Leo Says Ep. 76: Hands-on with Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus

Qualcomm has been gearing up for the launch of the Snapdragon Elite X processor for months now. Recently, KitGuru was invited to an event to preview to learn about the new Snapdragon X Plus, as well as get hands-on time with Snapdragon X-equipped laptops.

The Snapdragon X Elite features a 4nm 12-core Qualcomm Oryon CPU, clocked at up to 3.8GHz with up to 4.3GHz dual-core boost speeds. It also features the new Qualcomm Adreno GPU, offering up to 4.6TFLOPS of graphics performance and support for 4K/120Hz displays, multiple 4K or 5K displays, HDR and upgradeable drivers. To drive AI use and development, this chip is also equipped with a powerful NPU, based on the Qualcomm Hexagon platform.

The Snapdragon X Elite won't be the only processor in Qualcomm's arsenal though. The company has also announced the Snapdragon X Plus, a 10-core version of this processor, complete with a 3.8TFLOPs Adreno GPU, and an NPU capable of 45 TOPS to power AI applications. Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon X Plus will offer best-in-class performance with its 10-core Oryon CPU, all while remaining efficient for extra-long battery life.

During this preview event, we got to benchmark several reference grade Snapdragon laptops. The 10-core Snapdragon X Plus scores up to 2,425 points in the Geekbench 6.2 single-thread test, and up to 13,000 points in the multi-thread test. In Cinebench 2024, these numbers come out at 109 points in single-thread and up to 845 points in multi-thread.

The UL Procyon AI inference benchmark sees the processor topping out at 1,800 points, while the Office Productivity UL Procyon benchmark produces scores up to 5,900 points. For graphics, the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark was available, which saw performance topping out at over 38 frames per second.

The 12-core Snapdragon X Elite naturally scores higher in most of these tests. In Cinebench 6.2, we see scores rise to 2,800 points in single-thread and over 14,000 points in multi-thread. In Cinebench 2024, we see scores of 123 points in single-thread and 980 points in multi-thread. It also scores a higher 6500 point mark in the UL Procyon office benchmark.

However, the UL Procyon AI inference and 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmarks did see similar scores between the Snapdragon X Plus and the Snapdragon X Elite. In AI inference, scores top out at 1800 points again, while in 3DMark, we once again see a score of just over 38 frames per second.

Of course, this is just a small selection of benchmarks, we'll have to wait for the first wave of laptops and independent benchmarking to really dive in to the differences between these two processors. For now though, it does appear that they are closely matched in NPU and GPU, while the 12-core CPU of the Snapdragon X Elite takes a lead.

From what we understand, there may be other versions of these processors, with potentially as many as four SKUs each for the Snapdragon X Elite and the Plus. We did ask Qualcomm about this but they are not ready to comment at this time.

We still don't have a launch date for the first Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus laptops. However, with Computex just around the corner, we do expect to hear more on that front soon. Additionally, Microsoft Build is coming up in late May, so we may hear more about the latest improvements for Windows on ARM.

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KitGuru Says: We've been slowly learning more about these processors over the last six months. Hopefully once Computex rolls around, the launch plan will be made clear.

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