Qualcomm claims that the new Snapdragon X Elite is 21% faster than the Apple M3 processor

The release of the new Qualcomm processor that will be installed in PCs and laptops under the name Snapdragon X Elite was announced at the end of October. Soon after, Apple introduced its series of chipsets for this scope of work. These are the first processors of this kind that will be a product of 3nm technology and will be used for the Mac line of computers. These are of course: Apple M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max, which were launched almost in the same month.

The San Diego firm has now come out with a bold statement, claiming that its latest chipset is up to 21% faster than the Apple M3 competition in multi-core operations and tasks. However, despite supposedly having the upper hand, a Qualcomm PR manager says the experience will be different, and that has to do with both upcoming chipsets running different operating systems.

The Snapdragon X Elite is faster than the M3 processor, but Windows is still inferior to MacOS

An image posted by Digital Trends reveals that the Snapdragon X Elite has a multi-core score of 15,300, while the Apple M3 lags behind the Qualcomm processor, with a score of 12,154. It's a Geekbench 6 test, but Qualcomm has cleverly left one important detail out of these results, and it concerns details about the Snapdragon X Elite's power limit. Remember that each processor has a power limit that allows its cores to run at higher speeds, but at the cost of higher power consumption. In question are the so-called “Power Level” (PL) levels that the current generation of AMD and Intel processors also have. Deliberately hiding this technical detail is calculated to cause unrest in the ranks of the competition.

Qualcomm

Snapdragon X Elite has two PL modes of operation, i.e. consumption levels: 23 and 80 W. Some earlier tests showed that when it draws less power, this chipset is also slower than the M2 version of the Apple processor. On the other hand, consumption of 80 W undoubtedly promises better performance, but it certainly comes at the cost of generating more heat and a jump in operating temperature.

However, according to the Qualcomm PR department, it is not so simple to compare the Apple and MacOS ecosystem with the Qualcomm and Windows competition. It is a completely different work experience. Although they are of the opinion that MacOS is a better operating system than Windows OS, they claim that their hardware is very good, which according to our logic of thinking could influence the feeling of working with the Windows system to be even better, especially in those parts where it has been trotting so far for MacOS version.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm representatives advise end users to be patient and wait, because now is not the right time to spend money on buying a new laptop. According to them, we should wait for the moment when the first wave of laptops with the Snapdragon platform will hit the market. Although we would see to believe that the Snapdragon X Elite is a very capable processor for the PC platform, for now it is only in benchmark tools, where reference laptop models are tested. However, we will have to wait a little longer and see how the new wave of consumer-grade AI machines will perform in real life when they are officially released for sale.