We did a deep dive into Qualcomm’s upcoming X Elite laptop CPUs at the chip maker’s Snapdragon Summit this past fall. The chips are slated to be Qualcomm’s biggest push yet into the high-performance/high-efficiency tier of processors for laptops. Running on Windows on Arm and centered around a new set of CPU cores, dubbed “Oryon” and designed in concert with some technologies and personnel from Qualcomm acquisition Nuvia (which includes some former Apple silicon braintrust), Snapdragon X Elite looks to be a far cry from earlier Qualcomm laptop efforts. Those got little traction in the market outside a few Microsoft Surface devices and showed generally lackluster performance versus Intel and AMD alternatives.This time it will be different, Qualcomm insists, and it has gone to great pains to tease out performance previews of the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite chip. So far, the company has shown its X Elite at several venues, implemented in variously configured reference-design machines. This week, we got to play with the most recently optimized versions of these reference machines on some slightly different benchmarks, in a couple of configurations. We also got to try out some gaming on the X Elite’s integrated graphics—and it was a pleasant surprise.Gaming on a Snapdragon Laptop?What does gaming on Windows on Arm look like? That’s a question that up now we haven’t had much insight into. Gaming was a non-factor on earlier Snapdragon designs, and Qualcomm notes that the vast majority of games will still need to run through an emulation mode, which will presumably assert its own performance overhead.
(Credit: John Burek)
That said, we got a chance to do some basic run-throughs on a couple of games: Redout 2 and Control, as well as an, um, unauthorized look at the classic Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Mind you: This was not formal benchmarking by a long shot, but a few moments of experiential play on each title with a frame counter on the screen.The games were set to 1200p and low settings. In Redout 2, we consistently maintained a frame rate of around 35 to 45 frames per second (fps), seldom dipping below 30fps. Racing around the environment’s futuristic track, steering, acceleration, and the overall gameplay felt smooth, without screen tearing, any heavy swells or ebbs in the frame rate, or any kind of slowdowns in more graphically intense moments.Our Control runaround didn’t get deep into the game; it consisted simply of us running the main character around the game’s introductory lobby, hunting for items and weapons. Likewise, in this relatively undemanding environment, we saw frame rates in the low 30fps range, with the occasional dip below. Still, this was impressive for integrated graphics in this demanding AAA game, and it reminded us of the generally smooth low-detail 1080p experiences we’ve had with Intel Arc and Iris Xe Graphics solutions in the recent past.
(Credit: John Burek)
Last up was a game we technically weren’t supposed to see, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We got to play for 5 minutes or so digging out of the game’s initial, literal hole—of Lara Croft struggling and pick-axing her way out of an abandoned mineshaft. Again, the onscreen frame counter kept us a little above or below 30fps most of the time as we struggled toward the daylight, in this scene that emphasizes shadows and detail in the dark.Now, don’t expect fancy graphics with ray-tracing support or in-game “high” detail settings. You’ll probably get even better numbers at 720p at medium detail, if you’re willing to go that route. And the actual compatibility situation with Windows games in emulator mode remains to be seen; after all, we didn’t get to choose the games here. The fact that the Snapdragon X Elite, certainly not touted as a gaming platform nor expected to be one, was able to serve up some passable frame rates in a handful of well-known games shows promise for at least parity with existing Intel and AMD integrated graphics processor (IGP) solutions. We’ll see what follows when we can get more games on it—on our terms.Some New Benches: Snapdragon X Elite vs. Meteor LakeWhen we saw X Elite for the first time last fall, the benchmark session we attended was highly controlled, centered on a subset of common benchmarks run for us by Qualcomm representatives on site. The machines were still in a state that the chip maker wasn’t keen to have the attending press run the tests themselves.The reins were loosened in today’s session—well, just a little. For formal Snapdragon X Elite benchmarking, Qualcomm had four machines at our disposal, two samples each of a mainstream and a high-performance configuration using the chip. The first had 16GB of RAM and the other had 64GB of RAM. The 16GB machine was slightly lower clocked (4GHz single-threaded boost speed, 3.4GHz base clock), while the 64GB machine was clocked at 4.2GHz boost, 3.8GHz base. The integrated graphics processor on board was also clocked slightly lower on the 16GB machine (1.25GHz, versus 1.5GHz on the “high performance” 64GB config).
(Credit: John Burek)
Qualcomm pre-installed a mix of benchmarks that we’ve seen run before on the X Elite, as well as a few new ones. This is an interesting mix, though, because at our first rodeo with X Elite, both of the Snapdragon test configs had 64GB of RAM but very different performance profiles. Here, we have a 16GB and a 64GB, with the former likely more indicative of real-world memory loadouts.More interesting, though, is the fact that Intel “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra chips have debuted since the time we first saw X Elite. So we dragged an Asus ZenBook Duo with the Core Ultra 7 155H, a frequent target of Qualcomm’s comparisons, onto the test bench as soon as we returned from Qualcomm’s demo and did some comparison tests. Here they are.Graphics and Browser TestingLet’s start with graphics. We saw some 3DMark Wild Life Extreme results the first go-around with Snapdragon X Elite. Here it is again with these two latest samples versus the Intel Arc IGP in the Core Ultra 7 155, as implemented in the Zenbook Duo. Note: We’ll also include here a browser test (unrelated to the IGP performance) to keep the charts from multiplying in this article…
The Zenbook Duo is a dual-screen laptop, a bit of an anomaly, but the only Core Ultra 7 155H machine that we had on hand at the moment with integrated graphics, as opposed to a discrete GeForce chip. (We wanted to keep the comparison as parallel as possible.) The integrated graphics on this machine comprises Intel’s latest and greatest Arc solution. (For more on Arc Graphics performance, check out our deep dive into Arc integrated gaming.) This is just one test, of course, taken in isolation, but the score disparity is pretty clear. Even the lower-clocked Snapdragon X Elite outperformed the Arc Graphics in the Zenbook by several thousand points. For some context, the X Elite’s showing is roughly in parallel with the score we saw from the 2022 Apple MacBook Pro 13 with an M2 processor and a 10-core GPU.As for the browser test, this is mostly interesting in that it was run in the most recent version of the Chrome browser on the Snapdragon laptops. We covered about a week ago that Google has brought a Snapdragon-optimized version of its market-leading browser to Snapdragon machines. (See our feature analyzing the performance of the new Chrome browser in another of these X Elite reference machines.) Like in our earlier story, we ran Speedometer, an in-browser test, on both of the X Elite units, as well as our Meteor Lake sample. As you can see above, the Snapdragon system executed the tests with close to double the score.CPU and Content Creation TestsAnd so, on to some CPU raw-performance and content-creation tests…
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We ran the latest version of Cinebench at both the multicore and single-threaded settings. Even the lower-clocked of the X Elites outpaced the Zenbook Duo by about 20% on the single-threaded test, and by a little more on the multithreaded. What was especially interesting? The higher-clocked 64GB configuration boosted the multi-threaded performance by almost 20% over the 16GB configuration. That suggests that X Elite’s lower power consumption versus Intel (per Qualcomm’s presentations) could be manifesting itself in lower operating temperatures, which might be allowing the chip to run at peak speeds for a longer period of time when pressed all-out before it throttles down.Geekbench 6.2 showed a less dramatic dynamic, though the two Snapdragon X Elite configurations still came out on top on the multi-threaded test. The single-threaded performance test was the one test in which the Zenbook Duo acquitted itself reasonably well. It was on par with the lesser Snapdragon X Elite configuration.We also observed a bit of content-creation performance via Blender Benchmark 4.1. This dedicated Blender benchmark test runs through three models; in each case here, the test results are a summed combination of the three model runs. As in any benchmark, you should expect a bit of wobble run-to-run, and that may account for the 64GB configuration underperforming the 16GB one a little. But the overall story is clear, with the Zenbook Duo performing at about half the level in this test that the Snapdragon units did.Okay, Bring on the Elites, Already!We didn’t touch on here a few additional AI benchmarks that Qualcomm showed for these 45 TOPS processors. (Benchmarking AI is still in its infancy, and we didn’t want to get into the weeds for such an early chip comparison.) On the whole, this is an impressive showing for the reference systems, though we have to get out our Himalayan salt grinder and shake some big grains liberally over the narrative here. Remember that these are reference systems that have been designed and chosen for performance, and the benchmarks are of Qualcomm’s own choosing. That also means that the relative deltas between machines may change a bit once we get to choose the tests.Also bear in mind that the Snapdragon X Elites are designed to be implemented by system OEMs in a range of machines at different power levels. It’s up to the system maker to disclose details about the power level and how the CPU is being deployed. The idea of a thermal design power (TDP) or similar rating, and how that might affect comparisons, hasn’t been factored in here. Actual systems with X Elite can presumably range well to either side of the test numbers we saw for the 16GB configuration. (We are assuming the upper-clocked 64GB model represents X Elite performance close to the top of its potential.)
(Credit: John Burek)
Also bear in mind that the Zenbook Duo comparison system we used is just one Intel Core Ultra 7 configuration. Other 155H configs themselves will vary, and the 155H is not the only Core Ultra 7 laptop chip out there. (That said, Qualcomm has been targeting the Core Ultra 7 155H as a “most parallel” key competitor for the Snapdragon X Elite.) As we test more 155H-based systems against eventual X Elite retail models that come to market, we may see less-drastic differences. After all, while the Snapdragon X Elite looks like a cool chip in isolation, it will only matter in the real world how well it performs in machines that you can actually buy, and that we can test independently. We look forward to that day, soon.
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