Qualcomm has launched two new chipsets for laptops, the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite.
advertisement“Qualcomm is cheating on the Snapdragon X Plus/Elite benchmarks given to OEMs and the press,” claims an article by SemiAccurate.
Benchmarks shared by QualcommSnapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X EliteQualcomm's latest offering in the laptop chip market, the Snapdragon X Plus, marks the company's entry-level model.
Additionally, the Snapdragon X Plus supports LPDDR5x memory with a peak transfer rate of 8448 MT/s and integrates a 3.8 teraflop (TFLOP) Adreno GPU.
What's intriguing about these chips is their architecture; unlike competitors like Apple Silicon and Intel's chips, which use a hybrid design with dedicated performance and efficiency cores, Qualcomm's Snapdragon cores are all designated as "performance cores."
Qualcomm has launched two new chipsets for laptops, the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite. And even though Qualcomm has made laptop processors in the past, the announcement is catching so much attention because the benchmarks shared by the company show that the new Snapdragon X-series chipsets will compete with the best in class chipsets that include the Apple M3, Intel Core Ultra 9 and AMD Ryzen 9. However, barely hours after the launch, Qualcomm’s claims about the new chipsets’ capabilities have been challenged.
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“Qualcomm is cheating on the Snapdragon X Plus/Elite benchmarks given to OEMs and the press,” claims an article by SemiAccurate. Teh report relies on information from two "major" OEMs and a "trusted source at Qualcomm." It claims that Qualcomm's benchmark performance is challenging to replicate, even for top-tier OEM developers.
According to the report, OEMs have struggled to match the performance figures claimed by Qualcomm for the X Series chips. Initial test results reportedly fell significantly below Qualcomm's stated numbers, with blame attributed to Windows on Arm's suboptimal optimisation and inadequate cooling. Despite efforts to address these issues over time, testers allegedly failed to achieve results comparable to Qualcomm's benchmarks. Apparently, one of the publication's sources even likened the Snapdragon X Elite's performance to that of Intel Celeron chips –– which was launched in 1998.
The publication has not been able to quantify its claims of cheating. It says that Qualcomm hasn’t allowed anyone to do independent testing. Benchmarks shared by Qualcomm
Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite
Qualcomm's latest offering in the laptop chip market, the Snapdragon X Plus, marks the company's entry-level model. Boasting 10 cores and 42MB of cache, it reaches a maximum multithreaded frequency of 3.4GHz. What sets it apart is its Neural Processing Unit (NPU), capable of a whopping 45 tera operations per second (TOPS), making it ideal for advanced generative AI tasks.
Additionally, the Snapdragon X Plus supports LPDDR5x memory with a peak transfer rate of 8448 MT/s and integrates a 3.8 teraflop (TFLOP) Adreno GPU. But that's not all — Qualcomm is also rolling out three twelve-core Snapdragon X Elite processors. These variants offer even higher clock speeds, reaching up to 3.8GHz, with an integrated GPU boasting a remarkable 4.6 TFLOPs.
What's intriguing about these chips is their architecture; unlike competitors like Apple Silicon and Intel's chips, which use a hybrid design with dedicated performance and efficiency cores, Qualcomm's Snapdragon cores are all designated as "performance cores." According to Qualcomm, this approach results in superior performance, power efficiency, and battery life compared to the competition.
Furthermore, the top two SKUs of the Snapdragon X Elite feature Dual-Core Boost technology, allowing them to reach speeds of up to 4.2GHz—an equivalent to Intel's Turbo Boost or AMD's Turbo Core. Image: Qualcomm
