Will 2024 finally be the year of the transition to ARM for Windows? We were able to try the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip for PC. We came away quite impressed.
Qualcomm has been selling us Snapdragon PCs for more than five years that would be able to compete with our AMD or Intel computers. Let’s face it, we never really come away convinced. Until now, ARM machines running Windows, like the Surface Pro The fault is both a lack of optimization of Windows and an architecture still behind its competitors.
With the Snapdragon X Elite presented in October 2023, Qualcomm promises to change everything. Thanks to a brand new Oryon architecture resulting from the acquisition of Nuvia, but also to an evolution of Windows, the firm now promises to be head and shoulders above all its competitors, even the Apple M3 of the latest MacBook Air.
The brand invited us to a test session in one of the tallest towers in London. In a room reserved for the occasion, the brand has placed several reference machines. These are laptop PCs designed by Qualcomm and integrating the Snapdragon X Elite. The brand ran several benchmarks there, but also video games.
Convinced for the first time
We were also able to run some benchmarks like Cinebench and Speedometer, a browser speed test. For the latter, we used Google Chrome in beta version, which now offers a native ARM version.
On Cinebench, the Snapdragon X Elite obtains a score of 123 points in single-core and 1219 points in multi-core. It thus outperforms the Apple M3 of our MacBook Air, which obtained a score of 141 and 562 points on the same test. It should be noted, however, that the Qualcomm PC has a fan for its dissipation, which is not the case with the Apple PC. The Apple M3 is a chip with 4 high-performance cores and 4 energy-saving cores, where the Snapdragon X Elite brings together 12 high-performance cores. We understand better how Qualcomm can surpass Apple’s chip in multitasking.
And even video games
But the most impressive thing, in our opinion, was undoubtedly the demonstration on the video game side. We were able to run the games Controlfrom Remedy, and Baldur’s Gate 3 by Larian Studio. Qualcomm does not claim to offer a machine dedicated to video games, but it works. The games ran in Full HD at 30 frames per second with the graphics at minimum. Not ideal conditions, but it worked well. In the case of Baldur’s Gate 3AMD’s FSR 2 was activated in quality mode to reach 30 frames per second.
We are faced with an ultraportable capable of running the latest games of the moment through the Windows emulation layer. Obviously, the performance is not at the level of the most efficient PCs on the market, but it is sufficient for light gaming sessions. Especially if we think of less demanding games like a simple Balatro.
We come away with our mouths watering and the desire to move on to the next chapter: that of testing commercial machines. For this, we will have to wait for a launch planned for mid-year. We imagine that Qualcomm will give us news during Computex, the Taipei exhibition dedicated to IT which takes place at the beginning of June.
NB. Our journalist Cassim Montilla was present in London as part of a press trip organized by Qualcomm from April 9 to 10, 2024.
