Snapdragon X Elite: Impressive Efficiency, But Desktop Performance Lags

BigGo Editorial Team
Snapdragon X Elite: Impressive Efficiency, But Desktop Performance Lags

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, the company's latest foray into the PC chip market, has been making waves with its efficiency claims. However, recent revelations about its architecture and performance at higher power levels paint a more nuanced picture of its capabilities.

Architectural Insights

The Snapdragon X Elite's core architecture has been unveiled, revealing some interesting comparisons with Apple's M4 chip:

  • Core area of 169.6 square millimeters, nearly identical to the Apple M4
  • Based on TSMC's 4nm process, compared to Apple M4's 3nm process
  • Features 12 Oryon architecture CPU cores (codenamed Phoenix)
  • Each core has 192KB of L1 instruction cache and 96KB of L1 data cache
  • 36MB of total L2 cache shared among core groups

Notably, while the CPU cluster is larger, the Adreno X1 GPU is surprisingly compact at just 24.3mm2, about 25% smaller than Apple's M4 GPU.

Performance at Higher Power Levels

Software developer Jeff Geerling tested the Snapdragon X Elite in a dev kit form factor, pushing it beyond its typical 23-watt TDP to around 80-100 watts. The results were eye-opening:

  • Only 10% faster in Geekbench 6 compared to a standard laptop implementation
  • 28% faster in Cinebench 2024's multi-threaded test
  • Performance comparable to Apple's M3 Pro, but at a bit more power

These findings suggest that while the Snapdragon X Elite excels in efficiency at its designed power envelope, it doesn't scale well to desktop-level performance when given more power headroom.

Implications for Future Products

The Snapdragon X Elite's performance characteristics indicate that:

  1. It's optimized for laptop use cases, prioritizing efficiency over raw performance scaling
  2. Qualcomm may need a different architecture for high-performance desktop chips
  3. The upcoming Snapdragon X2 or Project Glymur might address the desktop market more directly

While the Snapdragon X Elite showcases impressive efficiency for mobile computing, it's clear that Qualcomm still has work to do if it wants to compete in the high-performance desktop space currently dominated by AMD and Intel.