Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core analysis - The X1P-42-100 is smaller and cheaper, but not very efficient

In mid July, Qualcomm presented a total of five different ARM processors for Windows laptops, which are called Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus. Most of the models were already available at their market launch date and the SoCs' pure performance capabilities are great—this was already confirmed in our analysis of the Snapdragon X Elite models. Especially with native apps, these are very responsive laptops with long battery runtimes—at least for the most part.

Unfortunately, there are also problems, as Snapdragon chips require a special ARM version of Windows and, by extension, special ARM versions of applications. The selection of these is by no means poor but it quickly becomes problematic when it comes to things that require their own drivers (e.g. our calibration software, external sound cards, etc.). In principle, x86 apps can be emulated and in the best-case scenario, this emulation will only result in a small performance loss, but graphics errors and crashes can't be avoided when running games in particular. In the worst case, the application won't even start. If you are interested in purchasing one of these models, then you should research in advance whether your desired apps will run on the Snapdragon laptop. Qualcomm has published its own info page which lists all native apps and Microsoft has also pointed out the restrictions through a corresponding support page.

In our eyes, the second major problem is the price, as the previous Snapdragon laptops were anything but cheap and oftentimes came at a price comparable to or even more expensive than equivalent models with AMD/Intel chips—where you don't need to worry about compatibility issues at all. This is exactly where the new Snapdragon X Plus models with 8 cores come in, as Qualcomm is expanding its portfolio with smaller chips that are also significantly cheaper. The manufacturer itself speaks of device prices starting at US$799.

The different performance profiles of the two laptops only affect their multi-core performance. We tested the Vivobook S 15 OLED in standard mode (~25-watt TDP, 20-watt CPU) as well as in performance mode (~35-watt TDP, 25-watt CPU), while we only tested the PZ13 in standard mode—whereby its consumption fluctuated somewhat (~15-25-watt CPU).

In order to make a meaningful comparison between the different processors and graphics cards, we took a look at their power consumption in addition to their pure performance running synthetic benchmarks—from which we then determined their efficiency. We always carry out our consumption measurements with an external display connected so that we can eliminate the different internal displays as influencing factors. Nevertheless, we measured the overall consumption of the system here and didn't just rely on the CPU and GPU values that were displayed.

So far, we have used Cinebench R23 for our efficiency comparisons of the CPU performance, as the benchmark also runs natively on the Apple M chips—plus, we have the most comparative data using this. However, Cinebench R23 doesn't run natively with ARM Windows and an additional emulation would distort the results. We have therefore switched to the latest Cinebench 2024, but we currently only have limited comparison options in this case. We still used The Witcher 3 for our efficiency evaluation of the GPU, as it is also recommended for testing in Qualcomm's official review guide and we have enough comparative values to fall back on.

The new X1P-42-100 achieves a maximum of 3.4 GHz on one core, which also corresponds to the familiar X1P-64-100 and X1E-78-100 chips. Unsurprisingly, its benchmark results were therefore identical and very good in total. The smallest Snapdragon chip came ahead of the current Meteor Lake processors from Intel and the old Zen 4 chips from AMD. However, the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Zen 5) just took the lead. Qualcomm can't match the single-core performance of Apple's M3 generation, but this even applies to the top model Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-84-100).

When it came to single-core efficiency, the new Snapdragon X Plus was slightly behind the X1P-64-100 inside the Surface Pro, but the difference was small and the Plus models were practically on par in this scenario. Due to the chip being smaller, we would have expected slightly lower consumption. Its efficiency was still better than that of the Snapdragon X Elite models and the x86 competition however Apple remained ahead with its M3 and old M2 generation.

As we have already seen with the other Snapdragon X processors, multi-core performance can vary greatly depending on the TDP configuration of the individual laptops. With a TDP of 30 watts, the new X1P-42-100 came very close to the small Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100. At 20 watts, the new ARM processor was still just ahead of the Apple M3, while the ProArt PZ13 fell behind the MacBook Air 13 M3 and was only just ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H.

With regard to multi-core efficiency, we noticed two things. Firstly, its efficiency suffers as a result of it not featuring any efficiency cores. Since only the faster performance cores are used in this case, both the X1P-64-100 and some Snapdragon X Elite models perform better. The sweet spot for the new X1P-42-100 appears to be around 20 watts. The ProArt PZ13's consumption fluctuated in our tests, which is why we don't want to overestimate the result, but its efficiency is worse. The new chip is most inefficient at a 30-watt TDP, which is in line with our assumption that more than 30 watts doesn't really make sense for the new 8-core models. Even in the best-case scenario, its efficiency is slightly lower than that of the current AMD Zen 5 chip. An approach with four P and four E cores would probably have been the better choice here.

The 8-core Snapdragon X Plus models have been given a new graphics card that is available in two performance levels, namely the Adreno X1-45. In the case of the new X1P-42-100, it comes with the slower version with 1.7 TFLOPS and a maximum clock speed of 1.107 GHz. Its graphics performance is significantly weaker than the X1-85 version with 3.8 TFLOPS and it can basically be said that its pure GPU performance has been halved. This means that the new X1-45 falls behind the Radeon 760M and the old Iris Xe Graphics. Its performance is still sufficient for everyday use and playing back high-resolution videos is of course no problem, but you can forget about gaming with the GPU. The new X1-45 GPU also falls behind the X1-85 models when it comes to efficiency.