Qualcomm says its Snapdragon Elite chip beats out the Apple M3

When Qualcomm launched the forthcoming Snapdragon Elite X SoC in October, there was a lot of interest from Windows on Arm fans to see whether the company could finally catch Apple with its Arm-based silicon for PCs. Qualcomm didn’t disappoint with its new custom Oryon cores outperforming Apple’s then still current M2 silicon. The 80W variant of the Snapdragon Elite X managed to blow past the Apple M2 Max by 10%, with the lower power 23W variant still able to draw level.

The results vindicated Qualcomm’s decision to acquire Nuvia in 2021 for $1.4B, which brought with it co-founder and CEO, Gerard Williams, who had formerly been Apple’s A-series lead architect. However, the chip is still a far way from launching with the first Windows on Arm PCs powered by the Snapdragon Elite X not expected to ship until July. Nonetheless, Qualcomm is still keen to keep users waiting for the chip excited about what it will deliver when it does arrive later next year.

With the launch of Apple's cutting-edge 3nm-based M3 family of chips arriving shortly after Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite X unveiling, the San Diego-based company has revealed that its new chip also outperforms Apple’s latest and greatest silicon too. As Digital Trends reports, Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon Elite X 80W variant is 21 percent faster than the entry-level M3 in multi-core performance. This is really good news from a performance perspective for the next generation of Windows on Arm laptops in the pipeline.

However, Qualcomm still also has to contend with Intel and its latest 14th generation Meteor Lake laptop processors which were just announced. While Qualcomm hasn’t yet had a chance to compare the performance with Intel’s latest chips itself, leaked benchmarks suggest that it could come close to matching Intel’s performance, while delivering much better battery life. Sadly, it is still several months away before we can get Snapdragon Elite X-powered devices in hand to test ourselves, but there is certainly plenty to be optimistic, and even excited, about.