In late October, Qualcomm unveiled its latest System on Chip (SoC), the Snapdragon X Elite. Shortly after, Apple responded by introducing its first 3nm chipsets for the Mac lineup – the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max – all launched in the same month. While Qualcomm boldly asserts that its SoC is up to 21 percent faster in multi-core performance compared to Apple’s M3, it is important to consider the impact of the distinct operating systems running on these chipsets.
Data from Geekbench 6, shared by Digital Trends, reveals that the Snapdragon X Elite achieves a multi-core score of 15,300, surpassing the M3’s score of 12,154. However, it is worth noting that Qualcomm did not disclose the power limit during these tests. Each CPU has a power limit that determines the clock speeds of its cores. The Snapdragon X Elite offers two power limits – 23W and 80W. Previous tests have indicated that the SoC with the lower power limit may be slower than the M2 in certain scenarios. While the 80W power limit enhances multi-core performance, it comes with the trade-off of increased heat and temperature spikes.
Sascha Segan, the senior public relations manager at Qualcomm, acknowledges the hardware’s quality but emphasizes that the user experience will differ due to the operating systems. Segan suggests that macOS, which runs on Apple’s chipsets, is a superior operating system compared to Windows. Despite this, she advises consumers to wait for the first wave of Snapdragon-powered notebooks to hit the market before purchasing a new laptop.
Although benchmark results of the Snapdragon X Elite in reference laptops are impressive, the true performance of consumer-grade machines remains to be seen upon their official launch.
