In late 2023, Qualcomm announced it would soon take on AMD and Intel in the laptop world with its newest Arm-based SoC, the Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm announced this in October, and at that time, Intel had yet to release what it called the most advanced mobile processor it had ever made, the Meteor Lake “Core Ultra” series of CPUs. Now that Meteor Lake is widely available, Qualcomm is reiterating its claims of superiority by saying even Intel’s latest doesn’t stand a chance against the X Elite.
When Qualcomm revealed the X Elite, its marketing numbers were outdated, as it compared its chip with Intel’s 13th Generation mobile CPUs. Specifically, it said it could match the Intel Core i9-13980HX while using 70% less power, and it said it would do the same with the Apple M2 at 30% less power. One month later, Intel launched Meteor Lake, which features a tile-based design that offers numerous performance-per-watt benefits. No matter, says Qualcomm, as X Elite is still the better solution.
Qualcomm is making some huge claims with its X Elite SoC compared to X86, but so far it seems like it might be able to back those claims up.
Credit: Qualcomm
Qualcomm gave PC World a briefing highlighting the X Elite’s dominance over the latest chips from Intel. Qualcomm stated in the briefing that when it comes to single-threaded performance, its chip is 54% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H at the same power or 65% more efficient when performance is the same. For multi-threaded applications, the X Elite is 52% faster than the Core Ultra 7 at the same power or 60% more efficient while offering the same performance.
Additionally, it says the X Elite is also faster than the flagship Meteor Lake CPU, which is the Core Ultra 9 185H. The company says for single-threaded workloads, it’s 51% faster at the same power or 65% more efficient at the same performance level. In multi-threading, it’s 41% faster, and when performance is the same, it uses 58% less power.
For context, the Core Ultra 7 155H is a 6+8+2 design, with six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power cores. The Core Ultra 9 185H has the same core counts but a 300MHz higher boost clock. In comparison, the Snapdragon X Elite features 12 Oryon CPU cores using the Arm architecture but without a so-called hybrid design that uses both power and efficiency cores.
The first Windows notebooks that utilize Qualcomm’s powerful X Elite SoC are expected to arrive later this year, and to say it’ll be a clash of the titans is an understatement. This is the first time Qualcomm is competing with both AMD and Intel in the notebook space while also challenging x86’s reign in Windows laptops. In March, we saw some pre-release benchmarks that did indeed show the X Elite beating Meteor Lake, but those were run on Qualcomm-made laptops.