Snapdragon X Elite Laptop Performance Disappoints Over Rivals

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Sajjad

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The Snapdragon X Elite is a new SoC from Qualcomm introduced months ago for laptops. The company immediately showed off how the Arm chip could outperform results from Apple, AMD, and Intel in performance testing.

Even though it seemed unlikely, we held onto hope because fresh data kept coming in, suggesting this would be possible. We could observe that the chip outperformed its competitors with less power consumption while delivering a longer battery life in the initial testing.

However, the review from NotebookCheck suggests that the performance is disappointing. As the initial reviews start to surface, it is evident that Qualcomm Snapdragon’s claims aren’t turning out to be true.

Why it matters: Qualcomm is a well-known brand in the mobile phone and tablet industry since it makes high-end Snapdragon SoCs. Despite its success in that market, its chips did not stand out in the laptop market.

The ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED with a Snapdragon X Elite has been thoroughly analyzed, and information on performance, battery life, noise level, temperature, and other factors has been provided.

The four power profiles, which range from 20 to 50W, demonstrate that while noise increases to a high of 57.2 dBA, increasing consumption does not affect performance in tests like 3DMark.

To match the Core Ultra 7 155H in Cinebench 2024, we need a minimum of 35W; however, the Cinebench R23 test yields just 10,856 points for the Snapdragon X Elite at this power. It can be observed that the Core Ultra is 63% faster, with 17,780 points.

Next, let’s talk about graphical performance. A Radeon 780M nearly doubles its score in 3DMark 11, where it only manages 6,352 points. The Snapdragon X Elite exhibits performance close to that of the AMD iGPU in FireStrike, but Time Spy yields poor results compared to the graphics of the Iris Xe G7.

Various games also demonstrate this, such as The Witcher 3 (19 FPS), GTA V (20.4 FPS), and Final Fantasy 15 (15.6 FPS). These performance levels are generally lower than those of the Radeon 780M and Intel Arc featured in the Core Ultra lineup.

If we talk about the battery, you get 13 hours with Wi-Fi, almost 15 hours watching movies, and 1 hour and 37 minutes at maximum performance. Even though these numbers are not bad, an Apple MacBook Air 15 M3 laptop offers 40% more battery life.