdragon

Three Snapdragon X Elite for the high end

Referenced X1E-78-100, X1E-80-100 and X1E-84-100, these CPUs have in common their number of Oryon cores (12). They use the 42 MB of cache of the X1P-64-100 as well as its support for the LPPDR5X-8448, but are distinguished by higher frequencies: from 3.4 to 3.8 GHz, with even the possibility of a boost of up to 4.2 GHz on two cores for the “80” and “84”.

Qualcomm would have presented some performance measurements obtained on its new processors, but we have not received any official document. On the other hand, our colleagues from The Verge evoke a tight competition with Apple’s M3, which dominates in single-core, but is overwhelmed in multi-core, whether on Geekbench 6 or Cinebench 2024.

For more “classic” competition on PC, The Verge specifies that it was difficult to distinguish the performance of these Snapdragons from those of the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H or AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS. This bodes well for Qualcomm, especially since a game, Controlwas also presented: there was talk of animation at 30 frames per second… without a dedicated graphics card, therefore.

Now the question arises of the first laptop models to integrate these new ARM processors from Qualcomm. We are talking about a release in mid-2024… that is to say in just a few weeks.

Sources: Qualcomm, The Verge