Snapdragon has become the latest entrant in the PC processor space with its Snapdragon X series chipsets. The company's integrated SoC in computers is now a necessary classifier to have a device be labelled Copilot+ PCs, which is another Microsoft-given terminology for AI PCs. However, these are just marketing nomenclature, that do not have a lot to do with the overall performance of the chipsets. A new report has now conducted benchmark tests for the Snapdragon X series chipsets to find how they fare against the chips by Apple, Intel, and AMD.
Snapdragon X Series Chips Reportedly Outperform Apple's M3 Chipset
Extensive benchmark tests conducted by The Verge show that the Snapdragon X Elite chipsets are 2-3 percent faster in single-core performance than Apple's M2 Max chips that powered the company's 2023 MacBook Pro model. These benchmark tests were conducted on Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 as they work across all of the company's processors, as per the publication.
The Snapdragon SoC was also reportedly outperformed Intel's Core Ultra 7 155H and the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processors by 24 and 17 percent, respectively. However, when compared to the Apple M3 chipsets, the Cupertino-based tech giant is said to be leading the race in The Verge's single-core benchmark tests.
The Snapdragon X series chipsets fared significantly well in CPU multi-core performance benchmark, according to the publication. However, Apple's M2 Max and M3 Max were able to outperform them, thanks to a higher number of cores (Apple's M3 Max has 16 cores vs up to 12 cores on its Snapdragon X series counterpart).
On the other hand, the Apple M2 Max chipset with 12 cores reportedly offered marginally faster performance compared to the highest-tier Snapdragon X Elite chips in the Cinebench 2024 benchmark test.
GPU Performance of Snapdragon X Elite Series Said to Lag Behind Rivals
GPU performance is an important consideration if users plan to run games or apps that are resource intensive. As per the report, this is one area where the Snapdragon X series chipsets fall behind their Apple, Intel and AMD counterparts.
In the Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) benchmark testing, the publication found the highest score for Snapdragon X Elite chips with Qualcomm Adreno GPU to be 24,004 points in the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
On the other hand, the AMD Radeon 780M GPU in the Acer Swift Go 14 AMD scored 29,199 and the Intel Arc GPU in the MSI Prestige 16 Evo scored 34,528. The leader in this category was the Apple M3 Max in the late 2023 MacBook Pro 16 with a score of 91,480.
Snapdragon X Series Could Offer Competitive Battery Life
Battery life is another important metric for chipset performance. This is the test of the overall optimisation of the SoC in the device. The publication found that Snapdragon-powered laptops, on average, offered between 14 to 16 hours of battery backup. However, none could reach the 18-hour mark offered by the M3 MacBook Air.
Interestingly, AMD and Intel fared even worse than Snapdragon in this area. The only exception reportedly was the Intel-powered Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra which was able to run for slightly longer than 14 hours on a single battery charge.
Based on these metrics, it can be said that while the Snapdragon X series chipsets are not clear winners in benchmark tests, they still offer higher CPU, GPU performance and battery life than previous Arm-based Windows laptops.
Notably, Snapdragon-powered laptops in the US are comparatively cheaper than the ones by Apple, Intel, and AMD, but we do not know how much these laptops will cost in India.
In a recent conversation with Gadgets 360, Don McGuire, the Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm said, “We worked closely with Microsoft for the last three to four years to build the Snapdragon X series chipsets. The new chipsets deliver high performance across CPU, GPU, and NPU. These [Snapdragon chipset-powered] AI PCs will be able to offer better videoconferencing capabilities, overall performance, battery life, and AI performance.”
