News of the Snapdragon X Elite: Full steam ahead to laptop dominance over Intel, AMD and Apple M3 (video)

All out against Intel

Even though AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS is at the top of the race in Qualcomm's slides, the chosen opponent in the analysis is primarily Intel and its current Meteor Lake chip generation in the form of the Core Ultra 7 155H and the Core Ultra 9 185H. Here, the focus is on the performance and efficiency advantages of the bright red ARM challenger, the Snapdragon X Elite. The current stand of the official benchmarks is as follows:

• In Geekbench 6.2 single-thread, the Snapdragon X Elite is either 54% faster than the Core Ultra 7 155H with the same power consumption (ISO power) or is 65% more efficient. The Snapdragon X Elite beats the Intel Core 9 185H by 51% with the same power consumption or draws 65% less power.
• In Geekbench 6.2 multi-threaded performance, the new ARM chip either performs 52% better than the Core Ultra 7 155H at ISO power or requires 60% less power for the same performance. Compared to the Core Ultra 9 185H, the Snapdragon chip processes 41% faster with the same consumption or is 58% more efficient.
• Qualcomm also advertises 36% higher performance than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H at ISO power or 50% lower power consumption in 3DMark Wildlife Extreme.
  
• Now that the Chrome web browser is available in an ARM version, the Speedometer performance can finally be suitably compared with that on an Intel system. Here, the native Chrome version on Qualcomm's test system beats the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H by 20%, while Microsoft's Edge browser even runs 57% faster and the Brave alternative 15% faster.
  
  

Better battery life thanks to Snapdragon X Elite

Performance is one thing, efficiency is another, as already implied by Qualcomm's neat charts. For those who are more interested in long battery life, the upcoming ARM alternative is the perfect choice. According to Qualcomm's latest information, Microsoft 365 apps, as Office products are now called, will run 40% longer on a Snapdragon X Elite system than on an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H notebook. Locally saved movies will have 43% longer playback time, YouTube streams 89% longer.

Those who often have to sit in Teams meetings will now have remain seated twice as long, while having 58% more web browsing time. These figures are based on a reference device from Qualcomm with a 75 Wh battery, which is the same as a Zenbook 14 OLED from Asus with Intel architecture. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen what OEM manufacturers can actually extract out of the Qualcomm chip and whether these values can be reproduced in practice. The whole TDP issue also remains unresolved, as Qualcomm has only confirmed thus far that everything from fanless low-power systems to 80-watt monsters are possible.
 

Faster app launches and many native ARM apps at launch

Of course, some skepticism is also warranted in regard to all other data provided by Qualcomm. For example, app launches, which are said to be faster across the board than on Intel systems. Here, the range extends from a 7% time gain when starting 7zip to Spotify launching 69% faster, and plenty of native apps are expected to be available in time for the launch in summer.

Although Microsoft has promised even better x86 emulation with its next Windows 11 version, the supreme discipline is applications and games in the form of native ARM code. In the office and enterprise segment as well as in entertainment, social media and creator apps, there should be enough programs at launch that "just work". However, the slide below does not only include native apps, at least as of today.