2y ago

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite can beat Apple’s M2 Max, Intel i9 in new ARM’s race for Windows laptops

www.windowscentral.com

r/gadgets

r/hardware

8 comments

This will be great for Linux users, and Windows users won’t care at all, because Windows on ARM is an absolute shit show.
- Until it’s revealed all the features on the chip need specialised closed-source drivers, and none of it will work very well until it gets an open source implementation in 5-10 years, and even then there will be limitations.
  
  Well that would only be shooting themselves in the foot.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Assuming Qualcomm’s numbers are remotely close to what is claimed, those are some astonishing benchmarks to be thrown around, especially compared to the older Snapdragon 8cX, which is closer to an Intel 11th Gen Core i5.
Qualcomm claims its new Hexagon NPU hits up to 45 TOPs (Tera Operations Per Second) and can run generative AI LLM (large language models) over 13B parameters on-device with “blazing speeds.”
Assuming Qualcomm’s numbers and no restrictions for tighter thermal constraints, Microsoft’s prized tablet PC could be more potent than the current gen Dell XPS 15 workstation and get better battery life than the iPad Pro.
Such a combination would be a remarkably powerful PC that is not only extremely fast but also packs some of the highest level NPU performance known, all while getting significantly better battery life than the competition.
Microsoft is not expected to release a Surface Pro 10 until fall 2024, and by then, Apple and Intel will already have faster systems, but that won’t negate what could be the holy grail in Windows computing.
The takeaway is that the Elite series is just one of the multiple versions of this platform that Qualcomm is set to release over the coming years to hit different PC categories at different price points, possibly higher and very likely lower, to better compete against Intel and AMD.
The original article contains 1,325 words, the summary contains 224 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Slap that bad boy in steam deck v2. If those numbers are all close to true it would be an amazing chip to put in the next version of steam deck. Much better battery life, world's better graphics processing, snapdragon chips play nice with Linux, and you could get cell data plans on it for online on the go gaming if you wanted.
- Yes it could be great but that would add another translation layer onto the stack since all the x86 machine code needs to be translated to ARM. I don't know if this will actually be a performance gain then
- According to Ars Technica this processor draws 50W to get those performance numbers. The entire Steam Deck doesn't even use that much power.

8 comments